Field Note No. 11 | Following the Research Thread

Sunday Field Note No. 11

Good morning, gentle readers..

Sometimes something new enters your life and, instead of feeling new, it begins gathering pieces of you that have been scattered across the table for years.

That is what research has begun to feel like for me. The flame was first lit while I was writing a story.

I have been working on a piece of fiction about a woman named Sara Jean Craven, an archaeologist whose work takes her into old places and forgotten stories. As I began building her world, I found myself researching abandoned structures, old roads, maps, Appalachian history, archaeology, and places altered or submerged by time.

And something unexpected happened. I became as interested in the research as I was in the story. Maybe even more interested in what the research was awakening in me.

I have always been curious. I notice things. I ask questions about things that other people might walk past without a second glance. Why is that there? What used to be here? Who made this? Who lived here? What happened before the landscape became what I am seeing now?

One question tends to produce another. And another. Before long, I am following a thread. That realization began pulling together pieces of my life that I had never thought belonged to the same picture.

My writing. My love of old places. My fascination with maps. My interest in archaeology, genealogy, abandoned buildings, land, memory, and story. Even my recent study of geobiology has been teaching me to look more carefully at place and to recognize that what we see on the surface is not necessarily the whole story.

Research suddenly didn't feel like another subject I was adding to my life. It felt like a name for something I had already been doing. So I decided to learn how to do it properly.

I began research training and started learning how researchers follow evidence, evaluate sources, document what they find, and allow one piece of information to lead them toward the next question.

And then I needed somewhere to practice. I chose Beaufort, North Carolina. I already love Beaufort, which made it the perfect place to begin. I pulled up an old Sanborn fire insurance map and started looking.

At first, I was simply learning how to read it. My years of drafting training kicked in. My work as a framer and remodeler came forward. Frame buildings. Brick buildings. Fire walls. Wells. Businesses. Street widths. Tiny markings whose meanings I didn't yet understand.

But that is the delicious thing about research. The moment you don't understand something, you have somewhere to go. A question becomes a doorway. And somewhere along the way, while following Beaufort's history, another familiar figure stepped onto the edge of my research map.

Blackbeard.

I never really thought of him before, until I was on a ghost walk through Beaufort a decade ago, and the host mentioned the Blackbeard story.

In 1718, Blackbeard's flagship, the Queen Anne's Revenge, ran aground near Beaufort Inlet. Centuries later, the wreck was discovered beneath those waters, turning one of the most legendary characters associated with the North Carolina coast into something more tangible than folklore.

And now I am curious. Not because I want to retell the story everyone already knows about Blackbeard. I want to see what happens when I start asking questions. What survives in the records? What has been repeated so many times that we assume it is true? What might the maps, archaeology, newspapers, documents, and landscape reveal when they are placed beside one another?

I don't know yet. And perhaps that is the part I love most.

For years, I have been creating work around recognizing, relating, and reorienting. I have been following threads, noticing patterns, sitting with what emerges, and resisting the urge to decide what something means before I have spent time with it.

Now research has entered the room carrying maps and archival records under its arm. And somehow, it belongs here. So this is the beginning of another kind of fieldwork.

I have my notebook. I have my questions. And apparently, I have a pirate.

Let's see where the thread goes.

I will share parts of my journey here with you on Sunday mornings.

Thank you for being here.

Until next Sunday…

“Always leave room around your dreams.”

DeAn’Na

Following the research thread, one map, one question, and one unexpected discovery at a time.