-[Female Voice] Nestled in the heart of Appalachia, the University of Virginia's College at Wise is where students experience unique regional culture and the great outdoors.

UVA Wise, empowering students to learn and lead in their communities and the world.

[indistinct murmuring] -[Joshua's Voice] Chincoteague, Virginia.

First light, that strange, soft hour where the world feels like a half-drimped fever dream, mist curling off the water, silence broken only by the slap of tide, and the low hum of motors kicking awake.

[indistinct complain] -[Joshua's Voice] We woke up at 1:30 in the morning, crammed ourselves into boats with cameras, coffee, and just enough sanity to chase ponies through the salt marsh like lunatics chasing ghosts, waiting for the slack current.

The 100th pony swim, 100 years of wet hooves and wet boots, and a one-of-a-kind tradition.

This is my job.

Think about that for a second.

This is what I do.

I get to witness these pockets of weird, beautiful America, where people still care about things that aren't trending, still wake up in the dark to keep something alive.

I get to point a camera at it and say, "Look, this matters."

I'm not here because I paid for it.

I'm here because this is my life's work, to be present, to witness, to document.

I've stood in rooms I never thought I'd enter, spoken to people most only see on screens, and watch the world turn through a lens few get to look through.

That's not lost on me.

It never is.

I've stood on fishing boats in Pennsylvania, in coal mines in Appalachia, on dude ranches in Yellowstone, always with the same sense-- I shouldn't be here.

But somehow, I am, and I know how lucky that makes me.

♪ ♪ ♪ And yeah, our PBS funding has been gutted.

The political noise is loud, and it makes the future appear uncertain.

♪ ♪ ♪ But we're still here.

The cameras are still rolling.

We're still climbing into boats in the dark, still rolling tape when everyone else is dreaming.

Because storytelling still matters.

We're not gone.

♪ ♪ ♪ We don't do this for the ratings.

We do it for the record.

For the people who can't afford to fly out to the eastern shore, to see wild ponies cross a channel at sunrise, for the stories that would otherwise get swallowed by noise and dismissed by out-of-touch politicians.

I feel like a pretty lucky guy, but that luck is a product of work.

The harder I work, the luckier I seem to get.

There's something really special about this episode and about where I find myself today.

As if turning a corner, although facing the unknown, my eyes are set to the horizon, to the sunrise and sunset.

Come what may, I choose a life of love, story and adventure.

This isn't glamorous, it's not easy, but it's real.

And if that's not worth it, what is?

♪ ♪ ♪ They say the place you're from shapes you.

Maybe it defines you.

I've always thought you can't really understand yourself until you understand where you come from.

I'm Josh with PBS Appalachia.

In this series, I'm going from town to town, exploring the places people still call home.

They're hometowns.

From Appalachia to the rest of the country, I've found we share more than we think, but it's the details, the food, the voices, the pride and traditions that make us different.

This isn't a story told from New York or LA.

It comes with roots embedded in southwest Virginia, and often overlooked, misunderstood corner of the map.

That perspective matters, because the character of America doesn't just live in its big cities.

It's the small towns, the back roads, the kitchens, and the bars where people gather.

That's the lens I bring to this journey, because the character of America isn't written in headlines.

It's lived in neighborhoods on porches at kitchen tables.

And this season, we're pushing past borders into communities far from here, into new towns, new kitchens, new homes, searching for what home means here and everywhere.

♪ ♪ ♪ Chincoteague, Virginia, a quiet, once exclusively fishing village on the eastern shore, humble, unhurried, the kind of place that doesn't ask much from the outside world.

Fewer than 3,000 people call it home.

But once a year, it swells with tens of thousands of outsiders drawn by something called the pony swim or pony penning.

Half tradition, half spectacle, equal parts, small town pride, and pageantry.

I came here because my partner grew up in this place.

Her stories of Saltwater Cowboys, wild ponies, and a community that somehow feels hidden in plain sight made me curious.

This was a corner of Virginia I hadn't really considered before, and that was reason enough.

I had to see it for myself.

And what better place to start than with a multi-generational Saltwater Cowboy.

♪ ♪ ♪ -Yeah, the Eastern Shore is great.

It's a good--it's a-- it gets left out on a lot of Virginia maps because it's not-- it's not like connected, but it's-- it's part of it.

We're proud to be part of Virginia, so.

-Now, you, uh, lifetime in Chincoteaguer?

-Yeah, I've always been here.

-Yeah.

-I wouldn't wanna live anywhere else.

-Yeah.

So, your family get back always here?

-Long time, yeah, all the way back of 1600s.

-Sixteen hundreds?

-Yeah.

It's crazy.

A lot of people have heard of the pony swim but have no idea who does it, why it's done, anything like that.

They just know that it occurs.

And so a 100 years ago, in 1925, our town had experienced two major fires and a group of men got together and said, "Look, we need to start a fire department."

And so they began thinking about ways to fundraise and they actually ended up taking a tradition that had been pony penning that had been going on since the 1700s.

Then they kind of roped it all into the idea of doing it with a carnival and everything kind of pieced together very slowly to make this a big event that would attract people from elsewhere.

And now, it's multi-pronged in that.

We have to round up the ponies and sell off the babies in order to maintain the herd numbers.

So Chincoteague here is all, you know, inhabited by people.

Assateague is a fish and wildlife refuge.

So they're pretty strict about grazing area and things like that because really the ponies shouldn't even be there.

If you're talking, you know, eight, nine hundred years ago, there certainly weren't any ponies there.

And so the government, thankfully, we were able to negotiate 150 pony grazing permit.

So every year, they proliferate quite well.

As you can see, they have lots of little babies.

And so this year, we've actually had 100.

-Wow.

-So it's our 100th year.

We've had 100 foals, which has never been done.

We've never had 100.

-Never had that many?

-Never had that many foals.

-Oh, wow.

Wow.

-And so it's a sign from above.

We don't know what else to say.

Swimming was the only way to get them from island to island back in those days because they didn't have a bridge.

-Right.

The bridge was the only way.

So they were just like hop your horse on a little boat, take it across, round them up, swim them across, run them down through town, and people would come to see it, and they did.

And over the years, things changed, of course.

Misty of Chincoteague was written, and that brings-- that still brings thousands and thousands of visitors here every year, not just for Pony Penning Week, but any time of the year.

Misty of Chincoteague was a book written by author Marguerite Henry, who subsequently, she actually came here in 1947.

Misty was six days old at the time.

She did the Pony Swim, but struggled.

And so she gets this entire story out of this meeting these two kids, Paul and Maureen Beebe.

And pulls this entire children's novel about them buying Misty and her mom, The Phantom, and it just captures everybody's hearts.

And so a lot of people, a lot older than me, to be fair, read this book as kids and haven't, you know, that they know it's a real place and they just never got here.

I mean, millions and millions of them.

Still today, it's still a great bestseller and then they come here and they experienced this and it's just like a dream thing for them, you know, something they saw and dreamt of his kids who actually coming through.

-Right.

Right out of the book.

-Right out of the book, exactly.

-And they turn it into a movie.

-Yeah, in the 60s.

Yeah, they turned it into a Hollywood motion picture, became a very big thing and a big reason as to why we are as successful as we are, and a tourist destination.

So you have that to think as well.

-[Joshua's Voice] I've heard the stories, Misty of Chincoteague, part fiction, part folklore, all wrapped up in Marguerite Henry's words.

My partner grew up with it, Hunter 2, like a hometown myth everyone here knows by heart.

So I wanted to see the ranch, or at least what's left of it, to understand how a small horse made famous in the pages of a children's book could still cast such a long shadow over this island.

The story is so powerful, it became part of the place itself.

♪ ♪ ♪ -When Marguerite Henry first heard about Chincoteague, she's at a dinner party and her editor is there, and the editor had just had a conversation with somebody with some exciting event that had just happened.

And just pretend you have never heard about pony penning before.

She's at this dinner party, and he's talking about this wild west roundup on the beaches in coastal Virginia, led by the fireman on horseback, picking up wild ponies, and they're swimming across the water, and they sell off some of the foal.

She's hooked, you know, she's got to come here and see it for herself.

So she packs her bag, she comes to Chincoteague.

She stays at Miss Molly's Inn, which is still a bed-and-breakfast in town.

And she talks to Molly and says, you know, "Who do I talk to about Pony Penning?"

And she sends her down here to the Beebe ranch.

She said, you know, "Grandpa Beebe, Clarence Beebe, he's the stockman.

He is the voice of the ponies.

He's like the horse whisperer on Chincoteague.

He is an expert.

He owns a lot of ponies.

He actually owned more ponies than the fire department.

Go down and meet him.

So she comes on down here to meet Clarence and his wife, Ida Beebe.

She meets two of his many grandchildren, Paul and Maureen, they're living here on the property with them, and meets this brand-new pony, this little cute filly named Misty.

And that's it.

She's in love.

"This is the family I want to write about.

This is the pony I want to write about."

And she kind of weaves them into a great story about Pony Penning and the island and the desire of these children to own a pony of their own, which everybody here in this room probably can relate to.

But the book is a stellar success for Marguerite Henry.

It's considered one of the top 10, you know, fictitious children's books of the 20th century.

It stood the test of time.

And prior to that book, people maybe were starting to come for Pony Penning, but nothing like it was after that.

After the book, it becomes the reason people are coming here.

They're coming for the ponies and the wildlife and the life that's here, which is a very simple kind of life that's hard to find these days.

It's a nice community year-round.

But for once a year, we are like at the Super Bowl here.

[chuckles] -And so after the movie comes out too, is it just further... -Oh, yeah, the movie was a big deal here, and it was filmed here locally, so all the kids got to be in the movie.

I mean, how cool is that?

-Yeah.

Did they actually use any of the ponies from Misty or Misty's lawn in that?

-Almost every single pony you see in the movie is from the Beebe ranch that was trained to be in the movie.

-Wow.

Wow.

Okay.

-Yeah.

Yeah.

And like the hoof prints in front of the theater is-- -That's really Misty.

-That's really Misty?

-That's really Misty.

Yep, yep.

♪ ♪ ♪ -[Joshua] So with the ponies, you said, pinning had been going on since the 1700s?

-[Hunter] Yeah, they think.

They don't really.

So nobody here knew how to read or write, but they started out as livestock.

That's why my family came here as we were livestocking.

And cattle and sheep were the primary livestock animals at the time.

Ponies were not really considered useful, and so what they would do is round them up and sell them off.

Again, they were good at proliferating there.

They can reproduce rather quickly.

So what happens is that they would start rounding them up and selling them off on the mainland, nonetheless, which is, I don't even know how they did that back then, but they did.

-[Joshua VO] The ponies have been here for centuries.

How they got here, shipwreck, settlers, myth, depends on who you ask.

It doesn't really matter, though, they're here.

And because they're here, millions of people have projected their own stories onto them.

I've seen grown women crying, clutching Misty books like scripture, overwhelmed by the idea of these ponies, and that's the genius of Marguerite Henry and how she captured this place.

And that's the power of story.

It shapes reality.

This year marks 100 years of the pony swim, a record 100 foals were born, and one sold at auction for over 100 grand.

Not bad for horses that live on salt grass and marsh water.

They're wild, but not abandoned.

Over time, they've adapted, bigger organs, tougher stomachs, able to thrive on salt and scarcity, that combined with a more hands on approach to their management, efforts such as crossbreeding to enhance herd genetics, launched by Hunter's grandfather, Donald Leonard, decades ago, Along with vet care, the herd is healthy and thriving.

Soon, I'll get to see the swim myself.

But first, I want to explore life around the island.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ Man on the edge ♪ ♪ This whole world pushed you to the edge ♪ ♪ Nobody knows ♪ ♪ All the pain you shoulder on your own ♪ ♪ Here's hoping you have made up your mind ♪ ♪ I know this world can be so unkind ♪ ♪ There's another way down, turn around ♪ ♪ Come with me inside ♪ ♪ Listen to the sound of my voice ♪ ♪ It's all right, it's okay ♪ ♪ You're gonna need to fight another day ♪ ♪ That ain't water down there ♪ ♪ A man can't fly on his own through thin air ♪ ♪ It's cold concrete ♪ -[Joshua's Voice] Chincoteague was once almost exclusively a fishing village, small, unassuming, built on the tides.

Commercial fishing isn't what it once was, but I wanted to know what's left of that life.

That's how I met Ray.

He first came here as a teenager, fell in love with the rhythm of the place, and never really left.

He started out working the water, hauling oysters, then hustling shrimp out of the back of a pickup on the side of the road.

Now, he's got a seafood market and restaurant that tourists and locals alike line up for.

It's a destination in its own right, a family business built with his own hands, employing his kids and grandkids.

Ray's lived it all, and he's got the stories to match.

-We were in a fishing tournament, um, myself, Jack Waterfield, and Mike Edwards, were fishing on my boat called-- I had a boat called Time For Fun.

I fished a lot on shark tournaments.

Fished all over placing shark tournaments.

Anyway, we were fishing like I said, it was the last day of the tournament, and we hooked his fish about 15 or 20 minutes before the tournament was over.

And we got him to the boat, got ready to get the gaff, to gaff him, and put the tailor on him, and he dove.

And when he dove, the line went slack.

I started cussing all kinds of stuff, because I thought I was gonna be-- I thought I was gonna have a big--big payout, big payday.

But next thing you know, he shot up out of water, grabbed me right by the hand and just pulled that meat right on down just like that, [indistinct] looked right through it.

And Jack and Mike, both turned just like a white ghost.

I mean, I'm bleeding to death, and they're turning-- and they're turning like white ghosts.

I told them, I said, "Grab me a belt."

So they got a belt.

Put a belt as a tourniquet on my arm, put a tourniquet.

And he said, "Cut him loose.

Cut him loose."

I said, "No."

I did say no.

I said, "Hell no."

He cut him loose.

We gotta get him to the boat.

So we got him back up to the boat, and, uh-- -And he let go after you-- after he bit you?

-What happens when he grabbed you like this, when he closed his mouth like this, just peeled all that meat right on.

-Yeah.

And he went back to the water.

-He went back in the water.

-Okay.

-Still hooked up?

-It was still hooked.

We got him, brought him in.

-We served it.

-We served it.

We headed out on a bar case.

I got a piece of the shark, it got a piece of me.

[chuckles] Yeah, that's funny.

-[Joshua's Voice] Doesn't matter what's on the menu, people love Ray's.

They come for the food, sure, but also the stories, the history he carries with him.

But fishing isn't the only work around here.

If you want to live on this island, you likely work multiple jobs, or you build something of your own.

That's just how it is.

And the Chincoteague at heart, don't seem to mind.

-[Carla] This store we're in now is my wine shop, has some gourmet stuff and some coffee.

This is the second store I've owned.

I actually started with a jewelry store in here that have now moved through the doorway over here.

That one I've had for 20 years, I started, actually with my mom and had my daughter the first year.

Really wanted to be able to have my kids that work with me.

I knew I wanted to work and be creative.

For locals, the off season is our favorite time.

Well, maybe not everyone's, but September, October, we still have gorgeous weather.

We have really special Christmas events all the way through the holiday season.

-Okay.

-So, yeah, it's just a really nice place to be.

And then it's really just two months out of the year that I'd say it's kind of totally dead.

January and February, we slow down a lot.

But then come spring, we really need to, like, renew, refresh and be ready.

Once spring break and Easter hits, we need to be rolling and good.

And I think we all really want to preserve the charm here.

We get that a lot, that compliment, like the old town charm here.

It's just--it's how that part hasn't changed, you know.

-All right.

-You get smiles, you get eye contact, you get a connection.

And I think when you go other places, you just-- you don't get as much.

♪ ♪ ♪ -My husband, Scott, worked with my father for a long time, and we lost four years ago.

My dad started Daisy's Island Cruises.

He actually started Island Cruises and then bought another little tour company that became Daisy's Island Cruises.

They have multiple large boats and small boats where they take people out and do authentic Chincoteague Island experience tours.

But Scott worked for my dad for a long time, and then when my dad passed, he took over and is running all Daisy's Island Cruises now.

And he loves it, loves to talk, loves to entertain, um, yes.

-Loves to get people on a boat at 2:30 in the morning.

-He does, yes.

-Here we go.

-Um, yes.

He is full of adventurous spirit.

Never stops moving.

But yeah, he'll-- he'll be a wealth of information when he takes you out there.

♪ ♪ ♪ -So did you grow up in Chincoteague.

-No.

I'm a come-here.

-You're a come-here?

-So I was like a coast guard for quite some time.

And then, I ended up going reserve because my wife told me to get out or get out.

So I got out the Coast Guard, and I went in reserve.

And then I did that.

So anyways, with a--when I first joined the Coast Guard, I ended up in Chincoteague, my brother was actually here, so it was kind of funny.

I didn't even hear about this place till I was a Coast Guard and, uh-- -And how long ago was that?

-Um, 20, 22, 23 years ago, about that.

-Okay.

-Yeah.

-Okay.

So what point does it come here to become a-- -Oh, you don't.

-Oh, okay.

-Yeah.

No, there is no-- You don't get into the good old boys.

-Even if you marry into it.

-It doesn't matter.

-Man... -It doesn't matter.

You're always going to be slightly on the outside.

-Yeah.

-But that's all right.

I mean, she's got a good end.

-This is the lifeblood of...?

-Well, yeah.

I mean, I would say as-- as far as the tourist industry goes, it would be the lifeblood and in the attraction of people, but... -So this isn't your first rodeo, how many of these have you done?

-Um, well, because COVID messed it up.

I did 14 as a captain, and I've done 21 out here beyond that, because I would come home for this, you know.

-Yeah.

-They call this, uh, a lot of people call this Chincoteague Christmas, because it's where all people come home, you know.

More people come home for this, and they come home for Christmas around here.

♪ ♪ ♪ [indistinct distant conversation] -[Joshua's Voice] At last, the moment arrives, the reason we came, the reason 10s of 1000s crowd the banks, the marsh, the stretch of water between Assateague and Chincoteague.

Months of planning, years of tradition, a century of expectation.

And then three minutes, that's all it takes.

Three minutes of bated breath, of hope and awe as the ponies gather themselves for the crossing.

Small wild creatures carrying the weight of legend, pushing against the tide, bound for shore.

We are now here to be witness to this moment, all of us.

♪ ♪ ♪ [audience cheering] ♪ ♪ ♪ -[Joshua's Voice] Chincoteague isn't an easy place.

Making a living here takes grit, hustle and often more than one job, but people stay, out of love, out of pride, pride in their heritage, in the water, in the ponies that have become part of who they are.

What struck me most wasn't just the spectacle of the swim or the mythology of Misty, it was the people, complete strangers, eager to show us their island, to take us out on the water for a better view, to share their stories, to let us in, the kind of generosity you don't forget.

This is the kind of place that reminds you heritage isn't something in a museum, it's alive, it breathes.

It swims across the channel every summer, carrying with it generations of memory and pride.

And if you're lucky enough, for a brief moment, you get to stand on the shore or in a boat and be part of it.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ Man on a [indistinct] ♪ ♪ This whole world pushed you to the edge ♪ -[Female's Voice] Nestled in the heart of Appalachia, the University of Virginia's College at Wise is where students experience unique regional culture and the great outdoors.

UVA Wise, empowering students to learn and lead in their communities and the world.