Nature and Rejuvenation

No worries – Greystone Inn’s new spa is set for maximum relaxation.

We all want to feel better. Perhaps it’s true that often the greatest gift you can give yourself or a loved one is a chance to detach and revitalize, to get away, even briefly, from the rigors of everyday life. Just a short road trip away, nestled into the mountains, the Greystone Inn at Lake Toxaway draws both locals and visitors who need relaxation amid nature. They find it on an Adirondack chair overlooking peaceful Lake Toxaway or in meditation and yoga by the lakeshore with melodies of birdsong in the background. They leave the stresses of city life behind in the serenity of the spa’s private sitting rooms, softly lit by candles with views of the lake and the mountains.

And of course, they discover it inside the spa’s tranquil treatment rooms, where they can partake in a long list of services that range from high-tech facials to European rituals. Four years ago, this historic hotel, got a 21st Century makeover and a new, modern spa, offering a full roster or facilities and services. Picturesquely positioned on Lake Toxaway, treatments boast a “a sublime balance of nature and rejuvenation.” Proffering a holistic approach to wellness, “Sound bowls set the healing tone,” and services utilize aromatherapy customized to guests needs. Inspired by the rituals of Greek and Roman bathhouses, expert massage therapists take traditional body treatments to the next level – including lymphatic drainage, body exfoliation and nourishing sea mud therapy. There’s a complete range of therapeutic massages to choose from including the most popular, Swedish and deep tissue, along with Thai, Shiatsu, Reflexology and Myofascial therapy. Relaxing facials with light therapy and microcurrent technologies will leave you feeling renewed and refreshed to enjoy the healing mountain air. Guests frequently opt to add an enhancement – a scalp massage or paraffin wax or an organic aromatherapy treatment – and then finish up with a makeup (available by special request) or waxing service. Happily for locals, the spa also functions as a day spa where visitors can enjoy all the same amenities without an overnight stay. In fact, the day I spoke to Spa Manager Sara Hartless she was bidding goodbye to a Greenville, South Carolina, couple who had driven up for a massage. The spa employs seven therapists and technicians, and one esthetician, all with ten or more years’ experience. Hartless, a former professional dancer who now teaches yoga, and who recently relocated from Los Angeles is happy to help clients select and customize a treatment regimen. Details and booking at greystoneinn.com/spa; or contact spa@ greystoneinn.com.

by Marlene Osteen

Culitivate a Place in Your Heart

Following the collapse of its earthen dam and the draining of Lake Toxaway, the little Toxaway community staggered, but wouldn’t collapse.

But I didn’t get into details about how my family’s American experience had practically ensured that he’d end up in that little community nor did I detail the hard things that led him to leave. Our story began in 1774 in Savannah, Georgia, with the arrival of William and Nancy Osteen. The important thing to realize about this is that the Irish arriving in Georgia in the mid-1700s were overwhelmingly convicts, transferred from filled-tobursting debtor’s prisons. They were received with the same degree of hospitality that we offer to undocumented Hispanics found wandering west of Nogales. In fact, Benjamin Franklin wrote that in gratitude for the welcome addition of all these convicts delivered to these shores, the colonists should gather all the rattlesnakes they could find and ship them to the court of George III. All of that animosity vanished when the colonies declared their independence and suddenly needed to field an army. North Carolina filled out its quota of troops and officers for the Continental Army by offering free land to any man enlisting. This land turned out to be this far corner of Western North Carolina, and the fact that it belonged to the Cherokee didn’t seem to matter – especially after the Cherokee allied themselves with the British. William and his brother Joseph quickly took advantage of this offer, seeing how they continued to be ostracized by most citizens of Georgia, South Carolina and North Carolina. The Osteen brothers served the entirety of the war and were rewarded a plot of land that would eventually end up in the heart of Pisgah National Forest (you can still find Fate Osteen’s Cove, next to the Fish Hatchery on Forest Service topo maps). Their descendants would live on that plot for the next 150 years (managing to be Union sympathizers during the Civil War), acting as farmers and woodsmen of the vast chestnut forests all around them.

I’m afraid the limits of page layout are going to have to make me tell the remainder of this tale in our October Issue – I promise, I’ll tie this all together. I’m not the sort of writer who composes stories with a definable message, but in this instance, I’d ask that you cultivate a place in your heart for forgiveness and hospitality to the stranger. You truly cannot predict who’ll end up fighting for your rights or whose heirs will be telling you stories in a magazine found on the Southern curl of the Appalachians.

by Luke Osteen

HISTORY

Pages 162-165

Tennis in Highlands

Isabel Chambers with brother Johnny. 1946

Tennis was certainly more formal and perhaps a bit freer in Highlands’ early days.

“The rage might be Pickleball today, but in the early 1900s just about everybody in Highlands had a tennis court in their own yard.” Isabel Chambers Travel back to the late Victorian Era. Playing tennis was a popular pastime. Ladies wore long dresses and wide-brimmed hats to protect porcelain skin. They were accompanied by mustachioed gentlemen in shirts, vests, and ties, their heads topped in straw hats, and legs decked out in knickers. All players carried unwieldy wooden racquets. They politely tapped the clunky ancestor of today’s tennis ball on a painfully slow, uneven clay court. But that’s what made it fun. In the summer, Highlands residents planned their days around an early morning tennis game, a leisurely lunch, an afternoon tea social or cocktail party, and an evening dinner party. Tennis devotees didn’t play at the golf or tennis club. There weren’t any then. Eateries were practically non-existent, so dining rotated house-to-house. Isabel Chambers recalls playing on her grandparent’s court. “In the late 1800s my grandparents owned the Hall House between 5th, Chestnut, and 6th – a whole square block. There was an Inn where many spent summers. My grandmother cooked and looked after summer residents, organizing picnics, parties, and dances. In that block was a lake, dance pavilion, skeet shooting, a tennis court and more. Years later, on Sunday afternoons my cousins, aunts, and uncles from Atlanta would spend weekends sitting by the courts and playing tennis all afternoon. They’d pause for watermelon, and I’d chase balls.” Maintaining clay courts was a challenge. Court owners had a

Tennis in Highlands Photo courtesy of Highlands Historical Society

barrel-roller containing heavy sand or water to flatten the court. Isabel says, “Someone had a small steam roller. I would drive it and flatten a court so friends and I could play.” To mark court lines, cloth tapes were fastened down. Players tripped or accidentally rearranged them. People often removed them and drew lines with a stick. Tall poles topped with chicken wire served as errant lob-stoppers. Tennis shifted from private courts to a town court in the 50s when Tony Chambers, Isabel’s husband, became the first director of the rec park at the Old Highlands School. He hung a net on the basketball court and voila! the locals had a place to play. Isabel chuckled and said, “What was good enough for basketball was good enough for tennis!”

by Donna Rhodes

Tales of Wade Hampton

The larger-than-life Wade Hampton III made his mark on history and, of course, Cashiers.

The larger-than-life Wade Hampton III made his mark on history and, of course, Cashiers. “…The buck came on like thunderbolt, As if shot out of catapult. And fell dead within twenty rods, That shot was worthy of the gods… Col. Hampton then was young and rich, A full made man in every stitch.” That’s from Hampton’s Last Hunt (1891) by Jackson county poet and proud Scotch-Irish David U. Sloan, who witnessed the remarkable chase on Nix Mountain that took down a leaping stag (Hampton fired from his galloping horse!) It’s found in the informative, satisfying and just-long-enough 2014 book, Wade Hampton III: Summer Resident of North Carolina—Cashiers, Hot Springs by S. Robert Lathan Jr., M.D., and Jane Gibson Nardy, which grew out of a 2006 symposium on Hampton sponsored by the Cashiers Historical Society. Chairman of that scholarly gathering, Dr. Lathan went to Johns Hopkins medical school, while Jane Nardy is Cashiers’ beloved historian and a longtime contributor to The Laurel who has helped me more than once in my writing and research. Hampton (1818-1902), the hero of both the verse and the history, was born in Charleston to one of South Carolina’s most prominent families. During the Civil War he famously led Lee’s cavalry after J.E.B. Stuart’s death. In 1876 Hampton was elected – it was messy – governor of South Carolina, reelected, then transferred to the U.S. Senate for two terms. He was famously big and handsome and rich – until the war, which bankrupted him and also took one of his sons, Preston. The heart of today’s High Hampton resort in Cashiers was originally the site of Wade Hampton III’s hunting lodge and farm. Hampton’s parents had escaped the heat and mosquitos of a S.C. summer by visiting the spas at White Sulfur Springs in what is now West Virginia, and also Hot Springs along the French Broad River north of Asheville. But Wade III wanted someplace closer to his home near Columbia and so bought 400 acres in Cashiers Valley in 1855. After his death, High Hampton went to niece Caroline Hampton and her husband Dr. William Stewart Halsted, a famous and innovative surgeon at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore. They increased the property to 2,200 acres and created the famous Dahlia garden. Wade Hampton III covers all this and more, with much fascinating detail and well-chosen illustrations. It can be checked out from the Albert Carlton-Cashiers Community Library and is for sale at the Cashiers Historical Society or Shakespeare & Co. in Highlands.

by Stuart Ferguson, Local Historian, Co-Owner Shakespeare & Company