1- I aving lived 

 in a desert for 10 

 years, we know why 

 the ancient cultures 

 worshipped rain 



gods they knew 



what was most 

 important. 



Dorothy Harte, Palm 

 Springs, CA. 

 (father's family 

 settled on the Black 

 River in mid-1 700s) 



the Black's headwaters and the upper 

 South from ORW consideration. But 

 the river water recovers in the slow, 

 purifying filter of the downstream 

 swamps. David Martin, president of the 

 South River Association and an advo- 

 cate for river protection, says the 

 Black's classification must be nailed 

 down before water quality is compro- 

 mised. 



"It's worth a lot of money to find a 

 stream to put pollutants in," says the 

 retired N.C. State University physics 

 professor. "You have to have a good 

 chunk of river that has low enough 

 pollution in it to where the wastewater 

 will not take it up over the standards. 



"None of the outstanding resource 

 waters that have been designated up 

 until now has threatened any kind of 

 major industrial use," Martin says. 

 "They've all been way up in the moun- 

 tains or ... down in the marshes where 

 industry doesn't want to locate anyhow. 

 The South and Black rivers, those are 

 viable water sources; they're clean and 

 they're ready for pollution." 



People say that a trip down the 

 Black is to travel back in time. You 

 won't see the log rafts and steamers that 

 floated passengers, lumber and turpen- 

 tine down this once-bustling commer- 



cial highway through the turn of the 

 century. But from your vessel, you'll 

 see forest primeval and be propelled by 

 slow-moving, shallow water that seems 

 unsullied by the developer's hand. 



"A lot of canoeists go out on the 

 river and see what appears to be an 

 undisturbed area," says Lenat. "But 

 often just behind the trees is a vast agri- 

 cultural field." 



For almost 20 years, Douglas 

 Little has lived about a mile above the 

 headwaters of the Black on its eastern 

 source tributary, Six Runs Creek. As a 

 Charlotte high school student in the 

 early 1960s, he spent summer vacations 

 in Sampson County helping his uncle 

 hang Funk's G Hybrid Seed Com signs 

 on tobacco bams for $1 apiece. He was 

 charmed by the region's creeks and 

 crannies and built a home here in 1976. 



Little and his family earn a living 

 crafting small electric boats out of juni- 

 per. He lives with his wife and two 

 sons, 1 1 and 15, 150 yards east of the 

 riverbank, a rare opportunity on this 

 typically flat floodplain. 



"My boys are quite at home in the 

 water, no matter how dark, how deep or 

 how snaggy," he says. 



Little has paddled a canoe from his 

 house to Carolina Beach and in and 

 around nearly every cove and slough 

 between. At least one day a week on 

 the Black, he tests his wooden craft, 

 which are quick and quiet shallow-draft 

 vessels well-suited to the terrain. Black 

 River Boats are made of only dead 

 Atlantic white cedar, salvaged, with 

 permission, from a nearby hog farm. 



"There's more dead wood than I 

 can harvest," he says. "It's a mixed 

 blessing." 



Little never misses an opportunity 

 to talk up the river, whether he's de- 

 scribing a winsome otter munching on 

 a catfish or guiding a visitor through a 

 beguiling backwater slough. Like other 

 supporters of the river's reclassifica- 

 tion, he knows it will take more than 

 laws to protect the Black. 



It will take the people who meet it 

 and the people who love it. 



6 MARC HI APRIL 1994 



