{"id":31331,"date":"2025-06-23T13:07:32","date_gmt":"2025-06-23T17:07:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ncseagrant.ncsu.edu\/coastwatch\/?p=31331"},"modified":"2025-07-15T16:13:27","modified_gmt":"2025-07-15T20:13:27","slug":"summer-2025-turtle-road","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ncseagrant.ncsu.edu\/coastwatch\/summer-2025-turtle-road\/","title":{"rendered":"Turtle Road"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n\n
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\n

One time, a strong early-middle-aged man showed up at my cabin, shirt and arms all covered in blood. He had just tried to get a snapper off of Old Greensboro Highway with a stick\u00a0and\u00a0<\/em>his bare hands and arms, and that beast had bitten and slashed him till he looked as if he had been in a knife fight.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n <\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n

\n \n
\n \n FROM THE SUMMER 2025 ISSUE<\/span>\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t<\/svg><\/span>\n <\/a>\n <\/div>\n \n\n <\/div>\n\n\n\n

In late February a year  ago, just as winter\u2019s last bitter winds visited the Currituck Banks and on a bright sunny day made 47 degrees feel like 35, my wife and collaborator Ann and I wrapped up a visit to Corolla and the Currituck Beach Light and environs and headed west towards home.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We took the high road, above the Albemarle Sound, on the way to Elizabeth City, US 158, passing unmarked relics I recalled well from childhood: Anna Gallop\u2019s pyramidal-roofed vegetable stand, the small workshop building where I once stopped and bought a Canada-goose whirligig, a low-slung building that sold Currituck peaches by the bushel and the peck, the judge\u2019s place between Coinjock and Barco, where we would stop and sit on the porch and visit him and his wife and aged mother. . . <\/p>\n\n\n\n

And then we turned due west at the Barco fishdealer\u2019s and soon encountered a stretch that was from my first consciousness one of the most charmed and treasured places on the way from Elizabeth City to Kitty Hawk:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The turtle road<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On this couple-of-miles causeway through the upper North River swamps, in the canals alongside, from which dirt was long ago borrowed to create the above-swamp-level causeway passage, sun thousands of eastern sliders, lazily basking and perhaps looking dark green, perhaps dull and muddy, depending on how long they may have been out of the water.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a>
Red eared slider, sunning himself on a warm fall day. AdobeStock<\/em>.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

What a treat for my sisters and me way back when, to see all these turtles cheek by jowl on every log or fallen branch that could support them, a treasure one need not own in order to have<\/em>. The guarantee of seeing them most any sunny day year-round was a phenomenon almost without rival, and our excitement upon entering the long swampy glade where they were was unlimited. Perhaps we counted them, or tried to, yet there was no way to keep up, for their sheer numbers outstripped our youthful abilities at counting. Not that it mattered at all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For the turtles were in their right, and rightful, places, and the pleasure of seeing and knowing this was what carried the day.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Beach-bound, in only several minutes, our father would have driven the family\u2019s maroon, humpbacked \u201952 Dodge straight on through the swamp and we would be headed for Barco, Poplar Branch, Point Harbor, the Wright Brothers bridge, and Kitty Hawk \u2013 and thrilled by coming over the last sandhill and seeing the Journey\u2019s End <\/em>motel, the little cottages below, all set brightly against the sea, we would forget about the little piece of swamp well behind us now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As Ann and I headed for the same spot on that late February day, the Currituck sea-winds were likewise left behind, and I could feel the decades-old high anticipation of what awaited us in the swamps, and then here the sliders were  — whether yellow-bellied slider, red-eared slider, or eastern painted turtle, they all knew how to slide! — enjoying this territory all their own, as if we had left them here on their logs years before and they had not ever moved since then. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

For a tiny piece of time, the turtle road held us in thrall, as always, its abidingly large population of turtles delivering a show, providing a high level of magic without fail, as it has year after year.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

That was enough, way more than enough. How happy a shortcut through the big swamp, with its turtles going on forever, could make a boy, and, much later, how happy these treasured delights could make a man and a woman too.                                                                                      <\/p>\n\n\n\n

*** <\/p>\n\n\n\n

A century and a quarter ago, a floating bridge on a spindle in the middle of Charles Creek served foot and horse-and-buggy traffic moving up the Pasquotank River side toward town. And when a boat needed to get to the mill up the creek from the river, the bridge tender worked a pulley that let the bridge turn and allow the boat into the stream.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a>
A yellow bellied slider turtle perched on the stump of a cypress tree at Greenfield Lake in Wilmington, NC. AdobeStock<\/em>.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

By the time I was a schoolboy, walking home along that route, Charles Creek was bridged by a small Works Progress Administration arched concrete bridge, and only small craft were able to enter the creek beneath it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Big timbers lay akimbo all over each other upstream on both sides of the bridge, a situation that was pure delight to me, as those timbers drew eastern sliders by the score, and on any sunny day they would lay out all over that angled wood, where they seemed imminently approachable, therefore catchable by the likes of me. I really did try and try with all my might to catch one and take it home and put it in my mother\u2019s ivy bed — yet I learned that I could not simply walk over to the timbers and fetch one, for they all shed their places, falling just a bit into the water, not to come back while I was around.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

My tactics changed, and I approached them very, very slowly, walking sideways, sidling up to them and often getting within about five feet of them, tantalizingly close, before the turtles, every one, fell away. Over time I probably tried 50 times, having no better luck or chance on my final try than I did on my first.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The lesson, I learned, was that it was not given<\/em>, in a sense of Biblical justice, that I should have or own any of these turtles, not a one. They were free and independent beasts under the sight of the Lord, as I at eight or nine somehow understood myself to be, and I must learn to see them thataway, as they were and how and where they were. The sight of them sunning themselves in places they had claimed for the nonce for themselves was gift enough, and I should take no further action, no approaching them whenever I saw them so ensconced, that would make them retreat and fall away from their natural places in this world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The joy of regard<\/em>, I came to understand it.                                                    <\/p>\n\n\n\n

***<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yet I felt not so much joy, but wild excitement, when my father pulled down our oyster-shell driveway one Saturday when my Lamborn cousins were with us in Elizabeth City, with something to show — he called my cousin Johnny and me over to his Dodge, waved us around to the trunk of the car, advising both of us six-year-olds to stand back.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then he unlocked the trunk and, as it rose, a big green beast lunged at the opening: a large, 15 or 20 pound snapping turtle my father had picked up out of the road a scant eighth of a mile away at Gaither\u2019s Lagoon, a swamp that led to out to the Pasquotank River.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI just wanted you boys to see it,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"common<\/a>
Common snapping turtle. Credit: Edgar Figueiredo\/AdobeStock.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The snapper moved around the trunk, counter-clockwise is my recall, animated but unable to get up over the rear of the trunk, tall above the bumper.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I think we asked my father what it would do if it got out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWell,\u201d he said, \u201chard to say, but, first thing, he\u2019d probably want to bite your hand off!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cousin Johnny and I recoiled with a start.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBut we\u2019re not going to let him out — now that you\u2019ve gotten a good look, we\u2019re taking him back to where he lives.\u201d  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Which we did.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Johnny and I climbed into the Dodge and my father drove us east towards the river. Neighbors we passed had no idea what a secret we carried with us, just waved as we rolled by. My father stopped the car and we all got out, and he warned us again to stand back. We were a good 20 feet away from him when he popped the trunk this time — we could not really see the snapper but we could for sure hear him knocking around on the trunk\u2019s floor, snorting, as my father reached  into the trunk and grabbed the turtle by his tail.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By his tail!<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The snapper lunged for my father, who held the creature well out from his body, and it swung its claws and bit and snapped at the very air, and we were scared in our excitement as my father laughed and gave us another good look, before he moved across the street, swung the turtle back, then forward, letting him go into upper Gaither\u2019s Lagoon, where it lived and where it landed in the moment, quickly swimming away and down into the dark swamp waters to get shut of us forever.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWell, that\u2019s a snapping turtle, boys, and don\u2019t ever let one bite you, \u2019cause he won\u2019t let go till it thunders!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Eastern<\/a>
Eastern painted turtles. Credit: Jarek Tuszy\u0144ski\/CC-BY-SA-3.0 & GDFL.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Johnny and I looked up at the clear blue Carolina skies of this Saturday afternoon, considering just what that meant before hastily diving back into the Dodge, away from where the snapper had just gone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A turtle moral, never to be forgotten.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the years since, I have seen folks try to move such creatures off of highways, usually with thick sticks and branches that the turtles flip around and quickly snap in half. One time, a strong early-middle-aged man showed up at my cabin, shirt and arms all covered in blood. He had just tried to get a snapper off of Old Greensboro Highway with a stick and <\/em>his bare hands and arms, and that beast had bitten and slashed him till he looked as if he had been in a knife fight.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

And this man in his professional hours worked for Army Intelligence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sliders and box turtles are easily moved off most any non-Interstate roadway, but snappers? No: they are not looking for any help, and they have had millions of years to perfect their shows of disdain and animosity towards our kind.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So do not try and pick any old snapping turtle up or scoot it along with a stick. My father was all kinds of lucky that long ago Saturday afternoon, picking the snapper up in the first place and then pulling him out of the trunk to set him free in the second. As he put it, he just wanted to teach his son and his nephew a lesson, and so he did, swinging that big turtle off into the dark southern swamp.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And the lesson took.                                                                                       <\/p>\n\n\n\n

***<\/strong>  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Forty years ago, on an early May fishcamp weekend down in the swamp forest of Big Flatty Creek, several miles from the mouth of the Pasquotank River, Jake Mills, my colleague and mentor at UNC Chapel Hill, and I set a fifteen-hook trot line across a small stream coming out of the woods into the big creek. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This was just before sundown at the close of the first day, and, naturally, we made plans for a big, or even little, catfish fry the next night. Our first order of business the next morning would be to check the line, and we boated on back to our camp right on the water near the point, where the Creek makes a big southward turn, put a steak on the grill, and soon enjoyed watching the stars pop out in the big sky and form up as constellations, the grand rotation of the night just beginning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"box<\/a>
Box turtle. Credit: Ken Thomas.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Next morning, after Jake, in his parlance, \u201cwhomped us up some eggs and bacon,\u201d we got back into the jonboat and went up Big Flatty about a mile to where we had set that line.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

From a distance we could see it bouncing and flopping and breaking the water\u2019s surface quite a bit. Several catfish, so we thought.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But it was not catfish at all,  or any other kind of fish — the thrasher on our line was a large snapping turtle, which had gotten itself caught on one of the trotline hooks. We knew we were not going to get him loose by hand. The hook lay onto and into, though as best as we could see not through<\/em>, its tough webbing between shell and claw of one of its front legs. The snapper was caught but not hard<\/em> caught.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cLet\u2019s see if this\u2019ll do it,\u201d Jake said, calmly and carefully pushing a paddle blade towards the turtle, and as soon as he touched it and pushed on that foreleg, the turtle and the hook parted, as the hook popped loose and the turtle fell into the water. We took down the trotline, and I eased the boat out towards the center of the creek, turning downstream.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Just then we saw an enormous silver fish leap out of the Creek and streak into the air several hundred yards away before falling almost parallel with the water, and a millisecond after we saw the splash we heard it, dramatic as all get-out in the morning light.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhat on earth was that<\/em>?\u201d I said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cTarpon, I think,\u201d said Jake.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 \u201cA tarpon<\/em>!\u201d I repeated.  \u201cI thought they were a Florida fish.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWell, they are,<\/em>\u201d Jake said, \u201cbut they come up this far, just not in big numbers.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This was a real surprise — I had never seen a tarpon in our interior waters, and I am not sure Jake had either.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, doubly excited by the lone snapper on our line and by the almost magical tarpon that had come up Big Flatty from the Albemarle Sound, we decided to run back around the point, past our camp, and try our luck with bream and bass and catfish, the more expected fish for our spinning-reel lines, and, that being so, our luck was excellent that Saturday of forty-some years ago.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"turtle<\/a>
Warning sign outside Charlotte, NC.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

And the bright evening stars came out and graced us again, and that was excellent too, down yonder on the banks of Big Flatty Creek.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

***                                                      <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The low bridge over University Lake, not far from where Morgan Creek enters the lake, has had an informal name in our family since our twins were quite young. A break in the northern bridge rail marked the spot where an affable Chapel Hill insurance man named Marvin Muse had met his end, a heart attack ending his life and causing his car to break the rail and crash into the shallows of the upper Lake. In brief terms, when they asked about the broken rail, I told Hunter and Susannah what had happened and they immediately, and reverentially, began saying \u201cPoor old Marvin Muse\u201d most times when we crossed over — and so it became the \u201cPoor Old Marvin Muse Bridge.\u201d  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Eastern sliders found University Lake to be a grand habitat, and they were nowhere easier to see in numbers than from this bridge, on warm spring and hot summer afternoons, when they would lie, cheek by jowl, or shell by shell, on the many logs lying at the edges of the Lake.  And I do not mean two or three; on one recent warm spring day, I saw two dozen tightly together on the west side, their shells muddy and dry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I recall a big stump in the Perquimans River, not far downstream of the S bridge at Hertford, a big slider lying there with its head well out of its shell and lifted proudly toward town, as if to say \u201cYou got yours, I got mine.\u201d  Driving by there once with my elder cousin Jesse Perry Sr., I slowed for us to get a good look, and Jesse smiled and remarked with highest respect:  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHe\u2019s been there 10,000 years!\u201d  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The sliders have a skittish side, and, as I have long known,  generally do not wish to be approached. They slide, or spill, off their logs if threatened; though we mean them no harm, they of course do not know that. We might see a log-full of sliders when we round a riverbend in kayaks, yet too late — they have sensed or seen our presence, and off off and away<\/em> they go.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Not so, though, the turtles of Airlie Gardens, the decorated swamp that lies along Bradley Creek in Wilmington\u2019s mainland area of the old Wrightsville community. These creatures have over the  generations been so visited, drawn, photographed, and made party to weddings galore at the pergola porch on the lake that they seem to have lost all shyness and so sit amiably and close by on that built feature\u2019s steps leading down into the waters. All <\/em>shyness: I saw one slider mount another the last time we were there.  And I did not see a single turtle move away from a single human anywhere in Airlie during the hours we walked about there.             <\/p>\n\n\n\n

What a pleasure it is to catch an eyeful of these old hardshell creatures, anytime — even the snappers, though a little less <\/em>so — and know that they are ours, as long as they are up on the roadside logs of canals and lakes, in the light, and in the mind\u2019s eye forever, even when they do go sliding off their set spaces and slip away one more time into the murky waters they call home just below. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bland Simpson<\/strong>,\u00a0North Carolina\u2019s oft-honored voice of the state\u2019s coast, is the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s Kenan Distinguished Professor Emeritus. He is the pianist for the Red Clay Ramblers, the Tony Award-winning string band, and has collaborated on such musicals as Diamond Studs<\/em>,\u00a0Fool Moon<\/em>,\u00a0Kudzu,\u00a0<\/em>and\u00a0King Mackerel & The Blues Are Running<\/em>.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Turtle Road<\/strong>” and several other recent pieces from Bland Simpson in Coastwatch are part of The Sea Buoy<\/strong> (in progress), a sea-and-sound-country collection.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

More from Bland Simpson in Coastwatch<\/em><\/strong>

“Public Trust<\/a>“

\u201cRemembering Hazel<\/a>\u201c

\u201cThe Straits by Skipjack\u201d<\/a> 

\u201cCrossing the Mighty Neuse<\/a>\u201d 

\u201cOut at Hatteras<\/a>\u201d 

\u201cThis Wet and Water Loving Land<\/a>\u201d 

Ghost Ship of Diamond Shoals: The Mystery of the Carroll A. Deering<\/em> <\/a>

Two Captains from Carolina: Moses Grandy, John Newland Maffitt, and the Coming of the Civil War<\/a><\/em> 

on writing Two Captains<\/em> <\/a>

Books from Bland Simpson<\/strong><\/a> 
                     <\/p>\n\n\n\n

lead image: snapping turtle.
credit: Chuck Homler\/FocusOnWildlife.Me, CC-BY-SA 4.0.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

FROM THE SUMMER 2025 ISSUE<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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