would watch the moon rise over Core 

 Sound. Family quilts are carefully 

 folded on the beds, the dining room 

 table set with the family 

 china. In the main parlor, he 

 taps on an ancient organ his 

 grandmother played. 



Currently, Gillikin 

 spends much of his time 

 working with marine 

 biologists who are exploring 

 new ways of cultivating 

 oysters. He's justifiably 

 proud that he farms the same 

 water granted to his great- 

 uncle for an oyster garden in 

 1891, and he pulls up net 

 bags bulging with oysters 

 grown from tiny spat. If I 

 return later in the fall, he 

 promises, he'll teach me 

 what a Jarrett Bay oyster 

 tastes like. That is a visit, I 

 assure him, he can 

 count on. 



Hancock House typifies 

 the attractions Down East 

 has to offer — little known 

 and easily passed by. 

 Likewise, I would have 

 driven right past Homer 

 Fulcher's house in Stacy, had 

 I not been offered an 

 introduction by Curt Salter of 

 the Waterfowl Museum back on 

 Harkers Island. At age 77, "Mr. 

 Homer," as Fulcher is known, has 

 "made a living out of the water" all his 

 life, Salter says. He has captained 

 tugs, menhaden fishing vessels and 

 charter fishing boats. He is best 

 known, however, for his hand-carved 

 wooden decoys. I find Fulcher sitting 

 in his small garage workshop, in a 

 rusty chrome chair with a torn green 

 vinyl seat, packing a pipe with Carter 

 Hall tobacco. 



"Any direction I looked," he says 

 of his boyhood home on Piney Point, 



Riders from Cedar Island's 



White Sands Trail Rides 

 gallop rented horses along 

 a deserted Down East beach. 

 Cedar Island sunsets provide serene 

 backdrops for hour-long rides 

 or weekend horseback trips. 



"every one of those guys carved their 

 own decoys." With hatchet, handsaw 

 and a wood rasp, Down East carvers 

 fashioned thousands of decoys during 

 the 1940s and '50s, many for personal 

 use, but hundreds more for the large 

 duck clubs that dotted the barrier 

 islands. Turning a battered decoy 

 upside-down, Fulcher shows me its 

 V-shaped bottom, the telltale sign of a 

 quartered log. Behind him, shelves are 

 a jumble of chisels, knives and carved 

 decoy heads. 



Fulcher's grandfather was raised 

 on Great Island, a wide stretch of Core 



Banks where anglers now flock to the 

 Alger Willis fish camp. For years 

 Fulcher had a "crab camp" there, with 

 four bunks and a two-burner 

 kerosene stove. It might not 

 have been luxurious, he says, 

 "but you can't say the food 

 was bad — oysters, shrimp, 

 fish, all you could catch." 

 One day in the 1960s, Fulcher 

 looked across the sound and 

 saw smoke rising from those 

 dunes; the National Park 

 Service was clearing the 

 islands of the crab camps. 

 He's been back few times 

 since. 



From Fulcher's house in 

 Stacy, the road curls around 

 the deep cut of Nelson Bay, 

 then presents me with a 

 dilemma. To the left lies N.C. 

 12 to Cedar Island; to the 

 right, the last few miles of 

 U.S. 70 and the fishing 

 communities of Sealevel and 

 Atlantic. I check my watch 

 and make a reluctant choice. 

 Atlantic and Sealevel will 

 have to wait for my next visit. 



N.C. 12 tunnels through 

 long stretches of tangled 

 woods and then suddenly 

 bursts across 10,000 acres of 

 open black needlerush marsh, the 

 largest remaining on the Atlantic 

 seaboard. Part of the Cedar Island 

 National Wildlife Refuge, the marsh 

 sweeps to the west for a mile or more, 

 hemmed in by far trees that form a thin 

 green horizon. To the east is Core 

 Sound, dotted with duck blinds built on 

 pilings over the water. The first bill- 

 boards appear, advertising hotels and 

 restaurants on Ocracoke Island, a signal 

 that the ferry and the end of the road are 

 at hand. 



As abruptly as I barreled onto the 

 open marsh, I bore again into dense 



6 MARCH/APRIL 1996 



