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The last crepe myrtle branch drops as I turn into the driveway. Through the windshield I lock eyes with a guy guiltily grasping loppers and hold him fixed in my glare. Getting out, I pick my way around the limbs until I square off with the destruction. A ...
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It’s not too much above freezing outside, but in my living room a loaf of a cat rises in the warmth of the sun, the dog sleeps peacefully sprawled in front of the space heater, and my husband is clattering about in the bathroom where he’s patching pla...
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There’s a host of furry, feathery, slinky, slimy, big and tiny creatures making their homes across the mountains and with which we share the landscape. Some homes are but temporary.
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The evocation of the log home incites images of a beautiful blend of past and present. One often envisions the modest, one-room structures of the past as well as the glamorous, awe-inspiring cabins that romanticize the term “vacation home.”
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The 6th Annual Winter Heritage Festival in the Smokies is a celebration of East Tennessee history, Appalachian traditions, and the natural beauty of Townsend, Tenn., Cades Cove and the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.The Win...
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Blackberry Farms is relying on four-legged hunters to sniff out precious ingredients for the luxury resort’s culinary masters. A team of eight Lagotto Romagnolo, one of Italy’s oldest dog breeds, is the key to bringing Blackberry Farms’ truffle harv...
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The Stecoah Valley Cultural Arts Center was named as the 2011 Mountain Heritage Day Award Organizational Recipient. Built of native rock with the skill and labor of many local residents, Stecoah Union School in Graham County opened to its first students i...
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Appalachian State University has won the U.S. Department of Energy Solar Decathlon 2011 People’s Choice Award for its Solar Homestead. This award gives the public the opportunity to vote for its favorite house. This year, 92,538 votes were cast. The awa...
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Having grown up on the western side of Haywood County, N.C., I had some preconceived notions of the eastern end of the county, not all of them positive. But for a young couple on a budget, my husband and I could not pass up the value and location of Canto...
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On the eve of the new millennium, Knoxville, Tenn., roots music fans bid farewell to one of the most beloved bands that ever called The Marble City home. The V-Roys, in all their ragged glory, charged through an inspiring set at the majestic Tennessee The...
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My father was raised in Pike County, Ken., where the hills are high, the air is crisp, and the men have their own notions about romance. In his early courting days things were easier; everyone knew everyone and everybody wanted to get married and have bab...
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I didn’t mean to adopt a hound—at least not a barrel-chested, stick-legged, long-eared, musk-smelling hound. They told us he was a Norwegian Elkhound and Golden Lab mix. Golden Labs are reliable, if not overtly friendly dogs, and I’d known a Norwegi...
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Eustace Conway wasn’t born a mountain man. Or maybe he was. Maybe he inherited the gene from his mother, who grew up on the grounds of a rugged outdoor boys camp in the mountains outside of Asheville, who got it from Eustace’s grandfather, C. Walton ...
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The man known for plowing his mountain farm with a steer instructed, “Berry, look at the camera,” and, sure enough, the bovine with horns that came up to the farmer’s shoulders turned toward Asheville photographer Tim Barnwell.
The moment was magic...
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Abingdon, Va.’s, Barter Theatre gets its name from a Depression-era tradition. An enterprising young actor named Robert Porterfield and his fellow actors found themselves out of work and hungry in New York City. Porterfield contrasted that to the abunda...
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Near Morganton, N.C., South Mountains State Park spreads across 100,000 acres in the state’s foothills. The South Mountains once served as a buffer zone between the Cherokee and Catawba Indians, and the first European settlers in the area farmed the fer...
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The Night Train by Clyde Edgerton. New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2011. ISBN 0316117595.
Imagine a secret friendship in a small North Carolina town between two high school boys in 1963, one black, the other white. Clyde Edgerton’s The Night Trai...
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As summer fades away and the other-worldly colors of fall begin to creep into view, the cool breezes that bring a peaceful calm among the valleys and mountains of our area commence to blowing and sounds of music fill the air. Gone are the dog days of summ...
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Whether uniformed and booted, as with the military teams and individual military competitors, or more comfortably dressed and shod, as with the civilian competitors, the Mountain Man Memorial March is a true test of mountain man (and woman) spirit, and pr...
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A new exhibit coming to The North Carolina Arboretum introduces visitors to the functions of shelters and how animals and humans have adapted to different environments through a diversity of structures. Opening Sept. 24, “Sustainable Shelter” explores...
