Peter Pan of Preservation

The road leading up to Big Yellow Mountain twists and turns, making tires to spin on gravel and engines grind into first gear. Climbing this mound of earth and rock seems best left to all-terrain vehicles, which fits it really. The community that calls this mountain home is suited by its nature of being somewhat cut off from the rest of the world, and one cannot help but see the beauty of this place come into view while ascending.

Author Jay Erskine Leutze is among those who call this remote part of North Carolina— nestled deep within Avery County—home. This summer he celebrated the publication of his first book, Stand Up That Mountain; a story about how he and his neighbors fought to preserve the magnificent views and natural wonder of the Appalachian Trail, a national park entitled to government conservation efforts. This section of the over 2,000-mile path is considered by many to be the most scenic, and perhaps the most ecologically fragile.  

For at least three centuries humans have looked to harvest whatever resources they could from these mountains—be it coal, timber, or—as in this case, rock for gravel. Stand Up That Mountain outlines the saga from start to finish, telling how big companies with even bigger money thought to tear down the top of a mountain and expected to get away with it. The Putnam Mine, atop Belview Mountain, would have encompassed 151 acres as a quarry for producing crushed and broken granite. Not only were Leutze and his neighbors fighting to save a mountain, they were fighting for their homes and for justice. They were fighting to keep the tranquility that one expects as inherent to living on the side of a mountain.

The group’s defense for shutting down the mine relied on proving that its permit had been obtained illegally. A saving grace was the mine’s proximity to the Appalachian Trail. According to poll results listed on the website for the National Parks Conservation Association, 95 percent of Americans feel it is appropriate for the government to protect and support national parks. These places are considered national treasures, and had the Putnam Mine been allowed to operate, the Roan Highlands would have been devastated by the sight and sound of the mine during its 99-year lease.

After nearly five years of essentially volunteering his time, Leutze and his allies prevailed against Clark Stone Company and the mining efforts were shut down. This landmark case was fought by dogged individuals, many of whom describe themselves as “mountain”—such as Ollie Ve Cook Cox and her niece, Ashley, the women who first brought the mine to Leutze’s attention.

The importance of being “mountain” opens the book with the lines, “The story of the southern mountains is told in her face. The crepe-soft skin is laid over stone-hard bone. She’s as white as February snow, but her blue eyes smolder.” Recognizing that preserving the mountain was best for the ecology and tranquility of the area, Leutze also understands and gives attention to mountain culture. Preserving mountains becomes synonymous with preserving mountain life. “Son, you ain’t mountain. I’m mountain. That’s all the hell I am and you wouldn’t never understand,” Leutze writes at the end of the book’s prologue.

The stories of these mountain people are even more interesting than the account of the legal battle to save Belview Mountain. Known affectionately as the Dog Town Bunch, Leutze makes their stories come to life. On an afternoon spent sitting with Leutze outside his home with views of both the Blue Ridge and Smoky Mountain ranges, along with three states, these narratives take on a life of their own. A natural storyteller, Leutze’s cadence gives breath to past voices as he recounts tales from a way of life nearly forgotten in this country.

His home is humble by modern standards, a cabin, really. His is land where he thought to live and write and take his retirement. However, Leutze decided in order to enjoy the fishing and hiking he so loved as a child he would have to reverse the paradigm of work first retire second—and that is precisely what this native North Carolinian did.

His motivation for moving back to his childhood summer escape was partly to preserve all things summer—the time when childhood is at its peak and kids can explore and tear things up and just have fun. “I was totally trying to reconnect to that camp self by spending time in a pond or a creek, or up in a tree,” Leutze said. “Of course it’s different as an adult—I definitely have a Peter Pan complex, though.” His boyishness shows as he continues, “I have this love of summer. I sleep outside in a hammock a lot. My sister has three kids and she gives them to me every summer for a week. We call it Camp Jay. We go hiking, fishing and exploring. They love playing in the creeks and waterfalls.” These are all the very same activities Leutze enjoyed himself as a kid on that very mountain.

Raised in Chapel Hill, Leutze’s parents bought land on Yellow Mountain when Leutze turned five. “My parents were professors. They didn’t have a ton of money sitting around but they bought this piece for $100 an acre—and this land now goes for sometimes $60,000 an acre,” he said.  

As soon as school let out  the family would shut up their city house, drain the water, put the lock on and off they’d go. “I rode horses all summer, fished, built tree forts and just hiked all over with my brother and sister,” Leutze said.

Five other families also lived on the mountain, and all the kids would spend the first half of the summer getting ready for the Burnsville Fair—making moss terrariums and collecting baby ferns and lichens. “I was always fascinated with the natural world,” Leutze said.  

Spending summers on a mountain essentially cut off from the world gave him and the other children the freedom to fully explore the land and enjoy everything the natural world—and a bit of mischief—had to offer. Since his parents were also adventurous, he and his siblings were free to explore unfettered, “though they did like to see us at suppertime,” Leutze said. It is no wonder that reclaiming that freedom became his passion as an adult.

The life Leutze now leads on Big Yellow Mountain allows him to preserve something deeper than just the environmental aspect of the mountain. He has sought to preserve that sense of awe and wonderment that children feel when they’ve discovered something new. Leutze has made it his mission to foster the expressions seen lighting up children’s faces at the glory and beauty that the natural world offers. The ability to also adamantly lead the fight for conservation and land preservation is a bonus to him.

While his major pursuit once back on Yellow Mountain was to “unclutter his mind” so as to focus on writing while enjoying all the things from his childhood, his passion for the natural environment and the wonderment of an essentially untouched scenic world led him into conservation work. Having attended law school, he was known on the mountain as a lawyer, even though he never actually practiced law.

Leutze had participated in the British Universities North America Club (BUNAC) work-exchange program and lived in Britain, working at a bookstore. When it opened a branch in Boston, he moved back to the States and continued working for them while enrolled in writing courses at Harvard. During one of these courses, his instructor had nothing to say during critique. “I was worried, but she said ‘you need to quit your job and become a writer full time,’” Leutze said. “I believed in my heart that was true because I’d always felt like a writer and I thought I can do this—whenever I get the chance I’m going to do it.”

The British company he worked for offered him a job based out of Atlanta opening bookstores in airports with full-time travel. “It would have been a nice job, but I thought if I’m moving back to the south I’m moving back to Big Yellow Mountain,” Leutze said. “My parents were going through a divorce and I became owner of the house through the divorce settlement. The house is mildewing and squirrels are eating the boards, so they gave it to me and I love it!”

Thinking about mountains is something he claims in his book to have done much of throughout his life. His ancestors are mountain people, and he has purposely kept himself a part of the culture he experienced growing up only in summers. The mountains’ have been revered by cultures throughout time and the world. In his book he writes of their magnitude, saying:

“In nearly every culture, mountains are revered and held in esteem. They are the source of myth from Tibet to the Caucuses. The lofty elevations are where the sprits reside in the nine sacred mountains of China, and the indigenous people in the Andes still make pilgrimages into the mountains to convene with the spirit world… In the Blue Ridge we have our own myths. The Cherokee told stories of the mountains, how they were formed by great spirits, of how the Long Man, the god of rivers, had his head in the upper reaches, where waters were born. How the streams carving the mountains into ridges are the blood of the Long Man… But mountains, these mountains, have long held another allure, for they are also a source of money.”

The resources of the mountains are vast, and it is defenders like Leutze and organizations such as Southern Appalachian Highlands Conservancy that will fight for future generations to have access to mountains untouched by human greed. The call to defend preservation efforts is as natural to him as breathing oxygen. He is credited with numerous pieces of legislation and protecting more than 15,000 acres of critically important high elevation habitats. His goal is to protect 30,000 acres, and he maintains a strong presence in both the state legislatures and in Washington to help make this goal a reality.

He remembers when Sugar Top, a mountain top resort also known as the Citadel, went up in 1983 and claims that it simply wrecked him. He watched in horror as more and more of the mountains in the viewshed of Big Yellow Mountain were cut and scraped and domesticated for second-homes and resorts. With gravel mining, the Putnam Mine was not only disturbing the landscape of the mountain but contributing a good deal of noise. The loss of quiet and the solitude he had come to love about living in isolation was more than he could bear.

“Having mourned the loss of my sense of utter wilderness solitude I’d known as a child in the summers, I found that the loss of quiet on top of that was more than I could bear,” he writes. “Home was becoming my torment. I had a notion that maybe being sensitive to the destruction of Belview Mountain was called for, was the least I could do. If I could come to terms with that, with the dismantling of a mountain, with the daily churn of devastation out my door, then maybe I would become the kind of man who could accept anything, could give in until there was nothing left. And that seemed to me like dying.”

From the field outside Leutze’s home one can see Hickory Nut Gorge, Chimney Rock (which is 60 miles away) Mt. Mitchell (38 miles away), Hawksbill and Table Rock (14 miles away), Grandfather Mountain, and beyond that Howard’s Knob and Elk Mountain. “This truly is one of the most scenic places in the Eastern United States. Not a great place for a quarry to take off the top of a mountain,” he says with a touch of humor. The Appalachian Trail comes down within view as well, and from there one can easily see Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

To the eyes of Leutze and his neighbors, who have been a part of these mountains for generations, the landscape is remarkably changed as more and more people flood into it.

“When I grew up out here you couldn’t see an electric light anywhere,” Leutze said. He remembers how even before North Carolina started its Natural Heritage Program his family and several neighbors understood that grassy balds were extremely rare and deserved the first order of protection. As they built their home, leaving as minimal an ecological footprint as possible, Leutze’s parents and others worked on ways to conserve and protect the land. “I grew up watching these conservation heroes because they would meet in my home,” he recounts. Conservation is truly in his blood. 

It isn’t enough for Leutze to simply enjoy the mountains himself. He understands that having built on top of one puts him in a unique situation in terms of balance between man and the natural world. He is not completely opposed to finding a way to become a part of the mountain and has deep respect for the people who have always called these mountains home. It’s the privatization of the mountains, the shutting out, that causes him problem. And to that end he tirelessly works on behalf of the people in keeping these mountains open to the public.

Coming to grips with the fight that often ensues regarding the environment between preservationists and developers can be complicated as each side makes valid claims. Striking up a balance in a world that is ever increasing in population is difficult, and perhaps it is this tension between the two groups that keeps things in check. Thankfully men like Leutze continue to dedicate themselves to keeping land public for the enjoyment of all.