During times of hardship, community leaders in North Carolina look again to the Roanoke River

The Roanoke River passes under I-95 at mile marker 173. Here, just north of the town of Weldon (known as the Rockfish Capital of the World), the river comes apart like string cheese, tumbling down the fall line to create the Roanoke Rapids, fast and foamy and scenic as hell. Hard as it is to believe, this isn’t even the wildest part of the river, the part that locals call “the Amazon of North Carolina.” To find that place, you have to get off the interstate. You have to drive down narrow country roads, framed by cotton and peanuts and sun-bleached houses covered in pine straw. Past the shuttered mills and the playhouse-sized church with a sign out front, a warning to spiritual procrastinators: “church doors closed do [sic] to rapture.” Beyond the bypass and