BOOK I SH
Bland Simpson defines NC through photos
T
he next time somebody asks you the coast from “sleepy Plymouth,” to the Britto describe North Carolina, pull ish Cemetery on Ocracoke Island, through the out and read aloud this quote from swampy land of the Lumbee along the Lumber River, winding up in Southport the beginning pages of and its gravesites “beneath the Bland Simpson’s new book. bending and yearning live oaks, “It is a line of sandbars some nearthe small sassafras, the unmoving ly thirty miles out into the Atlantic Spanish moss.” Ocean some less than a mile from In his second section, “Short the mainland; a set of broad, flat Hills and Sand Hills,” he guides terraces, vast farm lands, and timber us across the Piedmont including stands broken by willow-clad rivers poignant stops from his boyhood both black water and brown and by in Chapel Hill’s Battle Woods, their deep gum and cypress swamps, by Forest Theatre, and Gimghoul occasional bluffs, and green and Castle. golden marshes; a host of hills made D.G. He shows us other underapof red clay and sand, growing pines MARTIN preciated sites all over the region, called loblolly and longleaf, oaks called white and red and turkey and blackjack, including, for instance, “The Uwharries stand red maples and river birches and hickories with tall and proud high above the same-named rivshaggy bark; and then a profusely eruptive land er that flows through them, national forest and of tall folds upon folds, peaks, ridges and rocky a mountain range (one of the oldest on earth) tops, domes, cliffs, grassy balds, and gorges, a comprising the biggest wilderness in the middle host of mile-high mountains, too, with a vast of North Carolina, a great wild country scarcely known, if at all, to most of our citizens. South quilt of blue haze laid out over it all.” Then, if you really like this person, guide her and west of Asheboro, west of Troy and the state to Simpson’s new book, “North Carolina: Land zoo and the state pottery center in Seagrove, of Water, Land of Sky.” It is stuffed full of col- this 50,000-acre big empty with its almost or photographs of sights across North Carolina 1,000-foot peaks lures wild spirits to it, for the taken by Simpson’s wife, Ann Cary Simpson, Uwharries are full of streams, trails, and ghosts.” Simpson’s third section, “Jump-up Country,” professional photographer Scott Taylor, and demonstrates that, while his prior writings have naturalist Tom Earnhardt. The lovely photos supplement the book’s focused on the eastern part of the state, he has main attraction, a trip across North Carolina not neglected the awesome treasures of the rivled by a master communicator who is thor- ers and high mountains in the west. He takes oughly familiar with and deeply in love with his us to some of his favorites. One of them, Max Patch in Madison County near the Tennessee subject. In his first section, “This Wet and Water-Lov- line, “a-top-of-the-world corner” about which ing Land,” Simpson takes readers up and down he writes, “With a 360-degree view, we looked
down upon a rim of hills all around us and rolling blue hills beyond us in all directions, at crags and haze and clouds already in valleys near and far below, this midafternoon of a summer’s day.” The book concludes on a somber note, Simpson’s visit with William Friday shortly before he died in 2012. Friday warned that the natural treasures, such as the ones described and illustrated in this book, were in peril. He saw only negative actions from state government regarding the preservation of our rivers and streams. Simpson concludes, “What Mr. Friday saw — and foresaw — was instead a message of carelessness, recklessness, and even defiance of common sense, and this was what had so clearly driven his concerns about water during the last months of his life.” D.G. Martin hosted “North Carolina Bookwatch,” for more than 20 years. S
WINTER 2021-2022
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