When I was a kid, my dad and grandfather would wake me before dawn and whisk me off to bodies of water I was too young to locate on a map. In their company, I floated rivers in canoes and explored lakes in bass boats. Often, we’d get home just before bedtime, unpacking stories along with the gear stored in mud-splattered trucks. But when I turned 12, they decided that I was old enough to go on a camping trip: two nights on Lake James.

North Carolina’s Lake James is dotted with small, wooded islands. Not long after the idea of a camping trip was suggested, we headed to an island my grandfather knew well and set up tents on a small beach. As we worked, my grandfather told me that the island belonged to our family. He called it my inheritance.

He was a tall-tale teller, my grandfather. But

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