It just so happened that he knew the ultimate guide, James Karpinos, who was heading to UNC-Asheville to start college. So Billings piled into the Karpinos family's car and rode off with James and his parents for a weekend of moving in and exploring outdoors.

Carolyn Karpinos fondly remembers her son's friend busying himself when the group reached the school.

"While James did the orientation, we went to the library and Jake was out on the campus already meeting people," she said. "Jake was out there talking and introducing us to students -- he was such a friendly kid and just nice as can be."

Five years later, Billings had a degree in boat building from Cape Fear Community College and was there again taking culinary classes, while Karpinos was just finishing up his bachelor's degree in sociology at UNC-Asheville. But neither young man would get a chance to pursue postgraduate ambitions: Each died last month after injuries sustained on the same day -- April 26.

Karpinos was the youngest of three brothers, and died when he lost his footing while hiking with his girlfriend near Asheville. Jake, who also had two older brothers in addition to his twin brother Sam, fell and hit his head outside near his parents' home in Chapel Hill. He suffered a brain injury and was hospitalized for four days before dying.


Spirit of the mountains

After attending Culbreth and McDougle middle schools, respectively, Karpinos and Billings crossed paths at Chapel Hill High School, and the two became friends.

"They were good buddies," Sam said. "Every Friday night if they didn't call each other to go to the party, they'd be there at the party together."

Ever the skilled outdoorsman, Karpinos was a natural for the North Carolina mountains, and his backpacking trip with Billings was the first of many hours he would spend there. Karpinos was always willing to spread his love of the outdoors with others, because he wanted everyone to enjoy the world as much as he did.

"He always made sure everyone around him had a good time," longtime friend Megan Gulla said. "I don't know that I'll ever meet anyone with that sort of ability to make every person he met feel special -- he really made such an effort with everyone."

Karpinos traveled extensively as an undergrad: After four semesters he spent a year doing AmeriCorps, which took him to California, Oregon, Arizona and the post-Katrina sites of New Orleans and Gulfport, Miss. On top of that, he managed to go ice camping with Outward Bound in Alaska, do a National Outdoor Leadership School program in the same state, work with a forest fire-fighting unit in Montrose, Colo., and study abroad in Ghana in the past five years.

In addition to the friendships he made in his domestic travel, Karpinos was affected greatly by his study abroad. Not only did he take classes studying family and gender issues in Ghana, he traveled throughout the country and visited neighboring Burkina Faso.

"I think it was an incredibly important experience for James," said Carolyn Karpinos. "As he shared the slides with us, we were struck by how he would start every story not with a description of the place but of the people he met there."

Even when it came to connecting with nature, Karpinos valued personal relationships above almost all else. An experience he had in Alaska shaped that perspective, as his program group was sent to brave dangerous weather conditions and even to rescue one woman in their group who became sick and carry her to an emergency helicopter.

"He talked a lot about how they had to rely on each other's skill set and abilities," Carolyn Karpinos said. "I think he clearly understood how important it was that teams of people do that together."

Maddie Hayes, who grew up near the Billings family and was close friends with Karpinos at UNC-Asheville, was able to experience this first-hand.

"His character and his spirit really thrived on the outdoors," she said. "I think it brought him a lot of peace and comfort, and he loved being able to share that with his friends."

Friends made during Karpinos' year with AmeriCorps have decided to build a house in his honor in New Orleans, which they plan to construct in the coming months. Meanwhile, the immense network of close relationships Karpinos forged in Asheville showed itself as his roommates organized a memorial basketball tournament ("James, being a child that grew up in Chapel Hill, would never turn down a pickup basketball game," said his mother) that raised $1,400 for the UNC-Asheville outdoor education program.

Karpinos' warmth resulted in the creation of connections between many other people, Gulla says. "I really credit a lot of my friendships to James introducing me to people," she says, adding that - fittingly - she met Jake Billings when he introduced them at school.


The man in the water

The high school that brought Karpinos and Billings together also proved to be a character-revealing place for the latter young man. Just days before graduation, Billings' brother Sam got into trouble when he gave a ride to a fellow senior who CHHS administrators determined was acting suspiciously enough to warrant a drug search of Sam's car. When a bottle of wine was found, the twins were taken to separate rooms for a long interrogation, Sam remembers.

The truth was someone else had put the bottle of wine there, so both boys were adamant it didn't belong to them, though they refused to give away the name of the owner. But Sam was finally brought into Jake's room, where he loudly asked the vice principal if this meant he wouldn't graduate, since it would be his second suspension.

"As soon as he heard that, he was like, 'It's my bottle of wine,' " Sam said. "Without any thought or anything."

Many in the community saw the Billings boys' antics first-hand at the Exchange Pool on Umstead Drive, where they played and eventually worked each summer while growing up.

"It was so perfect for us because it was just a hop and a skip from the house," Sam said. "It was completely different than school -- we were in school mode all year long and then summer hit and everyone's back together at the pool.

"There were just a bunch of classic times."

Water was always an attraction for Jake, whether it was the ocean or just a local swimming hole.

"Growing up with Jake, I noticed he was always in love with the water. When we were kids, he would make fishing rods out of sticks and a little fishing line," Hayes said. "And at the Community Center he was always the first one in the pool and the last one out."

Billings found yet another water-related passion in Jim Gillan's woodworking class at Chapel Hill High, where he channeled his father's love for boat building and created a project that remains in the room today.

"It was really neat because his dad, Charlie, would come by and tell him about what he remembered about building a boat," Gillan said. "Jake would come in the morning before school started and at lunch time and work. He was really committed to building it."

Although the project was never quite completed, it resulted in Jake's attending Cape Fear Community College's wooden boat building program, where he received a degree. It also turned both the teacher and future students on to exploring that art.

"It really sparked an interest in me," Gillan said. "I went to Ocracoke for a workshop on traditional boat building put on by the North Carolina Advancement of Teaching. I had an interest in boats, but the fact Jake was so interested and committed sparked me to want to learn more about that.

Although Gillan says at the time the pair were "flying by the seat of our pants," the teacher now has ample experience to assist students who see Jake's project and want to pursue a similar goal.

It's a good thing, since most don't possess the instinctual qualities the Billings twins inherited.

"That's something that just came natural, working with wood," Sam said. "While Jake was building the boat, he'd come home every day and have a question my dad would know."

After Jake completed the degree at Cape Fear, he worked in Wilmington for a while but decided to alter his career in large part, Sam says, because building boats didn't let him be around people enough.

Hayes said it was important to Jake to have quick access to his loved ones, making Wilmington an ideal spot.

"I think his love for the water, yet his love for being around family, kept him in North Carolina," she said. "It seems North Carolina was the perfect playground for Jake."

Billings went back to Cape Fear and began taking culinary classes, striving for a different goal. His mother, Jane Cousins, saw similarities between the two.

"I think they're both kind of a process with ingredients, and you experiment and try to use your creativity to come up with something pleasing in the end," she said. "The one thing I saw with Jake in both of those was the organization and the planning and experimentation."

Cousins said Jake "loved the beach," and had made Wilmington his home since high school although he spent time in Chapel Hill. Karpinos, meanwhile, had spent years exploring the Appalachian mountains and his mother says although he enjoyed most outdoor activities he had a special affinity for mountain country. The two stretched North Carolina out to its ends, growing up in the heart of the state and finding themselves absorbing its natural brilliance at edges east and west.

But just as much as they cared for the earth, the two yearned for personal connection. And everywhere they went, friends agree James Karpinos and Jake Billings influenced others and allowed themselves to grow in the process.

"Jake didn't meet anybody that wasn't a friend and a lot of people have said that to me about James," Carolyn Karpinos said. "I think both of them were real 'people' people."