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Trailblazers & Traditionalists pulses with life
Published: 2020-06-03 15:21:56Years ago, in the parking lot of the Haywood County Public Library, I met a man in his late 20s who worked at the Champion Paper Mill. As we talked about what we did for a living — I was in debt to my eyeballs running a bed-and-breakfast and a bookstor...
Read MoreThe peculiar weather of the Smokies
Published: 2020-05-27 15:50:11Weather continues to be the enduring topic for conversation here in the Smokies region. Long after the Eric Rudolph furor has died down, folks will still be thinking, wondering and talking about the weather. The best weather discussions are about strange...
Read MoreEuropean boar proliferated in WNC
Published: 2020-05-20 14:18:16Numerous non-native plants have been introduced into the southern mountains during the last century or so. Many are now classified by wildlife biologists as “exotic pests.” Few would argue that kudzu does not fall into this category. And without doub...
Read MoreBirch stills were once common in the hills
Published: 2020-05-13 15:39:52All this spring, golden birch catkins were dangling throughout the woodlands of the Smokies region. These are the male, pollen-carrying part of the sweet birch (Betula lenta), also known as black, cherry, or mahogany birch. . They served as a reminder th...
Read MoreRemembering one of WNC’s biggest melees
Published: 2020-05-06 16:06:21In 1913, Western North Carolina historian John Preston Arthur described John Denton of Graham County as “the most picturesque mountaineer in this section.” The description is inadequate. The record indicates that Denton was also one of the most feroc...
Read MoreStone walls symbolize a delicate balance
Published: 2020-04-29 14:10:08OLD STONE WALLS “An entire book might be written about the natural history of an old stone wall.” — Edwin Way Teale, A Naturalist Buys An Old Farm (1974) . We are attracted to those places where the forces of the natural and human worlds have come ...
Read MorePanther sightings persist in the Smokies
Published: 2020-04-15 14:57:08Have you ever seen a mountain lion here in the Smokies region? I haven’t. In fact, the only one I’ve ever viewed outside of a zoo was somewhere near Crystal River, Florida, back in the early 1990s. It bounded out of the scrub in front of my truck and...
Read MoreObserving birds is a habit that never grows old
Published: 2020-03-11 14:48:18Lately, I’ve been writing a lot about birds. I guess I have them on my mind, in part, because the spring migration season is underway. I heard my first Louisiana waterthrush (a warbler) of the year this past Sunday morning. But then again, birds are al...
Read MoreGeronimo’s brush with WNC
Published: 2020-02-26 15:38:03Editor’s note: This article first appeared in a February 2012 edition of The Smoky Mountain News | The names Geronimo and Gen. George Crook are interwoven in the lore of northern Mexico, southeastern Arizona, western New Mexico and the Indian territori...
Read MoreA poet of the mountains
Published: 2020-02-12 15:41:07This past weekend was given over to reorganizing the books in my home library. In the process, I relocated a volume of poems I had feared was long lost. My favorite “Appalachian” poets would be Robert Morgan, Kay Stripling Byer, and James Still. . I ...
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