By Jack Moore • Contributor J.R.R. Tolkien wrote, “Not all those who wander are lost,” and he may as well…
The call of, “Come see! A frog!” is one oft repeated in the Hendershot household from spring through fall as…
By Melanie Threlkeld McConnell • Correspondent A rolling stone gathers no moss, so says the proverb, but it would if…
By George Ivey • Contributing writer What in the world would bring together the Great Smoky Mountains and the country…
After Jersey and the Big Apple (see last week’s Naturalist’s Corner — www.smokymountainnews.com/outdoors/item/7554-famous-nyc-offspring), it was time for a leisurely trip…
New York City is big, bustling and in July – hot, but there are always entertaining and even educational ways…
In 25 years of teaching kindergarten, Cathryn Sills of Franklin read a lot of books to her young students. In…
News outlets began reporting Sunday night (July 1) that North Carolina Gov. Bev Perdue vetoed Senate Bill 820, which would…
If you fall from a ledge rock-climbing, break a leg backpacking in the wilderness or twist your shoulder paddling a…
Gov. Perdue has to be weary. This weariness was apparent months ago when she declared she would not seek…
A million acres of national forests sounds like a lot, and indeed it is. But consider the 8.6 million people…
The Mountain Resources Commission, the Blue Ridge National Heritage Area, the U.S. Forest Service and the National Environmental Modeling and…
By Danny Bernstein • Contributor Many hikers are amazed by the balds that dot the Southern Appalachian landscape along the…
By Shannan Mashburn • SMN Intern Gardeners, wannabe-gardeners and those who simply appreciate a fine garden can catch a behind-the-scenes…
Mountain bogs are some of the rarest and most imperiled natural habitat in the country. They are generally small and…
As one whom is often standing on the shoulder of the road peering through binoculars, I’m accustomed to people slowing…
By Brent Martin • Contributor Mention the name George Ellison to most people living in western North Carolina and what…
I was in the Grandfather District of the Pisgah National Forest the other morning preparing to go to one of…
Richard Baird, a plant pathologist from Mississippi State University, was hard at work one day last week examining mushrooms in…
Up at 4 a.m. to try and catch up on a little correspondence before I hit the road for the…
Testing canola varieties for biofuel. Growing truffles. Finding hemlocks and Fraser firs that can survive the scourge of the adelgid.…
Experiments conducted by a multi-disciplinary team of researchers from the U.S., Canada and Germany strongly suggest that the fungus, Geomyces…
It took more than a decade, a lot of detective work and a protracted legal case to clear the way…
Last night (May 5) was the unveiling of this year’s supermoon. Astronomer Richard Nolle coined the term supermoon in 1979…
David Burnette and his wife Diane do things the old way. “One thing just led to another,” David said of…
I had to take my shoes off to get there, but I believe last Saturday (April 28) was the 13th…
In the two years since the Dillsboro Dam was torn down, the Tuckasegee River has become home to a growing…
Threatening weather forecasts likely kept many who registered for last Saturday’s (April 21) 5th Annual Spring Hike in Waynesville’s Watershed…
The recent acquisition of 720 acres of land in the Plott Balsams has helped set the table for the first…
The 62nd Annual Spring Wildflower Pilgrimage in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park will be April 25 – 28. I…
As Tommy Yon carried his kayak up the side of a waterfall in Tennessee, he tried not to over-think the…
At Wild South’s recent “Green Tie Gala,” friend, writer, poet and publisher Thomas Rain Crowe, with a knowing wink, slipped…
Just in time for its 30th anniversary, the Western North Carolina Alliance one of the region’s most august environmental organizations…
A couple of weeks ago I received an email from Rachel Reid of Andon-Reid Bed and Breakfast asking if I…
Several raceways were completely submerged in water, hundreds of thousands of trout laid dead on the ground, and the national…
Last year around this time I wrote about the honor of being nominated for Wild South’s Roosevelt-Ashe Society’s “Outstanding Journalist…
It’s probably not the view sightseers in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park were expecting last week when they pulled…
I was encouraged by a recent press release from the North Carolina Wildlife Federation. The release stated, “In a show…
Susan Sakna and her two dogs were far from their home in Massachusetts. But like many Appalachian Trail thru-hikers, Sakna…
Well, it might not exactly live up to the name "Polar Plunge" given the current spate of warm weather, but…
Borrow seeds in the spring, grow your garden in summer, give them back in the fall. That’s the premise of…
Due to a lack of foresight and copious amounts of poor planning, I found myself last Sunday evening (Feb. 26)…
Chris Graves had just parked a school van in a field, and his wildlife students were filing out for some…
This year was the 15th annual Great Backyard Bird Count, a citizen-science project created by Cornell Lab of Ornithology and…
Things have gotten slightly darker at Western Carolina University. The Cullowhee-based college is battling Boone’s Appalachian State University in the…
The Naturalist’s Corner dispatched its chief investigative reporter, Kuteeng Satire, to the land of Dudley Doright to bring you the…
As the weather cooled this past weekend, Kathy Taylor’s bees were nowhere in sight; sheltering themselves within their manmade, wooden…
I think the shrewd rodent hedges his bet a bit. I mean if you think about it, the difference between…
Anyone can run or bike. And if any two people could testify to that, it’s Gerri Grady and Hugh Lambert.…
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