[gentle orchestral fanfare]

♪

[resonant strings lead
building orchestration]

(male narrator)
Welcome to Our State ,

a production of UNC-TV

in association
with Our State magazine--

for over 80 years,

bringing readers
the wonders of North Carolina.

[swelling string harmonies
reveal placid orchestration]

On this edition...

the emotional journey
of a potter

who finds himself
in the North Carolina clay...

and take a literary trek
down the "sweetheart stream."

♪

[gentle piano melody]

(male announcer)
Since 1872,

BB&T has been supporting
the people and communities

of North Carolina.

From our small-town roots

to the banking network
you see today,

we've always been here
for all our clients,

stretching from Manteo...
to Murphy.

We're proud of our heritage

as the oldest bank
in North Carolina,

and we're very proud
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for Our State .

♪

Quality public television
is made possible

through the financial
contributions

of viewers like you,

who invite you to join them
in supporting UNC-TV.

[sparse piano chords]

♪

[oboe leads
calm orchestration]

[scraping noise]

♪

(man)
People always say, oh,

it must be just like Christmas
opening a kiln...

♪

but it's not, really.

There's a lot more anxiety

because there's
so much work that--

that goes into each firing,
each load of pots.

♪

It's a really private,
personal time

and can be really wonderful,

but it can also be
really pretty difficult.

And I can't even really
objectively see the pots

for...about two weeks.

♪

Once you can let
your expectations melt away...

♪

then you can actually
look at the pot and see it.

They, um--

they really reveal themselves
very slowly to you.

♪

The cold never bothers me...

'cause I--
I grew up in New England.

I like the cold;
I like a real winter.

[soft piano melody resonates]

♪

There are days, certainly,
when I wake up out here

and I wonder and I question,

what motivated me
to be out here?

[strings support piano]

♪

And I think
that maybe there was a--

a small percentage

that was running away
from something.

♪

And there's days when,
very clearly,

I feel like I needed
to put this space here.

♪

[quick whistled note]

[animal footfalls]

Came down to North Carolina

to go to college
at Guilford in Greensboro,

talked my way into a class
with Charlie Tefft,

who runs the ceramic program.

It was there that my eyes
were really opened

to this huge world of clay
that exists in North Carolina.

[oboe leads wandering piano]

There was a potter
named Matt Jones,

and I started
helping Matt fire.

The first time
I went into his workshop,

there was a smell about it,
and it has a dirt floor,

and it was very dark,

and something felt
really right about it.

[sloshing]

I felt, and I could really
put my head down

and learn something.

The apprenticeship
at Matt Jones's

was structured
in the same way

that his apprenticeships
were structured.

I would do chores
like chop wood,

mix glazes, mix clay.

As long as I had those things
taken care of,

I could also make pots.

[off-screen]
Corey, these
are little coffee mugs.

They're sort of
a variation

of that Cole mug
that I love

from Sanford,
North Carolina.

[voice-over]
He would throw a pot.

That was the sort of
small piece of perfection

that I was striving for.

I actually think
that somewhere in between--

[voice-over]
And the rest of the day,
I would look at that pot,

and I would try to mimic it.

♪

And you need to sorta
sacrifice your ego.

If you can't do that,
this type of apprenticeship

will prove
to be very difficult.

Keep it a little
wider at the top.

[voice-over]
It's bigger than just you.

You're part of a whole arc.

I worked with Matt;
Matt worked with Mark Hewitt.

Mark Hewitt
was with Todd Piker.

They were with Michael Cardew
in England.

Cardew was Bernard Leach's
first apprentice.

We're all sort of
in it together

and pushing
each other forward.

[rustling]

North Carolina's really a--
a land made of clay.

It's everywhere.

[machine whirring]

I can number the first time
that I used a local clay,

and it was
a huge amount of work,

and it's incredibly
labor-intensive

to refine it and process it.

But it threw beautifully,

and the color was beautiful,

and it had all this character.

[slapping]

But the throwing,
I struggle with it.

[strings support piano melody]

♪

I think
that's a funny illusion,

that art is joy
'cause it's not always joy.

And I think a lot of good art
comes from struggle...

and there's good days,
and there's bad days.

♪

The way that I throw is--
it's looking at older pots,

especially older pots
from North Carolina,

and looking at characteristics
of those pots.

Since most of those pots
were made for function,

it was important
that they were light,

and so there's certain things

that I really
beat myself up about,

trying to make them
as light as possible.

♪

But they have to look good
sitting--

a nice, midcentury home
or a modern home.

I mean,
that's the real challenge

for me now, I feel,
is the pots

fit into a broader context
of the world,

not just be suited
for a country cottage.

[orchestration thickens]

♪

But every once in a while,

it's kind of nice
to come back to an older form.

♪

There's an elegance
to a pitcher

that I don't really
wanna mess with.

Instead, it's just a slow
refinement of the form.

[oboe leads piano]

♪

I mean, they had to make
a lot of these.

They had to be
very proficient,

but they still added
a little bit of themselves

into each one.

They still had the touch
of the maker.

♪

The technique
that I use to decorate pots

is called slip trailing,
and it's an old technique.

You can see it
all over the world

in all different
pottery traditions,

and it's something I express
a little of myself in that,

and that's certainly
what people

seem to recognize me for
is my slip trailing.

♪

I grew up with both
my mother and father,

practicing artists.

As long as I can remember,

they were
in their studios working.

That is what I saw,
so to be an artist,

nobody would raise
an eyebrow at it.

It was like the doctor's son
going to med school.

♪

Being up here every day,
it turns into a juggling act.

♪

[sloshing]

Certain ones need to be
attended to at certain times,

and they need to be decorated.

These need to be glazed,
and these need to be trimmed.

Watching the racks
fill up with pots,

it's really fantastic.

♪

Hah, hah!

What'd you ruin?

I erased it, and--

Well, you can just
turn this into a leaf.

But I tried
to do that,

and then it looked
ridiculous--heh!

[sizzling]

[indistinct talking]

(man)
Connie and I met

in Madison County
at a farmers' market

in the bottom
of the old roller rink

in Mars Hill...

and she worked
for a goat dairy

in northern Madison County.

She was selling goat cheese.

We spent that first winter

driving back and forth
on these snowy roads--

it was the craziest winter
that we've had in years--

through two feet of snow.

She's watched this go
from an old tobacco field

to what it is today
and been part of that change.

She's really hugely important.

[horns and drums lead]

Our year
is broken into cycles,

and right now,

I've fired the kiln
four times,

so that's
four different cycles.

As I'm making the pots,
I sort of have an idea of,

in my head, where they're
gonna go in the kiln.

[off-screen]
Let's come over
towards me just a hair.

That's good.

It's OK;
it's OK.

[voice-over]
It's a puzzle
to fit them all in.

[harp leads]

[off-screen]
I think the short,
fat one, yeah--

bring--
bring me that one.

[voice-over]
For the most part,

pots farther back
in the kiln

have more decoration,
more glaze.

♪

The farther you are
in the front of the kiln,

the more ash and salt the pots
are gonna have on them

because the hottest part
of the kiln is in the front,

so they don't need
as much surface decoration,

but the form is important,

but then,
the form will interact

with the ash deposit

that the flame
will put on them.

So that relies on the fire
to do all of the work.

♪

Well, that's the most intense
moment because you've got

two or three months
of work behind you,

and you load it into the kiln,

and then, you sorta
step back away from it.

[wood snapping]

There is an element
of serendipity and chance

that you have in that process

that doesn't exist in many
other artistic processes.

[strings hold high note]

I still have control,
but there's certainly

a lotta things
that are happening in the kiln

that you don't have
control over.

[bells lead
as arrangement swells]

[fire crackling]

♪

[sustained violin chord]

I think,
in my situation,

I had to kind of run away
to find myself.

[piano melody emerges]

So, my family history,

if we wanna talk
about my family history...

is Henri Matisse, um,

the painter,
who had some children,

one of whom was Pierre,
who's my grandfather.

I grew up
with this stuff around me.

I mean, it was just
an everyday part of our lives.

We never talked about Henri.

It was always sort of
a great elephant in the room.

There's a--
a power behind it that, um--

that certainly
doesn't go away,

and every time
you walk through an exhibit,

it always kinda
leaves me speechless

because what--
what do you do in that wake

when that's always behind you?

[fire crackling]

There are times when it feels

like the shadow
that's cast by those figures

is kind of too broad to ever
get out from underneath...

[oboe leads]

but nothing that, I think,
putting your head down

and getting to work
won't resolve.

♪

And being here
sort of pushed me forward

to make the best work
that I can make.

It didn't really matter
what my last name was

because people
started to recognize me

for what I was doing.

♪

[fire roaring]

So this is the third
and final day of the firing.

[machine humming]

[off-screen]
It's good.

Enough.

[machine ceases]

Right now, we're at top
temperature in the front.

The clay is mature;
it's done.

We're just building up
ash deposits on the clay,

building up the character
of the clay body.

Right now, Josh is stoking,
and the door's open,

so the temperature's dropping.

As he stokes,
it'll take a minute.

There's always a lag.

And as it's catching,
right in the beginning,

the kiln
will go into reduction,

meaning there's too much fuel
and not enough oxygen,

but as that fuel
starts to burn,

then we'll see
the temperature

start to go up,
as it is.

And this kiln
is very responsive.

It also depends
on the wood you're burning.

This wood is mostly pine
and poplar,

and it's been drying
for about three months,

so it's really dry.

It's ready to burn.

So after a stoke
in the front,

you'll see a huge flame
coming out the chimney.

Once that flame
comes back into the chimney,

then, you know,
the atmosphere--

it's kind of cleared up
in there--

the back is ready for a stoke.

OK, go ahead?

(Matisse)
Yup.

[voice-over]
It's important in the back

because that's where
all the glazed ware is.

It's important
to get temperature

so the glazes will melt,

and I formulate my glazes
to be a little stiffer

because this kiln gets so hot,

and you need it
to be really hot

to get that temperature
in the back.

[piano leads
calm orchestration]

♪

Once in a while,
towards the end of a firing,

I'll pull out a cup or
so

mething small from the front.

♪

I'm never actually
in love with the pots

that I pull out
because a lot happens

from the time you stop firing

to the time
they come out of the kiln.

What it does give me
is a sense of how much ash

and how much salt
I have on the pots.

This has
a pretty thin shino on it,

which has gotten a little
darker in the reduction--

the heat in the front,

that I would like
a little more ash on this pot,

so I'll probably
just keep goin'

for another hour or two.

[oboe leads]

♪

I had this sort of notion

of wanting
to go into the woods

and come out and--

and have this skill...

♪

and have something to--
to offer the world.

I wanted to create a place
that would eventually

have its own energy

and attract other people.

It is doing that.

It is opening itself up.

The evolution is very slow.

♪

You're not gonna
hit a point one day

and wake up,
and suddenly,

you're there;
you've arrived.

I have to work at it.

[bells and piano lead]

♪

[cascading
acoustic guitar notes]

♪

It might not sound like it
from the names,

but right where Naked Creek
enters Drowning Creek

above Wagram,
that's where one

of eastern Carolina's
loveliest rivers is formed,

the Lumber River.

♪

In its upper reaches,
this is its aspect:

a thin, dark stream,

one of short stretches
and sharp, slaloming turns,

bends known locally
as "cow faces,"

the river varying
from 20 to 40 feet in width

and almost always canopied
by cypress, gum, maple,

and occasional pine.

In recent decades,
the Lumber,

particularly the upper river,

with its black-water
lowland look

and its hill-country rapidity,

has charmed many thousands
of canoe and kayak paddlers.

♪

[strummed guitar chords]

Over a century ago,

the Riverton poet
John Charles McNeill,

our unofficial poet laureate

and a favorite of
President Theodore Roosevelt's,

called the Lumber River
a "sweetheart stream."

This was his home,
and he absolutely adored

the river
that ran through his boyhood

and helped raise him.

In 1907, the year he died
young at the age of 33,

he wrote
these parting thoughts

about the Lumber River:

"She is a tortuous,
delicious flirt,

"but she does not deserve
the punishment

"put upon her by geographers,
who have perverted

"her sweet Indian name
of 'Lumbee'

"into something
that suggests

"choking sawdust,
rotting slabs,

and the shrill scream
of the circular saw."

The upside-down goblet
on the Bible

sits atop Temperance Hall,
near the McNeill home,

a brick hexagon built in 1860

and now on the National
Register of Historic Places.

The Richmond Temperance
and Literary Society

met here regularly
for 40 years,

and it later served

as part
of the Spring Hill Academy.

Sherman's force
shot the place up in 1865,

but it's still here,
and the society still meets

at least once a year.

Maxton,
a little railroad town,

sits between the Lumber River

and its tributary
Shoe Heel Creek.

In fact, the community
was named Shoe Heel

on two different occasions,
but there were

so many settlers
of Scottish descent

in this part
of the Lumber River valley,

so many folks whose names
began with Mc or Mac,

that the place
became known as Mackstown

till the post office
resolved the name as Maxton,

with an X in the middle.

Here at the corner of McCaskill
and Patterson Streets,

Maxton boasts its own genuine
clock-towered flatiron.

[burbling piano notes]

Pembroke is the home,

the cultural and historical
center of the Lumbee--

at 55,000 in population,

our state's largest tribe
of Native Americans.

And it is home, too,
to a branch

of the University
of North Carolina.

At the Native American
Resource Center,

we pay homage
to the heritage of the Lumbee,

and the life and legend
of one in particular

never fails
to capture folks' interest

and imagination:
Henry Berry Lowrie.

[dramatic arrangement]

In the Civil War,
Lumbees were being conscripted

by the Confederacy

and put to work
building the sand ramparts

of Fort Fisher on our coast,

but young Lowrie resisted

and is said to have witnessed,
from hiding,

the murders at the hands
of the Confederate Home Guard

of both his father
and his brother.

He swore
he would avenge their deaths,

and hiding out in the swamps,
he and his gang

robbed and raided
during the Civil War,

skirmishing
with the Confederate Army

and the Home Guard
as Sherman advanced

through Robeson
in the spring of 1865.

Lowrie kept on fighting
during Reconstruction,

and he was
well and widely known

as the Lumbee Robin Hood.

[strings fade]

Colonel Thomas Robeson,

hero of the Revolutionary War
Battle of Elizabethtown,

is said to have opposed
the creation

of a new county
to be pulled out of Bladen

until the suggestion came
to name it for him,

and the idea
then found favor in his heart.

Robeson County's seat

is Lumberton
on the Lumber River,

through and from which
resin, pitch, tar,

and turpentine
have been shipped.

Proposals in 1798
and again in 1815

to connect the Lumber
and nearby Cape Fear Rivers

by canal both failed.

In the late 1800s,

the timber and turpentine town
of Lumberton

was still sending
hundred-foot log rafts

downriver to Georgetown,
South Carolina,

where their three-man crews

would collect $200
for the timber

and the two weeks' poling,
and then walk on home.

On the west side of the river
just outside of town

was a campground for wagons
carryin' produce,

tobacca, and whiskey,
a spot called Mud Market.

Old-time Lumberton
had a reputation

for being
a wide-open turpentine town,

but you might not know it

from lookin' over
the modern city that emerged

after the great fire of 1897
burned Lumberton down.

An early-19th-century structure

that survived
that conflagration

is the small, brick
Proctor Law Office.

Dating to about 1820,

it's the oldest building
in this old town.

[mellow guitar arrangement]

I've got
a front-row balcony seat

at the Carolina Civic Center
Historic Theater,

which first opened in 1928,
featuring silent movies,

vaudeville acts,
and yodelin' cowboys.

After a major preservation
and renovation effort,

it reopened in 2008--

another Lumber River landmark
on the National Register.

It's currently presenting
a hundred events a year

and on the rise.

Now playing,
John Wayne in Red River.

[hollering and whistling]

[choir supports
orchestral film score]

The fine arts
and literary arts

are alive and well here,

and Lumberton
is much appreciated these days

as the home
of one of North Carolina's

and the South's best-loved
authors, Jill McCorkle.

I have
always loved

Meadowbrook
Cemetery,

just the--
it's beautiful,
quiet,

and I would
come here
to ride my bike.

We would always come visit
Clare Townsend.

The--the local tale
is that Clare Townsend, um,

who died way too young, uh--

when this statue was erected,

we always heard
that she had ruby eyes

in the statue
and that someone stole them

and that Clare
is always watching, and, um,

hoping to see the person
who stole her ruby eyes.

And so kids would, you know,
dare each other to run up

and touch her
and run away, and--

and I always
just loved her.

Somebody dared me
one time to kiss her,

and I did, and it didn't
bother me a bit--hah, hah!

(Simpson)
We're in downtown
Princess Ann, North Carolina,

established in 1796,

back when
the whole Lumber River

was still called
Drowning Creek.

All that's left
of Princess Ann

is her name on a road,

and yet
that's just the beginning,

not the ending
of the tale,

for the road leads
to one of our state's

truly great natural treasures.

We're at Griffin's Whirl,

a hypnotic,
reverse-flow feature

on the river near Orrum.

Our state has one and only one
black-water stream

with the federal government's

wild and scenic river
designation,

and this is it.

Eighty-one miles
of the Lumber hold that honor.

In 1989,
the state of North Carolina

declared the Lumber

a state natural
and scenic river

and made a goodly portion

of McNeill's
"tortuous, delicious flirt"

into the Lumber River
State Park.

[gentle piano
and guitar arrangement]

A number
of primitive campsites

await campers at the park's
two key facilities,

at Chalk Banks near Wagram

and at the headquarters
here at Princess Ann,

about 15 miles downstream
of Lumberton.

More overnight ports
for canoeists and kayakers

are along remote stretches
of the stream,

and their names of traders
and landings from bygone days

read like a roll call
of the river's history.

The Powell House,
this small coastal cottage,

was built here
as the Wooten trading post,

hard by the Lumber River,
back in 1802,

predating the laying out
of the town of Fair Bluff

by four years.

This lovely,
little crossroads town,

with its mile-long river walk,
is the last civilization

along the Lumber River
in North Carolina.

Below Fair Bluff,
it's only a short way

through wilderness
river-swamp jungle,

and then nothing...
but South Carolina,

where the Lumber flows
into the Little Pee Dee.

Yet the wondrous Lumber River
is ours for 115 miles,

and one
of the very best reasons

to get out
and afloat in our state

is the dark, alluring water
of this "sweetheart stream."

♪

[birds chirping]

[water sloshing faintly]

♪

[piano and strings lead
placid orchestration]

♪

♪

♪

♪

♪

CAPTION EDITOR
Will Halman

Caption Perfect, Inc.
www.CaptionPerfect.com

♪

(announcer)
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to Our State magazine,

visit the Web site
ourstate.com or call...

[strings support
gentle piano melody]

From the time BB&T
opened its doors in 1872

in the town of Wilson,

we've supported
the people and communities

of North Carolina

from the Outer Banks
to the Blue Ridge Mountains.

We've been in business
for 136 years,

making us the oldest bank
in North Carolina.

We're proud
of this distinction,

and we're also very proud

to provide funding
for Our State .

♪

Quality public television
is made possible

through the financial
contributions

of viewers like you,

who invite you to join them
in supporting UNC-TV.