The 

 Hook 



Man's Tenure on 

 Cape Lookout 



By Eddie Nickens 

 Photos by Scott D. Taylor 



1^ am no newcomer to Cape Lookout 

 National Seashore. In past years, I have 

 overnighted in the rough-and-tumble 

 Alger Willis fish camp, feasting on 

 clams dug with a yard rake and red drum 

 just hours out of the surf. I have camped 

 in the fall under the beam of the 

 diamond-patterned lighthouse and driven 

 from Raleigh in the black of two-hours- 

 to-dawn to fish the cape spit for false 

 albacore and Spanish mackerel. 



But never have I visited with a 

 guide whose Cape Lookout pedigree is 

 as pure as that of David Yeomans. 

 Always before, I'd made the trip to exult 

 in Lookout's wilds, its empty beaches 

 and marshes and undulant dunes, but this 

 time I hope to sift back through man's 

 tenure on the cape. I hope to learn how 

 its shores came to strike their fragile 

 balance: not quite primal but far from tame. 



Yeomans would know. He would 

 know where the old whalers' camps had 

 crouched in the dunes, remember the 

 mailboat and recall lighting afire chips 

 of dried cow dung so the acrid pall 

 would hold the mosquitoes at bay. 



Continued 



This article is the first in a series 

 by Eddie Nickens on coastal landmarks. 



6 SPRING 1998 



