585 Search Results for "george ellison"
Years 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 MoreWeather 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 MoreNumerous 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 MoreAll 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 MoreIn 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 MoreOLD 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 MoreHave 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 MoreLately, 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 MoreEditor’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 MoreThis 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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