Smoky Mountain Living, April 2015

APRIL/MAY 2015

Celebrating Southern Appalachians THE

MOUNTAIN RENEWAL | BEST HIKES | SONGBIRDS | SHENANDOAH | BATTLE OF WAYNESVILLE | BISCUITS

Appalachian

SPRING Trails to discover & ramps to devour, birds on the move & flowers in full bloom

Mountain Towns

The New Fountain of Youth

APRIL/MAY 2015 • VOL. 15 • NO. 2

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SMOKY MOUNTAIN LIVING

CHOCOLATE GRAVY | SMOKIES RESCUE | CIVIL WAR | RISING MUSICIANS

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Contents

FEATU RE STO RIES

MEET THE CHEESE MAKERS Goats and cows and farmers, oh my— see the faces of the Western North Carolina Cheese Trail.

PHOTOS BY SAM ENGLISH

PAGE

42

THE THEATER OF WAR Battle cries and a curtain call: With the help of the Cherokee, Waynesville took center stage during one last Civil War clash in 1865.

BY JEFF MINICK

PAGE

46

GETTING THAT SECOND WIND A breath of fresh mountain air is like a drink from the fountain of youth in Asheville, Boone and Blowing Rock, and the Tri-Cities.

BY ANNA OAKES

PAGE

54

BACKCOUNTRY DIARIES The author of a new book on Shenandoah delves deep into the woods to shed light on the dark side of the park’s history.

BY SUE EISENFELD

PAGE

2

SMOKY MOUNTAIN LIVING VOLUME 15 • ISSUE 2

62

Contents SWEET APPALACHIA

DEPA RTME N TS

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

15

Comforts for the mountain soul—1920s cabin life, garden tips and tonics, biscuits and gravy on your table, a recipe that truly stinks, books for Carolina buffs, David Holt’s latest TV show, a trio of musical acts on the rise, and what it means to dig up the roots of blue bottle trees.

MOUNTAIN EXPLORER

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

29

Roving these hills and valleys, from tales of hiking 911 to lessons on birding 101.

Here’s where to find top waterfalls, spring blooms, lunch in the High Country, and Gatlinburg’s saltiest spot. Plus: Chattanooga’s arboretum puts all its eggs in one exhibit, Glade Spring banks on artisanship, Asheville sweetens up, and a Georgia festival that “bears” all.

FROM THE MANAGING EDITOR . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

ON THE COVER In April, fringed phacelia blankets the ground along Porters Creek Trail in Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

PHOTO BY RYAN YODER YODERIMAGES.COM

Good Living 4

AT THE PARK . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 MEET OUR CONTRIBUTORS

9 12 68 69 72

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

PHOTOS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

FROM OUR READERS. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

CROSSWORD

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

STORIES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Southern Appalachian Mountains Gallery Guide . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39 Visit Waynesville, North Carolina . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52 Visit Eastern Tennessee . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60 Select Lodging . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70

SMOKY MOUNTAIN LIVING VOLUME 15 • ISSUE 2

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customerservice@beverly-hanks.com SMOKY MOUNTAIN LIVING VOLUME 15 • ISSUE 2

FROM THE MANAGING EDITOR Community

VOL. 15 • NUMBER 2 Publisher/Editor . . . . . . . . . . . Scott McLeod scott@smliv.com General Manager . . . . . . . . . Greg Boothroyd ads@smliv.com Sales Manager . . . . . . . . . . . Hylah Birenbaum hylah@smliv.com Managing Editor . . . . . . . . . Katie Knorovsky editor@smliv.com Editor-at-Large . . . . . . . . Sarah E. Kucharski sarah@smliv.com Art Director . . . . . . . . . . . Travis Bumgardner travis@smliv.com Graphics . . . . . . . Micah McClure, Emily Moss Finance & Admin. . . . . . . Amanda Singletary Sales . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Greg Boothroyd, Whitney Burton, Amanda Bradley Distribution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Scott Collier Contributing Writers . . . . . . . . . Jim Casada, Annette Saunooke Clapsaddle, Sue Eisenfeld, Mark Lynn Ferguson, Holly Kays, Carroll McMahan, Jeff Minick, Garret K. Woodward Contributing Photographers . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Jim Casada, Annette Saunooke Clapsaddle, Sue Eisenfeld, Sam English, Mark Haskett, Holly Kays, Callie Pruett, Timothy Spira Contributing Illustrator . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Mandy Newham-Cobb Smoky Mountain Living has made every effort to insure listings and information are accurate and assumes no liability for errors or omissions.

For advertising information, contact Hylah Birenbaum at 866.452.2251 or hylah@smliv.com.

For editorial inquiries, contact Katie Knorovsky at katie@smliv.com.

Smoky Mountain Living assumes no responsibility for unsolicited manuscripts or photographs. Queries should be sent to Katie Knorovsky at katie@smliv.com.

I never expected to buy a banjo, and certainly not for myself. And yet I recently found myself ogling an Irish tenor on the showroom wall of Acoustic Corner in Black Mountain, North Carolina. This was not my first visit. One of the shop’s resident musicians wandered over—whether he recognized me as a repeat admirer, I couldn’t say. I sheepishly mumbled something about playing the violin and wanting to take up the fourstring banjo. He nodded; the instruments’ pitches are the same. Over the shop’s door hung a quirky quilt stitched with a school of “banjo fish” plumbing the bottom of the sea. Those fish seemed to be winking at me. A few minutes later, I walked out carrying my new adventure.

A year ago, the thought of buying a banjo would have been laughable. But I’m not the same person I was then—none of us are. Every so often, life takes our priorities and shakes them up. We discover surprising passions, challenge our beliefs, pick up different hobbies. We buy banjos.

This issue of Smoky Mountain Living pays tribute to such moments of renewal, big and small, timed to nature’s annual wake-up call. Because for all its shades of pastel, spring is anything but genteel. It’s the season of upheaval. Those trilliums poking up in the woods emerge tiny warriors, having won their battles to break ground.

Proving rebirth happens at any age, Anna Oakes writes about our region’s retirees—a can’t-stop, won’t-stop group of seniors pursuing dreams with vigor. Retirement is a long ways off for Sue Eisenfeld, but she knows what it’s like to have a reawakening. After years of hiking in Shenandoah National Park, unaware of its creation story, she chose to go offtrail to search for the stories of its former residents; she shares a piece of her story here. Also in this issue, Jeff Minick tells the tale of the last shots of the Civil War east of the Mississippi River, which rang out 150 years ago this May in our own Waynesville, North Carolina. He reminds us that endings signal beginnings—a transition that has come to define our nation, for better or worse.

In these pages, we also reveal a refreshed look for Smoky Mountain Living. A new section called Sweet Appalachia features the finer parts of life here, which means everything from recipes to books and albums imbued with the spirit of these ridges. Mountain Explorer encourages you to get out there and rove the region, whether in search of songbirds, waterfalls, or a favorite lunch spot. We also introduce a page dedicated to the happenings of Great Smoky Mountains National Park. This issue features an interview with Cassius Cash, who became the new park superintendent in February.

Fresh starts are scarcely easy, but they sure can be exciting. There’s magic in the way the revolving of the Earth spurs adaptation, in the unpredictability of nature’s course, how the choices we make now bear fruit later. Enjoy the coming bounty.

— Katie Knorovsky, managing editor

©2015. All rights reserved. No portion of this magazine may be reprinted without the express, written consent of the publisher.

Smoky Mountain Living is published bimonthly (Dec/Jan, Feb/Mar, Apr/May, Jun/Jul, Aug/Sep, Oct/Nov) by SM Living, LLC, 144 Montgomery Street, Waynesville, NC 28786. Periodical Postage paid at Waynesville, N.C., and additional mailing offices. POSTMASTER: please send address changes to Smoky Mountain Living, PO Box 629, Waynesville, NC 28786.

Crossword answers Puzzle is on page 69.

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7

AT THE PARK Community

Introducing the New Smokies Superintendent

Endless Streams

C

assius Cash, who became the new superintendent of Great Smoky Mountains National Park in February, knows a thing or two about bridging divides. The Memphis native previously made waves presiding over—and building connections between—Boston’s two downtown national parks. As the first African-American to hold the top post at GSMNP, Cash shares here how he hopes to work with neighbors on both sides of the mountains to incorporate the region’s many layers of history.

It goes without saying that, thanks to an average rainfall that rivals the Pacific Northwest, Great Smoky Mountains National Park courses with countless miles of streams.

Correction: A recently completed three-year stream mapping project finally provides an official number.

Aerial laser scanners combined with GPS technology identified a grand total of 2,900 miles of streams in the park, including some 1,073 miles of streams large enough to support fish.

The new tally is 900 miles more than previously estimated based on topographic maps, with most of these recently discovered streams located in places above 4,000 feet and too small to support fish. How exactly do park scientists define a stream? It must feature the hydrologic, geomorphologic, and biologic characteristics of moving water at least part of the year.

The Birds and the Buds

8

SPRING WILDFLOWER PILGRIMAGE PHOTO

From April 21 to 25, the 65th Spring Wildflower Pilgrimage proves why Great Smoky Mountains National Park is sometimes called “Wildflower National Park” for its 1,500-plus kinds of flowering plants. Flowers take center stage, but history walks, tours, art classes, and seminars also cover everything from bats and bears to photography and cultural history. New this year: a birding theme complete with sketching classes, birding hikes, tips on how to make your backyard more hospitable to avian guests, and Audubon and photography programs. Most programs take place outdoors at the park; indoor classes are held in Gatlinburg. Fees apply. springwildflowerpilgrimage.org

Does the next generation see themselves as future stewards of our treasured park and its natural resources? I ask myself, how do we all compete for our youth’s attention span?

What opportunities do you see at GSMNP? In Boston, my team and I rebranded the Freedom Trail and the Black Heritage Trails as Boston Trails To Freedom. What drove us was our vision for what we wanted the visitor experience to be. We did not want millions of visitors to feel that there were two different histories—one for the American Revolution and the other for abolishing slavery. Instead, we wanted to highlight Boston’s “total” contribution to this country. We will take the same approach here in the Great Smokies. We will look at the current visitors’ experience and ensure that it connects the resources with the history of the communities that lived in these mountains in a way that speaks to how these sensitive and resilient ecosystems serve as crucial habitat for many indigenous plants and animals today. It is equally important to highlight Native Americans’ and European settlers’ relationship to these resources.

You hosted a series of open houses in your first month on the job. Why reach out to the park’s neighbors?

Some of the best ideas that I have been part of were those that were in collaboration with our park neighbors.

It is important for me to understand, firsthand, how our neighbors want to experience their national park. We can’t truly protect our natural resources without valuing the people who live and work near them. It has been a longstanding belief of mine that science, by itself, doesn’t always make a good management decision.

What challenges do you hope to tackle at GSMNP? I think a shared concern for all of us is the answer to this question: Does the next generation see themselves as future stewards of our treasured park and its natural resources? I question whether that is a role they see for themselves and I ask myself, how do we all compete for our youth’s attention span when it comes to appreciating their national parks versus video games and smart phones? I’d like to see us come together to help our rural and urban youth understand that they have a role in the park’s future—to protect these resources and outdoor experiences for their children as we have strived to do for ours.

SMOKY MOUNTAIN LIVING VOLUME 15 • ISSUE 2

MEET OUR CONTRIBUTORS Community

Sue Eisenfeld

T

he first time Sue Eisenfeld visited Shenandoah National Park in Virginia, as a college kid from Philadelphia, she shivered through an unexpectedly snowy spring night on a group camping trip. “We had no gear, and we were unprepared for the weather. So we took turns sleeping on top of each other to keep warm,” she recalls. “At the time, it seemed like a terrible place. I never imagined I’d go back there.”

But she did return—again and again—and readers of her new book, Shenandoah: A Story of Conservation and Betrayal, would scarcely recognize the inexperienced outdoorswoman of her younger days. Eisenfeld spent 15 years hiking and exploring the story and people behind the creation of the national park, using historical maps and other means to find places and remnants hidden in the backcountry.

These days, she’s most at home bushwhacking through the Shenandoah woods in winter, off-trail hiking through the skeletal bush. In “Backcountry Diaries” in this issue, Eisenfeld writes about one of these adventures.

In addition to forming the foundation of her book, this sort of “history-hiking,” as she calls it, has resulted in the added benefit of strengthening her bond with her husband. “Used to be he was the nature-lover and birdwatcher, and I was the history lover, and we'd each take those separate interests with us on hikes,” she says. “Now we've joined forces. He loves the hunt of finding things.”

When Eisenfeld isn’t being sliced up by thorns in the untrammeled parts of Shenandoah, she lives and writes in the Washington, D.C., area, where she is also a faculty member in the the master’s programs in writing and science writing at Johns Hopkins University. Her articles have appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, Virginia Living, Blue Ridge Country, among other publications. Learn more at sueeisenfeld.com.

Jim Casada

B

orn and raised in Bryson City, North Carolina, writer Jim Casada reflects on life as a son of the Smokies in “A Gardener’s Rites of Spring” and “A Day at Devil’s Dip.” A long-time angler and chronicler of flyfishing history, including his book Fly Fishing in the Great

Smoky Mountains National Park: An Insider’s Guide to a Pursuit of Passion, Casada also helped develop the new Museum of Southern Appalachian Fly Fishing, which opens this spring in Cherokee, North Carolina.

“The long history and innovative nature of mountain fly fishermen, not only when it comes to fly patterns but also fishing techniques, has consistently been overlooked or largely ignored by the Museum of American Fly Fishing and what might be styled the eastern angling establishment,” Casada says. “This region is particularly rich in angling characters—for that matter, in characters in general—and a major underlying concept of the museum is to preserve their legacy.”

Learn more at jimcasadaoutdoors.com.

Annette Saunooke Clapsaddle

A

nnette Saunooke Clapsaddle has three names but many titles. Award-winning author and finalist for the 2014 Pen/Bellwether Prize. Member of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians and executive director of the Cherokee Preservation Foundation. Alumna of Yale University and the College of William and Mary. Wife and mother.

With “A Blue Bottle Tree Grows in Appalachia,” Clapsaddle adds Smoky Mountain Living folklorist to the charge. “Folklore speaks directly to our worldview—it is indicative of the value system that defines our past and often even directs our future,” she says.

“Southern Appalachian folklore is particularly special because it is a marriage of so many diverse histories and sets of beliefs. The result is a beautifully rich storytelling culture teetering somewhere between settled reality and the penchant for wanderlust.”

Read Clapsaddle’s take on the time-honored tradition of blue bottle trees in these pages, and watch for future essays by her in coming issues.

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9

Discover Historic Historic Hendersonville offers cool mountains and warm Hendersonville is ideally located

southern hospitality. Hendersonville is located in Western

for exploring town and country with

North Carolina, 22 miles south of Asheville, in the Blue

varied attractions, festivals, cultural &

Ridge Mountains on a plateau, 2200 feet above sea level.

recreational activities, historical sites, golf courses, family activities, a historic downtown with unique shops, excellent restaurants, and quality antique stores.

Henderson County offers many diverse attractions, all located within a few blocks, to a few miles of downtown: these include the Henderson County Farmers Curb Market, Jump Off Rock scenic overlook, Historic Johnson Farm, the labyrinth in Holmes Educational State Forest, the waterfalls in Dupont State Recreational Forest, the Western

The Garden n Jubilee Festival The Garden Jubilee Festival is a two-day festival, held on Saturday & Sunday, of Memorial Day weekend in Downtown Hendersonville. This is a great opportunity for gardeners to speak with experts at the garden clinics and gather tips and advice.

Garden Jubilee stretches 8 blocks of Main Street with over 260+ vendors selling handmade arts and crafts, plants and items to enhance your outdoor living area. Local and regional nurseries will be selling 1000’s of annuals, perennials, vegetables, herbs and hard to find plants on every block of the festival.

North Carolina Air Museum and the Historic Hendersonville Depot.

Check out

Architecture Historic downtown features interesting architecture, delightful shops, museums, and locally owned restaurants. The serpentine street features planter boxes brimming with seasonal flowers and trees. Downtown hosts many activities, as well as, art shows, an antique show, car shows, and parades throughout the he year.

Hendersonville, NC The Historic Village of Flat Rock

Garden Jubilee Memorial Day weekend

The Historic Village of Flat Rock began when families from South Carolina’s Low Country came to Flat Rock to escape the sweltering heat and the epidemic of yellow fever and malaria. South Carolina’s Low Country gentry affectionately called Flat Rock, The Little Charleston of the Mountains. The entire district of Flat Rock is included in the National Register of Historic Places. Historic Flat Rock is home to several attractions such as: The Flat Rock Playhouse, State Theatre of North Carolina; the Carl Sandburg Home National Historic Site; and St. John in the Wilderness Episcopal Church as well as many unique specialty shops.

Concerts Summer evening concerts showcase traditional mountain music, square dancing, folk, blues and country Monday nights and oldies rock & dancing Friday nights. The concerts are held under the stars at the Visitor Center, located on Main Street in downtown. Music On Main Street showcases a diverse lineup of musical talents, from rock and roll to beach music. Monday Night Live features a diverse line-up of folk, country and blues. The sounds of fiddles and banjos playing at the Street Dance have been a part of Henderson County’s heritage for 95 years. These concerts h are held early-June through mida August. Experience Rhythm & Brews A concerts each month from April c through September each year in th downtown Hendersonville. d

Annual Events

Wineries and Breweries Henderson County wineries and breweries provide tours and tasting rooms, to sample mountain grown selections. Henderson County is home to Burntshirt Vineyards, Saint Paul Mountain Vineyard, Falderal Winery and Southern Appalachian Brewery. Sierra Nevada Brewing Company will be opening their new east coast brewing, bottling and distribution operation, in Northern Henderson County. Tours, a restaurant, tasting room and other experiences will be available to the public by mid summer 2014.

800.828.4244 historichendersonville.org

NC Apple Festival Labor Day weekend Flat Rock Playhouse mid-April thru late-December Rhythm & Brews Third Thursdays, May - Sept

North Carolina Mountain State Fair early September Music On Main Street June thru late-August, every Friday Street Dances July thru mid-August, every Monday Art On Main first Saturday & Sunday in October Farm City Day first Saturday in October

Let us Help you!

The Visitor Center, located at 201 South Main Street in downtown Hendersonville is open Monday-Friday from 9am-5pm; Saturday, Sunday and holidays from 10am-5pm.

Jon & Regina Phillips Cades Cove, Tenn.

Gary Pinholster Elkmont, Tenn.

The hills are alive with the sounds and sights of spring. Our readers share their views of nature’s renewal.

John Northrup Myrtle Point, Mount LeConte, Tenn.

Richard Kennedy Toe Valley, N.C.

April again! Patches of sudden green, the feathery blur and smoky buddings of young boughs, and something there that comes and goes and never can be captured, the thorn of Spring, the sharp, the tongueless cry! These things will always be the same. — Thomas Wolfe

John Northrup View of High Rocks from Clingmans Dome, Tenn.

The June/July 2015 issue of Smoky Mountain Living will chronicle the history of Southern Appalachian tourism, including the creative ways we promote our top attractions. Send pictures of barn-roof slogans, cars plastered with bumper stickers, and other regional tourism plugs to editor@smliv.com by May 6; include information on where the photo was taken and by whom.

Reader-submitted photos are unpaid but may be rewarded with publication in our nationally distributed magazine. Connect with us at smliv.com, facebook.com/smliv, and on Twitter and Instagram @SmokyMtnLiving.

Jo Harris Delano, Tenn.

Mary Meiners Schoolhouse Gap Trail, Tenn.

Come explore our lakes, waterfalls & trails

14

SMOKY MOUNTAIN LIVING VOLUME 15 • ISSUE 2

SWEET APPALACHIA COMFORTS FOR THE MOUNTAIN SOUL

SLEEPING BEAUTY Mollie McCarter Ogle rocks her baby on a porch in 1928. This image endures as one of Laura Thornborough’s most famous photographs of Smokies residents, perhaps because it “reflects our ideals of motherhood and how mountain folks in Appalachia lived,” says Mike Aday, the librarian-archivist for the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. “I see a woman taking a moment out of a long, hard day. The empty baskets at her feet indicate either a work day about to begin or one finished,” he says. “Life in the mountains was hard, and I’m sure that moments of rest and relaxation were savored.”

NPS, GREAT SMOKY MOUNTAINS NATIONAL PARK PHOTO

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15

ROOTS Sweet Appalachia

A Gardener’s Rites of Spring

BY JIM CASADA

Above: Swiss chard, yellow squash, Nantahala runner beans, eggplant, zucchini, and cucumbers from the author’s garden. Facing page: Spring planting gives way to summer abundance. JIM CASADA PHOTOS

16

“W

hy he ain’t a professor; he’s just an old dirt dauber.”

Several decades ago that’s how a woman known to locals as the “plant lady” described me to another customer who mentioned that I taught at the local university. Seldom in life have I been paid a finer compliment than being styled “an old dirt dauber.”

Living close to the good earth runs as a bright, meaningful thread through the fabric of my life. Some of my fondest memories of a Smokies childhood revolve around helping my father and his father plan and plant crops in the spring. To this day, recollecting the first time Grandpa Joe let me cut up seed potatoes alongside him, using my first pocket knife, warms the cockles of my heart. I still adhere to his simple advice: “Cut a good chunk of tater, son, and always make sure it has at least two eyes.”

Each of the four seasons in the Smokies has distinctive characteristics, but most gardeners, including this one, would pick spring as their favorite.

Earth’s reawakening brings bounty in many forms—namely, a profusion

SMOKY MOUNTAIN LIVING VOLUME 15 • ISSUE 2

of wildflowers, beginning with pussy willows and sarvis in March and on through May’s riotous blooms, which brighten homes as well as the forest understory. There are also delicious dietary changes, such as poke salad, ramps, lamb’s quarters, cress, branch lettuce, and fried trout fresh from the stream. Increasingly warm weather makes communing with nature an exercise in pure pleasure. Even the administration of traditional spring tonics such as sulfur and molasses, or sassafras tea sweetened with sourwood honey, holds a certain appeal. In tandem with wild vegetables of early spring they seem to cleanse the system or, as old-timers often put it, “set you free.”

Most of all, the beginning of another cycle in Earth’s eternal rebirth means time to plant and the promise of the coming months. These links to the land and its mountain folkways—often subconscious but nonetheless emotionally powerful—have succored and sustained me all my years.

Smelling freshly plowed ground and feeling humusrich soil in my hands sooth my soul like a balm. My garden has long been a place of quiet refuge, and I have planted at least a few things every year since completing undergraduate school. So strong is my love affair with the land that when I finally could afford a home, the key consideration was not the design or square footage but rather availability of at least two acres for fruit trees, berry bushes, and a garden.

Certain gardening principles have always guided me. My gardening mentors never specifically mentioned “three sisters” cultivation, although they certainly practiced variations on it by planting corn, climbing beans or field peas, and pumpkins or winter squash in harmony.

For those unfamiliar with the concept, the technique emphasizes a symbiotic relationship between plants learned from Native Americans. Corn provides a way for beans to climb; legumes fix nitrogen and enrich the soil; and the large leaves of pumpkins keep weeds at bay.

My overall approach has also integrated a different triumvirate—the three “Cs” of con-

tinuity, change, and cultural tradition. In other words, I adhere faithfully to lessons passed down through many generations—slicing seed potatoes for planting, removing all suckers on tomatoes except the first one, saving proven seed from year to year, regularly rotating crops, shaking tomato vines to assist pollination, and dozens of other tricks of the gardening trade. I cling fast to tradition as I plant by the signs, use time-honored means of saving seed (such as powdered tobacco, or dry snuff), select the best plants for that seed, and “read” the weather cues on when to plow.

Yet it’s wise not to get “sot in your ways.”

Accordingly, I try a few new plants each year.

With the renaissance of heirloom varieties and

So strong is my love affair with

the land that when I finally could afford a home, the key consideration was not the design or square footage but rather availability of at least two acres for fruit trees, berry bushes, and a garden. the increasing availability of long-forgotten seeds, there are new “old” varieties of tomatoes to try every year and different creasy or cutshort beans to test. This spring will see candy roaster seeds in the ground for the first time in decades; I can already smell the pies and preserves that warmed my boyhood.

Through it all, my garden is a place to pause and ponder—to observe in unhurried wonder—as I derive an ample measure of pleasure from the miracles wrought by soil and sun, water and wind, and my helping hands.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Jim Casada is profiled on page 9.

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Fresh Pickings POKE “SALLET” WITH EGGS AND BACON Among the first “pot herbs” to become available in the spring, thanks to having exceptionally high levels of vitamin A, poke needs to be cooked three times before serving to rid the poisonous weed of toxins. Also, only the new growth, when it is three or four inches tall, should be used. After washing the greens, place in a sauce pan and bring to a rapid boil and continue for 20 minutes.

Repeat the process twice more, draining and starting with cold water. While cooking the poke, fry several strips of bacon (or streaked meat) until crisp, and save the drippings. When boiling the poke greens has been completed, add the drippings and cook in the pan in which the bacon was fried. Top with crumbled bacon and thin slices of hardboiled eggs. Proper preparation of poke sallet takes time, but as one of the earliest greens of spring the effort is well worthwhile.

SASSAFRAS TEA My grandmother often said: “Drink sassafras tea with honey in early spring, and you won’t need a doctor for the rest of the year.” She also believed it was a fine way of staying slender: “You can get so thin drinking sass’ tea you can hide behind a three-quarter-inch water pipe.” She might have been overstating the effects of this traditional spring tonic, but it’s pleasantly palatable (unlike any of the tonics using sulfur) and easily prepared.

Dig up sassafras roots in winter when the sap is low, then clean and dry them. To prepare tea, place a cup of roots, which have been chopped into small pieces, into three quarts boiling water. Reduce heat and simmer for half an hour.

While it is piping hot sweeten each cup of the brewed tea with a tablespoon of honey. Then, as Grandpa Joe would say, “sasser and slurp. It’s mighty satisfying.”

17

TABLE CHATTER

The Rest is Gravy

Sweet Appalachia

Sawmill gravy has topped biscuits in the Smokies since at least the turn of the 20th century, during the logging boom. One legend holds that this milk gravy with sausage crumbles got its name at the Tremont lumber camp when the kitchen staff ran out of flour and, in a pinch, tossed some cornmeal in the gravy. The cooks told the loggers that day’s gravy was made of sawdust—and the name stuck.

Other people call this simple recipe “life everlasting” gravy, due to its subsistence role for those poor mountain crews. Another unique gravy style said to have originated in the Southern mountains is chocolate gravy.

A biscuit at Plaid Apron.

JEFF JONES PHOTOGRAPHY

How do you take your biscuits?

W

hether as big as a cat’s head or dropped from a spoon into a skillet, biscuits are a staple of most Southern breakfast tables. In May, Knoxville hosts the International Biscuit Festival, a grand celebration complete with a baking contest, the crowning of Miss or Mr. Biscuit, a songwriting competition, and a tasting area. We’ve got biscuits on the brain just thinking about it. In anticipation of the event May 14–16, we asked a few Tennessee cooks to describe their dream biscuits.

“I like to keep it simple: torn in half, a bit of butter, and enough wildflower honey to just spill over the edge of each round.”

— Shannon Walker, preservationist of Blackberry Farm in Walland “We take our biscuits just about any way we can get them, as long as they are hot and fresh. The key to the perfect biscuit is that it’s comprised of a simple, timeless recipe of fresh ingredients mixed with care like Granny used to make, whether with apple butter or covered in some good ole’ country gravy. In 2013, Applewood won the People’s Choice award at the International Biscuit Festival with our savory Cajun Andouille Shrimp & Grit biscuit. In 2014, we did a sweet Cran-Apple Biscuit and came in second place—so it’s all a matter of preference.”

— Roman Campbell, chef at Applewood Farmhouse in Sevierville

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“Growing up in Middle Tennessee I have eaten my share of biscuits—some sweet, some savory, out of a box, out of a freezer, and, yes, even out of a can. My grandmother’s biscuits were a loose batter which got dumped into a warm cast-iron skillet, similar to cornbread cooking, baked and then flipped and cut with a knife or fork. My mom’s biscuits were self-rising flour, shortening, and heavy cream, which we would kill with some pan-fried venison that we harvested, and butter till our heart was content. As I have perfected my perfect biscuit, lard from local farmers is the game changer. It also is a plus that some of the best buttermilk is provided by Cruze Farm.

A perfect biscuit can be eaten by itself.”

— Drew McDonald, owner of the Plaid Apron in Knoxville “Sweet over savory, any day of the week: My favorite is a mixture of chocolate gravy [see recipe, right] and homemade strawberry freezer jam over a hot buttered biscuit. It tastes like a chocolate-covered strawberry shortcake.”

— Meredith Layton, owner of Buttermilk Sky Pie Shop in Knoxville “In our Appalachian lunchable, we use biscuits with country ham from Paris, Tennessee, pimento cheese, benne seed bacon jerky, deviled eggs, chili pickled shrimp, and pickles.

Then there are our braised lamb and rosemary biscuits with sweet hot pepper jelly and apple slaw, and the classic buttermilk biscuits with berry jam, smoked salt, and soft butter.”

— Shelley Cooper, chef at TerraMáe Appalachian Bistro in Chattanooga

SMOKY MOUNTAIN LIVING VOLUME 15 • ISSUE 2

Chocolate Gravy /4 cups cocoa /4 cups granulated sugar 3 tablespoons all-purpose flour 2 cups whole milk 1 tablespoon salted butter 2 teaspoons vanilla 1

3

Mix cocoa, sugar, and flour together in a bowl until there are no lumps. Slowly whisk milk into cocoa mixture until well blended.

Pour into a saucepan over medium heat, stirring frequently to prevent scorching. Continue stirring over heat for approximately ten minutes or until thickened to gravy consistency. Remove from heat and add butter and vanilla. Stir until butter is melted and chocolate becomes velvety smooth. Serve warm. Store unused in jars in refrigerator up to two weeks.

— Recipe courtesy of Meredith Layton, Buttermilk Sky Pie Shop

So, how do you take your biscuits?

Share your best biscuit toppings, photos, recipes, or memories at editor@smliv.com or facebook.com/smliv.

We’ll publish our favorites in a future issue.

FARM TO TABLE Sweet Appalachia

Ode to the Odiferous

Farmer’s Cheese with Ramps and Herbs

B Y M A R K LY N N F E R G U S O N

B

y late April, we trust you’ve tiptoed into the woods, maybe under cover of darkness, pinched your nose with one hand and, fast as a rabbit, harvested your secret ramp stash using the other.

Your kitchen—make that your whole house—probably smells as if you’ve rubbed the walls with garlic and onions. Neighbors have stopped visiting, haven’t they? Has your dog run off yet? Did the rest of the family decide to take a trip without you?

Don’t worry. They’ll come back, and in the meantime, you’ve got ramps to eat. Ramps with eggs. Ramps with home fries. Ramps aioli. Grilled ramps. Pickled ramps.

For that matter, you may be looking for a new way to get your fix.

Travis Milton has you covCHEROKEE NC PHOTO ered. This Appalachian native grew up roaming the hillsides of southwest Virginia and pestering chefs in his family’s Russell County restaurant. Today, he marries his love of mountains with his love of food at Comfort, an upscale yet down-home restaurant in Richmond.

Here Milton shares his recipe for farmer’s cheese with ramps and herbs, with simple instructions that he promises will dispute the myth that making cheese is too difficult for a home cook to tackle.

He’s right. Cheese can be easier than you ever thought and tastier than you imagined when it’s loaded with our favorite stinky leek.

— This article and recipe first appeared on TheRevivalist.info and has been adapted here with permission.

What’s all the stink about?

Ramps usher in spring in Appalachia—and so do festivals like Waynesville’s 82nd annual Ramp Festival (May 2–3) and the Polk County Ramp Tramp (April 22–25) on the Hiwassee River in Reliance, Tennessee. Up in Richwood, West Virginia, the Feast of the Ramson (April 18) honors the 1930s legacy of Bato “King of Ramps” Crites, who was known for collecting hundreds of pounds of the plant in one swoop.

Sometimes called “Tennessee truffles,” the unruly cousins to the onion thrive in high elevations and moist soil under sugar maples, birch, and poplar. Their mineral-rich leaves resemble the

1 quart half and half 1 cup buttermilk 1 teaspoon lemon juice ½ tablespoon butter 5 tablespoons fresh ramps (chopped) 1 teaspoon fresh thyme (chopped) 2 teaspoons flat leaf parsley (chopped) ½ teaspoon tarragon (chopped) ½ teaspoon sumac (optional) 1 tablespoon heavy cream Salt and black pepper to taste 1. Combine half and half, buttermilk, and lemon juice in medium sauce pot and bring to a soft rolling boil. (Be careful to not let it boil over.)

Reduce heat and simmer for six to eight minutes.

You will be able to see the liquid begin to separate into curds and whey very soon after it starts to boil.

2. Pour the mixture through a mesh strainer lined with cheesecloth or muslin.

3. Once you have caught the curd in the cloth, cinch the cloth around the curd by bringing all the edges together. Lift then twist. This will put pressure on the curd and force some of the remaining whey out.

4. Transfer your curd to a small mixing bowl and let cool.

5. Heat a small sauté pan on medium/high heat.

Once your butter has melted, add the chopped ramps. Sweat the ramps for 3-4 minutes or until the white parts begin to get a little translucent. Set aside to cool.

6. Add herbs, sumac, heavy cream, and cooled ramps to the curd. Salt and pepper the mixture to taste, and mix well, making sure to combine all ingredients thoroughly.

poisonous lily of the valley—do the smell test to be safe—and have long been considered a tonic to cleanse the blood. The old mountain way of eating a “mess of ramps” is “kilt,” aka drenched in hot bacon grease. No matter how the wild leek is prepared, today’s foodies love its blink-and-it’s-gone nature, pungent flavor, and high vitamin A and C content.

Cherish that bad breath: In Quebec, appetites run more rampant than supply, and selling the vulnerable weed has been illegal (and tightly restricted for personal use) since 1995.

Emotions run high about harvesting ramps in the Smokies, too: Plant removal is illegal in the national park and national forests, though a 2011 provision allows limited gathering of ramps by the Cherokee for traditional purposes.

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READING LIST Sweet Appalachia

Western Carolina in our Minds

BY JEFF MINICK

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peppered cabbage and a Carolina shrimp melt.

Long associated with Southern cooking, Sims’s voice makes the writing shine, from chapter introductions to snappy recipe commentary. In the chapter titled “Porcine Love,” for example, she opines: “And then there’s bacon. One of the surest signs of genuine affection in our neck of the woods is to sign your missive ‘Love you more than bacon.’ A higher aspiration doesn’t exist.”

Finally, the extensive photographs and illustrations reveal both the end results of these mouth-watering recipes and the love of the authors for the mountains.

In the book’s foreword, the chef Sean Brock—originally from a small town in southwestern Virginia but now one of the stars of culinary Charleston—lauds this cookbook for the way “the traditions of mountain cuisine are looked at through a modern lens.”

That’s it exactly: old recipes and foods with a 21st-century twist.

(Andrews McMell Publishing, $30)

alk into any bookshop in the mountains of Western North Carolina, and you will almost FOR THE HISTORY BUFF certainly find an impressive array of Perhaps the most books celebrating these life and times— whimsical new title is The Blue Ridge Mountains of from hiking guides to Cherokee folk North Carolina, by Janet tales. And the new titles keep coming.

Morrison. Part of the Postcard by History Series, the Here are three volumes that arrived on book looks at bygone days store shelves in recent months. through reproductions of FOR THE MOUNTAIN COOK Tupelo Honey Café’s latest cookbook is as sumptuous as the meals served up by this Asheville institution. Tupelo Honey’s Elizabeth Sims, director of marketing, and Brian Sonoskus, executive chef, wrote and produced this ode to the restaurant. Take 125 delicious recipes easily replicated by the home cook, toss in a ménage of regional photographs and foods, spice the dish with the comments of Sims and Sonoskus, and you have a book worthy of both kitchen and coffee table.

Look first at the recipes for traditional Southern favorites: chicken and crispy dumplings, hush puppies, country ham and pimento cheese biscuits. But Sims and Sonoskus have added to the home repertoire, too, from goat cheese basil grits to pierogis with rabbit confit and

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postcards local to Western North Carolina, each accompanied by succinctly written notes packed with information. Here are cards depicting the Cherokee people, small communities such as Lake Junaluska, and wildlife, particularly black bears.

Two standout photos show the Ghost Town train on its steep incline and another of the Hotel Gordon on Waynesville’s Main Street. The latter reminds us that the town’s Main Street once served as home to half a dozen hotels and rooming houses, back in that time when summer visitors from the Deep South came by rail to the mountains to escape the heat. (Arcadia Publishing, $22)

FOR THE PHOTOGRAPHER North Carolina Unforgettable: Photography by Robb Helfrick begs for a spot on coffee tables across the state. We’ve seen some of these photo subjects in other such collections: Tryon Palace, the 740-gallon coffee pot in Old Salem, the Lynn Cove Viaduct, various coastal lighthouses. But many less well-known pictures testify to both Helfrick’s talent and of the beauty of all corners of the Old North State. His autumn shot of Upper Whitewater Falls in Transylvania County captures the majesty of that gorge, and the picture he took at dusk from Thunderstruck Ridge above Maggie Valley reminds us once again of our region’s appeal. (Far Country Press, $33)

SMOKY MOUNTAIN LIVING VOLUME 15 • ISSUE 2

Blockbuster Watch

“David Holt’s State of Music” turns an ear toward the future of traditional mountain music as it follows the four-time Grammy Award winner on location in Southern Appalachia. The one-hour PBS program is the latest channel Holt has used to share his beloved mountain music, which first brought him to Western North Carolina in the early 1970s and ultimately put him on tour with Doc Watson. In what could become the first in a new series, Holt interviews and performs with a wide range of acclaimed mountain musicians, including North Carolina guitarist Bryan Sutton and bluegrass band Balsam Range of Haywood County. Previously, Holt has spread his mission of folk preservation everywhere from the archives of the Library of Congress, to places like Nepal as a folk music ambassador of the U.S. State Department, to 2000’s O Brother Where Art Thou movie, in which he played the fiddle. Available for streaming at unctv.org/content/stateofmusic.

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State of the Art

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Asheville author Sara Gruen’s circus bestseller Water for Elephants is still pulling stunts in the ring: First her story dazzled critics and readers, then movie audiences, soon Broadway goers.

Yet Gruen’s best trick has always been storytelling, and she’s back with a new novel, At the Water’s Edge, that will keep readers gripped to the fate of Madeline Hyde, a young socialite from Philadelphia, as she follows her husband and their friend to a small Scottish Highlands village on a hunt for the Loch Ness monster. It’s a tightrope walk between personal quests and that of a very different monster, Hitler, who all the while is waging war against the Allied Forces. (Spiegel & Grau, $28)

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21

LISTEN HERE Sweet Appalachia

Rising Appalachia consists of sisters Leah and Chloe Smith.

DONATED PHOTO

Rise Above the Noise

BY GARRET K. WOODWARD

Q&A with Chloe Smith What’s the story behind the name Rising Appalachia?

We feel that Rising Appalachia stands for many things, quite literally that we are rising from a tradition of Appalachian music and culture passed down to us through our family. But also, it’s more of a dreamscape idea that Appalachia itself is rising up and sprouting, through countless incredible people, many with new visions for our collective future.

Does landscape play into your music?

There’s a fierce feminine soul to these mountains, a grandmother of sorts, and those who need nourishment, healing,

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A

t sold-out theaters and venues around the country, Rising Appalachia’s live shows blur the lines between audience and performer.

Led by the Asheville-based sister duo of Leah and Chloe Smith, the band creates mountain music accented with everything from hip-hop to world fusion. In this realm, old-time fiddlers share stage space with jazz trumpeters and Afro-Cuban percussionists, and performances weave between messages of love, Appalachian traditions, and social activism, tackling causes such as mountain-top removal and fracking. This past winter, a take-it-to-the-people campaign on Kickstarter.com helped fund the recording of the group’s sixth album, Wider Circles, at Asheville’s Echo Mountain Studios.

and natural wonder have little trouble finding it here. That quiet pulse of these ancient mountains still calls me home and soothes the roughest parts of my spirit.

The simple act of sharing something artistic and rooted in community and tradition influenced our whole family as well as our vision of the work we do with

“Our studies of traditional music and contemporary lyrical composition keep us invested in the role of the troubadour.”

— Chloe Smith

SMOKY MOUNTAIN LIVING VOLUME 15 • ISSUE 2

Rising Appalachia. The mountains and spirit of the land here has always offered a maternal and calming home to give back to and draw inspiration from.

What are your roles as musicians?

We are continuing to learn our work as soul crafters, piecing together the deep seeds of story and song. Our studies of traditional music and contemporary lyrical composition keep us invested in the role of the troubadour, as well as in forging a movement to bring voice to the voiceless, bring melody to stories, and make space for people to be heard.

Tell us about your new album.

We crafted each song as a poem, and hope that people who receive it hear our message in their own unique ways—and take it as a prayer and a call to action.

13 Stages of "Traditional Plus" Music!

The Avett Brothers

Dwight Yoakam

Robert Earl Keen

The Marshall Tucker Band

Lee Ann Womack

The Del McCoury Band

BĂŠla Fleck and Abigail Washburn

North Mississippi Allstars

Hot Rize

Sam Bush Band

April 23-26, 2015

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Trampled By Turtles

Plus many more performers!

LISTEN HERE

Folk Singer Steps Out

Sweet Appalachia

Rhiannon Giddens's self-assured debut solo album, Tomorrow Is My Turn, belies the true message. Forget tomorrow: The singer, violinist, and banjo player’s day has arrived. Then again, as a founding member of the old-time string band Carolina Chocolate Drops, she’s already got a Grammy Award to back up her moxy—not to mention collaborations with musical all-stars such as Elvis Costello, Taylor Goldsmith, Jim James, and Marcus Mumford.

A North Carolina native, Giddens grew up surrounded by old-time music and even moonlighted as a contra-dance caller while studying opera at Oberlin Conservatory. In 2005, she met the original members of the Carolina Chocolate Drops at the Black Banjo Gathering in Boone. The friends began traveling each week to the home of octogenarian fiddler Joe Thompson to learn, listen, and jam, ultimately forming their virtuosic band as a tribute to Thompson, his unique bowing style, and the legacy of Southern African-American string bands.

As the sole remaining original member of the band, Giddens steps out on her own with a soulful album rich in paeans to her influences, from Dolly Parton’s “Don’t Let It Trouble Your Mind” to folksinger Odetta’s “Waterboy.” rhiannongiddens.com

Wheels Up Roots band Steel Wheels has always cast its lot in the roving ways of Appalachia, from its road-ready name to its mountain minstrel sound. Based in the Blue Ridge Mountains, the four-piece string band further explores the push and pull of travel in their fourth album, Leave Some Things Behind, in which the thrill of adventure meets the sting of homesickness. Frontman Trent Wagler calls the songs “short stories on the Exodus theme,” with such telling titles as “Find Your Mountain” and “So Lonely” a result of the past five years of intense touring. “Towards the end of the album, in a song called ‘Rescue Me, Virginia,’” Wagler explains, “there is a line that says, ‘It makes a difference where you go, it makes you different where you go.’ But in the end the song is about coming home to Virginia.” Recorded at Blue Sprocket Sound in Harrisonburg, Virginia, the new album looks to the horizon but sounds firmly rooted in place. thesteelwheels.com

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SMOKY MOUNTAIN LIVING VOLUME 15 • ISSUE 2

13 Stages of "Traditional Plus" Music!

Willie Watson

Steep Canyon Rangers

The Earls of Leicester

The Kruger Brothers

The Spinney Brothers

Bruce Robison and Kelly Willis

The Gibson Brothers

Jim Lauderdale

Peter Rowan

The Black Lillies

Nashville Bluegrass Band

Scythian

Jim Avett

JOHNNYSWIM

April 23-26, 2015

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Blue Highway

Plus many more performers!

MerleFest and WCC are 100% Tobacco Free.

The views presented are not necessarily those of Wilkes Community College or endorsed by the college.

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25

LOCAL LORE Sweet Appalachia

A Blue

Bottle Tree Grows in Appalachia

BY ANNETTE SAUNOOKE CLAPSADDLE

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SMOKY MOUNTAIN LIVING VOLUME 15 • ISSUE 2

I

ANETTE SAUNOOKE CLAPSADDLE PHOTOS

admit to suffering from unjustified anxiety regarding the growing number of blue bottle trees peppered along dirt roads and adorning eclectic yards of West Asheville. One gust of wind, and someone will be mowing glass shards! Nonetheless, I’ve often wondered the story behind this beautiful and distinctive form of yard art.

Let me clarify. I am referring to the cobalt or “haint” blue-glass bottle trees that have stood in the same yards for generations.

Granted, commercially manufactured trees are sold everywhere from Amazon to eBay. BottleTreeBob.com even advertises, “Got haints runnin’ wild? Who you gonna call?” My guess is Bottle Tree Bob. Or maybe his kinfolk, The Bottle Tree Man. But I’m not talking about Bob or his band of merry “haint” catchers. The barren shrubs whose limbs are given one more go-around, the sheer devotion of collecting so many distinctive blue bottles—now that is a dedicated art form that harkens tradition.

The history of the tree’s origin, typically linked to Africa, is well documented, though not all scholars agree on the first sighting. We can assume that because this is a cultural practice (perhaps of multiple cultures), and culture is alive, then origin is likely disparate. Associated belief systems grow right along with the trees themselves. In the early 20th century, some rural Appalachians strung eggshells from naked tree branches as a talisman to keep witches away, especially in early spring.

Whether bottle or eggshell, the message is the same: Evil need not knock on this door.

I, with the help of my Labradors, am constantly killing shrubbery, so maybe a bottle tree could help. But I want to create it authentically. I want to collect the “haint” blue bottles— bonus if they contain mercury to deter mosquitoes—and decorate the closest Crape Myrtle. But where to start?

Since I’m of the generation, I take the obvious next step. I Google. Did you know there is a blue bottle fly? There is also a Facebook page.

Refine search.

Where have generations turned to find their bottles? Milk of magnesia bottles pop up again and again. Really? Have our ancestors experienced such bowel distress that they consumed enough medicine to fill an entire tree? It is time I seek out experts.

Don and Jean Ellen Forrister live in Sylva, North Carolina. They have a lovely bottle tree. Jean Ellen first encountered the art form while visiting Mississippi. Don, an artist, completed the project back home. Turning into their driveway, I am taken aback by the large display of bottles illuminated by my headlights. Later, Don tells me that he believes this reflectiveness is the true aesthetic appeal. Both sun and moonlight reflect off the bottles and bathe the ground in shades of blue.

Once inside their home, I can’t help but blurt out, “Where did they all come from?”

Don and Jean Ellen smile. “Everywhere,” Don says. “Yard sales and flea markets. But most of them came from my parent’s dumpsite.” Don reminds me that garbage pick-up is a relatively new luxury. Not so long ago, families found a deep, nearby ravine where they dumped their household trash. Now, of course, we know this is environmentally disastrous, but it does make for some mighty fine treasure-hunting.

I wonder, if most of his bottles came from family property, what products did Don’s family use?

“Oh, there’s Vicks VapoRub and old prescription bottles. Wine bottles and water bottles. But the majority are milk of magnesia bottles,” Don recalls.

“Yes!” I interrupt. “Why so much milk of magnesia?”

“We used it for everything,” Jean Ellen says, laughing. “They’d say a good dose could fix anything—especially a bad temper.” She eyes Don as confirmation.

A relationship must be cultivated if one ever hopes to generate a space for renewal and forgiveness.

Don agrees that medicine was sometimes used to correct behavior. Think castor oil. He also emphasizes that the “haint” blue color may be an extension of the “healing” process. He likes the thought that one is protected at night from evil spirits—that they are captured and then burned off with the morning sun. He likens it to how some people paint blue around their doorway, cleansing visitors of sins as they walk through.

Renewal. Forgiveness. Now those are concepts we can all appreciate.

Don leans back and nods. “It’s really about relationships, isn’t it?” he says in a reflective tone. “I have a relationship with every bottle I collect. We have a relationship to the history and cultures that inspire the trees. If the wind is blowing hard, I worry about the tree.”

I imagine not everyone has a relationship with their yard art, but that is the difference between commercial sculptures and the tree I want to create. A relationship must be cultivated if one ever hopes to generate a space for renewal and forgiveness. That thought helps to alleviate much of my anxiety—and not just about broken glass.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Annette Saunooke Clapsaddle is profiled on page 9.

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CekdjW_d9^[[i[<[ij$Yec SMOKY MOUNTAIN LIVING VOLUME 15 • ISSUE 2

MOUNTAIN EXPLORER ROVING THESE HILLS AND VALLEYS

FLOWER POWER Each spring, Asheville’s Biltmore Estate dazzles visitors with an explosion of color, including the multihued blooms of some 96,000 tulips. Harder working and no less spectacular, a canola crop now adds to the show.

Planted behind the original gardener’s cottage, 55 acres of the tall flowers blaze yellow in May. After the seed is harvested in June, the resulting canola oil gets converted to biodiesel, which fuels farm vehicles and equipment around the estate. George Vanderbilt, who dreamed of a self-sufficient model farm when planning Biltmore in the 1890s, would surely be proud.

THE BILTMORE COMPANY PHOTO

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OUTLOOKS Mountain Explorer

Ramsey Cascades.

Back at the trailhead, the crew (below) celebrates a successful rescue.

HOLLY KAYS PHOTO

Trouble in Paradise B Y H O L LY K AY S

I

called the hike “worth it” at my first glimpse of Ramsey Cascades and its 100 feet of rocky outcrops, covered by hurtling streams of water. As the exclamation mark of that four-mile trail through Great Smoky Mountains National Park, the sight melted away memory of the preceding 2,000 feet of elevation gain.

Though it had been a pretty great day already. I was tackling the trail with Cora, my oldest and best friend, and we’d made sure to take time for goofy pictures at the trailhead and detours to identify budding wildflowers and to pay homage to the pair of centuriesold tulip-poplars standing sentinel at 2.5 miles in.

A near miss with a black snake slithering across our path was plenty to round out our need for excitement that day.

Or so I thought. Partway through our descent, we came across 30

a middle-aged couple sitting alongside the trail. The woman wore what Cora later termed “the look of defeat.” An emergency medical technician since high school and now a paramedic, Cora had seen that look plenty of times. She’s never been able to ignore it.

When I’m in the mood to tease her, I call that compassion of hers a “Super Cora complex.”

“Are you OK?” she asked the woman, whose name turned out to be Chris.

“I’m fine, I’m just—I can’t make my legs move,” Chris said.

Super Cora kicked into gear. She took down Chris’s weight, age, medical history, details on how much she’d had to eat and drink and when—not much, we learned—and dug into her own pack for the squeezable applesauce packets she keeps on hand for occasions like this.

“Eat it. I promise you’ll feel better,” she told Chris, who protested that it would make her sick but gamely tried some small sips anyway. Then she flopped down on the ground, and we knew it was time to call for help. Cora drafted a set of text messages, and I ran the phone up the trail in search of signal while Cora kept an eye on her patient.

When I got back, Chris was resting while her husband, Bill,

SMOKY MOUNTAIN LIVING VOLUME 15 • ISSUE 2

chatted with Cora. A hobbyist photographer, he was hauling a backpack full of lenses, filters, and other gadgets.

“We just didn’t know it would be this far,” he said for what seemed like the 50th time.

“It happens more often than you’d think,” Cora said. “Chris, do you think you can try walking a little bit now?”

That was more than an arbitrary question. The route back to the parking lot included a long footbridge over a ravine, too narrow to carry a stretcher. Getting an immobile patient over it would require a lot of time, labor, and rope. If Chris could cross the bridge under her own steam, she’d get home a lot faster.

Luckily, Chris and Cora were the same height, so Cora stood in as her crutch.

The bridge came into sight as they walked together, chatting about cooking and recipes and the stand mixer Chris had received for Christmas from her kids.

Trailing them with Bill, I spotted the team of seven responders at the same time as the bridge.

“God sent me an angel today,” Chris said as she walked across the bridge and toward the red and yellow carryout litter awaiting her. The professionals took care of business, and once again Bill and I stayed behind, talking cameras and lenses and favorite photography shots.

The sun disappeared just about the time the hard surfaces of the parking lot began peaking through the trees. We were getting home much later than anticipated—so much for a night of cooking, eating, and lounging around with Cora.

But I didn’t much mind. Chris would be fine after a good night’s sleep, and she thanked us profusely for our help. She asked for a mailing address to send cookies to the crew, which Cora later described as “the best cookies I’ve ever had in my entire life.”

Our day hadn’t gone as planned, but then, what adventure in the wild does?

Meanwhile, the spring evening deepened. The woods turned a mysterious shade of green, the air struck a perfect balance of crispness and warmth, and the post-sunset sky cast a gentle glow on our drive toward bedtime.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Holly Kays of Waynesville, North Carolina, is a forester’s daughter who is happy to live, write, and hike in the land of many trees.

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FIELD GUIDE

Just Passing Through

GO BIG OR GO HOME: The blackpoll racks up superlatives.

With the longest migration of any passerine (songbird), this warbler flies more than 11,000 miles—that’s a potentially nonstop flight of up to 88 hours. He travels in style, too, wearing a black and white stripe, black cap, and a lightly streaked breast.

Boasting one of the highest pitches of any songbird, the blackpoll sings while foraging high in the treetops throughout the region. Sounds like: “tsi-tsi-tsi.”

DAN PANCAMO PHOTO

DOUBLE TAKE: Absence makes the heart grow fonder of the bay-breasted warbler: The species typically migrates west of the mountains, making appearances here a rare treat. This mysterious beauty has a black face, rich chestnut crown and throat, and a creamy belly (but no yellow coloring).

He’s big at five to six inches but tends to be a silent fellow, though his short, high-pitched song can occasionally be heard at

Gear Up for Spring Migration Southern Appalachia is a playground for birders of all levels. Here’s how novices can do more than get a stiff neck:

FIND AN EXPERT: Learn the basics from experienced birders. Stephen Lyn Bales, the senior naturalist at Knoxville’s Ijams Nature Center as well as the author of Ghost Bird about one man’s quest for the ivory-billed woodpecker, suggests joining a bird-watching field trip for beginners, such as those offered by Ijams.

North Carolina organizations that offer birding outings include Elisha Mitchell Audubon in Asheville, the Franklin Bird Club in Franklin, and the Highlands Plateau Audubon Society in Highlands.

CHOOSE YOUR GEAR: Top-ofthe-line brands like Swarovski, Leica, and Nikon offer quality optics, but there’s no need to spend thousands of dollars on

spots such as Tsali Recreation Area near Fontana Lake. Sounds like: “teeesi – teeesi – teees.”

GETTING CHEEKY: The Cape May warbler flaunts a bold yellow neck, throat, and breast with fine black streaking, a dark cap, and a chestnut cheek patch. A semitubular tongue proves handy when feeding on nectar in its West Indies wintering grounds.

Spruce budworms are the lifeline of the species; listen for their distinctive, thin song coming from the dense spruce foliage near the cross at Lake Junaluska. Sounds like: “seet, seet, seet, seet.”

U.S. FISH & WILDLIFE SERVICE PHOTO

T

hose southerly April breezes make sleep a chore for bird enthusiasts in Southern Appalachia. As the night skies fill with neotropical migrants on their way north to nesting grounds in the upper reaches of North America, birders have a fleeting chance to see and hear these special songbirds. Keep an eye and ear out for these three migrants this spring:

Mountain Explorer

Save the date:

This spring, Georgia’s popular youth birdathon turns 10.

From 5 p.m. on April 25 to 5 p.m. the following day, kindergarteners to high school seniors race to spot the most bird species across the state. In 2014, participants spotted some 200 species and raised more than $2,600 for the Georgia Wildlife Conservation Fund and other conservation organizations. Learn more at georgiawildlife.com/youthbirdingcompetition.

binoculars to get in the game. Laura Mahan, co-owner of the Compleat Naturalist in Asheville, recommends Vortex Diamondback 8x42 for beginners, which cost around $220. Mahan says the model offers “excellent optics for the price, and the field of view is 420 feet, making it easier for beginners to keep the bird in the field of view.” Pair the binoculars with the Vortex Diamondback current Peterson 8x42. VORTEX OPTICS PHOTO Field Guide to Birds for beginners, and learn bird songs with the help of a CD such as Stokes Field Guide to Bird Songs: Eastern Region.

GET OUTSIDE: The Blue Ridge Parkway in North Carolina provides ideal conditions to look for spring migrants.

Perched at treetop level, the overlooks allow bird seekers to avert the dreaded

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“warbler neck.” Mount Mitchell at milepost 355 and Heintooga Spur Road at milepost 458 offer opportunities for high-elevation specialties including winter wrens, red crossbills, hermit thrushes, and more. The yellow-breasted chat, blue grosbeak, willow flycatcher, and white-eyed vireo can be found at low-lying sites such as Kituwah Farms, between Cherokee and Bryson City.

LEARN MORE: A knowledgeable outfitter is an invaluable resource and can help explain what all those binocular numbers mean as well as sift through the subtle differences of the various field guides. Try the Compleat Naturalist in Asheville as well as Wild Birds Unlimited, with locations in Asheville and Knoxville.

Online resources for birding in the Smokies include birding trail websites in North Carolina (ncbirdingtrail.org) and Tennessee (tnbirdingtrail.org).

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GO WILD

Rainbow Falls.

TIMOTHY SPIRA PHOTO

Mountain Explorer

Falling for

Southern Appalachia

F

cascade some 125 feet high that is one of the region’s most spectacular—and powerful—waterfalls. If the light is right, you may see a long arching rainbow in the mist. The viewing area is rich in spring and summer wildflowers, with peak flowering mid-April through May. Stop and explore the exhibits at the recently opened visitor center (one mile after entering Gorges State Park). For further exploration, Whitewater Falls is eight miles south on N.C. 281. With two sheer drops and cascades totaling 411 feet, it’s one of the highest falls in the eastern U.S.

CRABTREE FALLS

Blue Ridge Parkway, North Carolina Lush forests, a large meadow with colorful wildflowers, and a near picture-perfect waterfall make this a popular destination about an hour’s drive from Asheville. This two-mile loop takes in a waterfall that cascades 70 feet as it tumbles down hundreds of narrow ledges, forming a sparkling white lacy pattern that contrasts with the dark amphibolite rock and green foliage. A sturdy footbridge with a built-in bench provides excellent views. The spray cliff nurtures bluets and mountain meadow-rue, while plumed Solomon’s seal, wood nettle, orange jewelweed, and white wood aster grow along the rocky streamside, along with rosebay rhododendron, mountain doghobble, and wild hydrangea. Cold air drainage near the base of the falls cools the skin and allows higher elevation species such as yellow birch, mountain maple, and mountain wood sorrel to grow here. Peak flowering is late April through May.

ew natural features charm visitors quite like waterfalls, from those that gently glide over bedrock to the fury and power of others. The spring melt signals prime time for cascades. Here are three favorite hikes to waterfalls.

MOUSE CREEK FALLS Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Tennessee The relatively easy Big Creek Trail, on the northwestern side of the park, features a cascading stream, enchanting pools, two small but scenic waterfalls, and good wildflower displays from April through mid-May. On the rocky banks at 0.3 miles, fire pink and purple phacelia bloom in spring, and hairy beardtongue, tall bellflower, and flowering raspberry take their turns in summer. At 1.5 miles, a side trail descends to Midnight Hole Falls, which drops between two boulders into a dark pool. From Midnight Hole, continue another 0.5 mile on the Big Creek Trail to a short spur trail that ends at a viewing area, with Mouse Creek Falls on the far side of the creek. The waterfall drops about 20 feet into a small pool before cascading another 15 feet into Big Creek. Red maple and yellow birch dominate the cove forest, with dense thickets of rosebay rhododendron and mountain doghobble in the understory. Restrooms, a picnic area, campground, and additional hiking trails can be found close to the parking lot.

RAINBOW FALLS Gorges State Park and Pisgah National Forest, North Carolina Beginning in Gorges State Park‚ just south of Lake Toxaway, this four-mile out-and-back trail soon enters Pisgah National Forest where it follows the Horsepasture River (a designated Wild and Scenic River) along the Blue Ridge Escarpment. Four waterfalls occur along this stretch of the river, including Rainbow Falls, a near vertical

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New Hiking Guide Timothy P. Spira’s Waterfalls and Wildflowers in the Southern Appalachians: Thirty Great Hikes (University of North Carolina Press, 2015), links these two tenets of the Smokies in an interpretive guide covering trails in Virginia, the Carolinas, Tennessee, and Georgia, including many in Great Smoky Mountains National Park and along the Blue Ridge Parkway. Learn about 125 wildflowers and discover which ones to look for, in which season, while hiking to the region’s most stunning waterfalls. In addition to being an avid hiker and wildflower enthusiast, Spira is professor of botany at South Carolina’s Clemson University and also the author of Wildflowers and Plant Communities of the Southern Appalachians and Piedmont.

SMOKY MOUNTAIN LIVING VOLUME 15 • ISSUE 2

GO WILD

Garden Party

Mountain Explorer

TOP FORM: Don your best chapeau for the Knoxville Botanical Garden’s spring luncheon at 11 a.m. on April 23. “Hats in Bloom” attendees sip mimosas and enjoy a catered lunch during a presentation of milliner Patricia Frankum’s spring collection of designer hats. After lunch, explore the stone buildings, greenhouses, and winding paths and alleys of this 44acre “secret garden.” $45 for lunch. knoxgarden.org ONE FOR THE RHODE: On May 2 and 3, the Southeast chapter of the American Rhododendron Society brings the 55th Rhododendron and Azalea Flower Show to the North Carolina Arboretum in Asheville. Enjoy hundreds of blooms, classes, expert growing advice, and plants and supplies for sale. While you’re there, explore the National Native Azalea Collection along Bent Creek. Free with standard $12 parking. ncarboretum.org

MARK HASKETT PHOTO

INTO THE WOODS: Retreat to the North Carolina mountains May 8 and 9 for Wildflower Whimsy. Highlands Biological Garden welcomes spring to the woodlands with wildflower walks, lectures, garden tours, a reception, and a native plant auction. Proceeds support the garden, which is a free, yearround destination where almost 500 species of mosses, ferns, wildflowers, shrubs, and trees flourish in native plant communities connected by trails. The garden is part of the Highlands Botanical Station, which also includes a nature center and laboratory.

Tickets go quick. highlandsbiological.org/wildflower-whimsy

Nesting Time

D

yed Easter eggs are no match for the painted eggs on exhibit at the new C.E. Blevins Avian Learning Center at Chattanooga’s Reflection Riding Arboretum. Thirty bird nests hold eggs so realistic you’d never guess these replicas were made from clay and PCV molds.

Artist C.E. Blevins, who passed away in 2012, spent years learning how to create intricate egg replicas, with each handpainted egg designed to match the size and shape of an individual bird species, from the ruby-throated hummingbird to the wild turkey. All together, the array of eggs demonstrates relationships between birds—and it also creates the world’s largest collection of speciesspecific egg replicas.

“He made these because he knew how fragile real eggs are, and he also knew that birds have been negatively impacted by people collecting their eggs,” explains

MUM’S THE WORD: On May 9, stock up on dahlia tubers and mum cuttings during a sale put on by the Carolinas Dahlia Society and North Carolina Chrysanthemum Society at the North Carolina Arboretum. Learn secrets of producing show-quality blooms from experts. Sale runs 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Free with standard $12 parking. ncarboretum.org

SMELL THE ROSES: Blooms of every size and color overrun the North Carolina Arboretum during the Asheville Blue Ridge Rose Society Exhibition, held May 30 and 31.

Alongside the award-winning buds, experts answer questions about the selection, care, and history of roses. Plus: educational programs and a sale.

Free with the standard $12 parking fee. ncarboretum.org

A new exhibit at Reflection Riding Arboretum and Nature Center displays the nests of 30 local bird species, complete with handmade eggs crafted to mimic the natural versions. REFLECTION RIDING PHOTO

NC ARBORETUM PHOTO

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Joel Blevins, C.E. Blevins’ son, in a YouTube video about his father’s legacy.

Blevins spent years building the egg replicas at the C.E. Blevins Avian Learning Center in Cohutta, Georgia, which recently relocated to Chattanooga’s Reflection Riding Arboretum, a 317-acre park on the western slope of Lookout Mountain. At their new home in Chattanooga, interpretive signs give insights on nesting habits of 30 local bird species.

Admission is $7 for seniors and children and $10 for adults. Learn more (and watch a video showing how these egg replicas are made) at reflectionriding.org.

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SWEET ON ASHEVILLE

IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD Mountain Explorer

Forget mountain highs: In Asheville these days, it’s all about the sugar high. Downtown’s French Broad Chocolate Lounge—known for its “bouncer” at the door and line down the block—moved around the corner to a prime spot on Pack Square for dispensing its awardwinning truffles, caramels, bars, drinks, cakes, and brownies. Lest cocoa have all the fun, two new temples to fried dough have also recently opened to much fanfare: South of downtown, Vortex Doughnuts offers yeast and cake varieties with a twist— from peanut butter jelly donut sandwiches to a “rotating tap” flavor made with Asheville beer and local malt. Across the French Broad River, Hole keeps it simpler, offering three weekly flavors of glazed yeast Coffee and a toasted doughnuts served hot. coconut doughnut at Hole.

Down Home, Up High

W

hether you’re on the trail of warblers or wildflowers this spring in North Carolina’s High Country, you’re sure to work up an appetite. And just because you’re stalking songbirds doesn’t mean you have to eat like one, too. There’s no risk of leaving hungry at the hilltop Over Yonder in Valle Crucis.

Since opening last June, this more casual sister restaurant of Mast Farm Inn has breathed new life into the historic Hard Taylor house, taking over the former home of 1861 Farmhouse.

Andrew Long, the Louisiana-born chef of both Mast Farm restaurants, prepares classic Appalachian cuisine “without any fuss”—from pan-fried rainbow trout with sweet potato casserole (pictured) to okra served crispy in a cast-iron pan.

Spring means chow chow and lots of pickles, made from heirloom vegetable varietals grown by Long’s wife, Megan, in the organic garden. Hearty menu standouts include a pastured beef cheeseburger, tomato cobbler, and stone-ground Adluh grits (pick your add-ins: pimento cheese, green gumbo, a runny farmfresh egg, sage sausage).

Whether in by the fireplace or out on the wrap-around porch overlooking the valley, you may just want to while away the day here, too, over banana pudding, a mason jar of North Carolina beer, or a latte spiked with Catdaddy Carolina moonshine.

3608 North Carolina Highway 194, Valle Crucis, N.C. Open daily except Tuesday, 11 a.m. to 8 pm. 828-963-6301; overyondernc.com.

A BEAR WITH A TALE In the spring of 1996, a bear cub climbed an old sycamore tree on the public square in Dahlonega, Georgia, and camped out for a few hours. Nearly 20 years later, the foothills town throws an annual free party in its honor, aptly called the Bear on the Square Mountain Festival (April 18– 19). Think that’s a good tale? The 2015 festival has even more yarns to spin. Nationally renowned storyteller Adam Booth of West Virginia will share stories, lead two workshops, and emcee the festival’s Appalachian Story Slam on Saturday night, featuring students from University of North Georgia’s Appalachian Studies program. Booth’s appearance comes as a result of the National Storytelling Network, which recently named the Dahlonega festival this year’s Southeast Regional Spotlight Event for Storytelling. bearonthesquare.org

REVIVAL PHOTOGRAPHY PHOTO

WHAT’S IN A LABEL?

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To be sure that cornhusk doll or beaded jewelry was actually made by a member of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians—not in a factory—a new label clears up any doubts. The Authentically Cherokee brand represents contemporary artists who embrace indigenous tradition through modern interpretations, including Betty Maney, known for her miniature white oak baskets, and Nativologie’s Christy Long, who makes laser-engraved syllabary blocks and wooden jewelry. “The Cherokees are such a talented art community, but unfortunately a lot of that is overlooked,” says Hope Huskey, director of program development at Cherokee’s Sequoyah Fund, which created the label to help artists build their businesses while also educating shoppers. Look for the yellow tag at spots such as All Nations Trading in Hendersonville and Smoky Mountain Host in Franklin, both in North Carolina. authenticallycherokee.com

SMOKY MOUNTAIN LIVING VOLUME 15 • ISSUE 2

FACES & PLACES Mountain Explorer

Glade Spring’s Artisan Awakening

BY CARROLL MCMAHAN

L

ily Kusmik’s work begins with 25 pounds of clay and a Louisville Slugger. In those incongruous tools and her own two hands, she sees possibility, creating sculptural porcelain vessels by forming the clay over the fat end of a baseball bat covered with a tube sock.

Making beauty out of the unexpected—it’s a sentiment that could be a metaphor for the revitalization of the southwest Virginia town of Glade Spring, where Kusmik’s work can be found at a new arts incubator called Town Center for the Arts.

Project Glade, a local volunteer group, saw promise in the shell of a condemned bank building, the oldest on the town square. Renovations transformed this historic place into a space for six resident artists, including Kusmik.

Hand in hand with the artists leasing studio and retail space in the building, Project Blade is banking on the future— and the arts.

Their bet is already paying dividends: Despite decades of decline, a deadly tornado in 2011, and a sluggish economy, The Town Square Center for the Arts (top) occupies a renovated bank building in Glade Spring, Virginia.

Glade Spring’s town square is coming Lily Kusmik’s porcelain forms start with a 25-pound lump of clay (above). DONATED PHOTOS back into its own. Works by local artisans adorn the old hardware store, Fiddlehead Junction, and One K Studios features photographs by Jonathan Bailey. Locals and visitors convene at Central Café and longtime favorite Suber & Sons General Store. Residents helped landscape the shared grounds by The original name of Glade Spring derived from contributing plants from their own gardens, and the local library Passawatami, a Native American word meaning “this is branch turned the page for another previously blighted building. the place.”

Movie nights and concerts enliven the social scene.

Kusmik, a Georgia native, had dreamed of retiring where she “could listen to the sounds of the waves.” But after visiting her International Ceramics Exhibition in Mino, Japan. This fall, the brother’s home in nearby Abingdon, she and her architect husband, Reece Museum at East Tennessee State University will also present Peter, bought “a little piece of land,” complete with double-wide, her work. in Meadowview, a small village near Glade Spring. The couple fell Kusmik constructs her porcelain vessel forms, which are basiin love with the mountain views and sunrises, and the serenity of cally giant pinch pots, without the use of potter’s wheel, coils, slabs, Logan Creek. or molds—that is, other than the aforementioned bat. Her surfaces Kusmik also exhibits at nearby Abingdon’s Heartwood, a center are left unglazed, but her hand finishes deliver an end result that is that serves as southwest Virginia’s artisan gateway. Rooted in Apnot only beautiful, but eminently touchable. palachia, her work has broad appeal, having earned accolades that “Using porcelain,” Kusmik says, “I am able to express things so range from the Gilmer Arts solo show in Ellijay, Georgia, to the intimate I have no words for them.”

Did you know?

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DETOURS Mountain Explorer

Andrea Ludden stands among her immense collection of salt and pepper shakers (above) at her Gatlinburg museum (bottom right). DONATED PHOTOS

Shake & Brake PASS THE SALT? AS LONG AS YOU DON’T PASS UP THE SALT & PEPPER SHAKER MUSEUM

B

e careful what you wish for. In the early 1980s, Andrea Ludden simply wanted a pepper mill that carried out its stated purpose.

Soon enough, a lineup of broken pepper mills decorated the windowsill of her kitchen, and friends and neighbors started contributing to her accidental collection.

As her stockpile grew, Ludden noticed something that fascinated her. A trained archaeologist, she began seeing salt and pepper shakers as time capsules that revealed much about the era and culture in which they were made, from material to shape to even how many holes they contained. Put many of those shakers together, and you can see a “rainbow of history,” explains Ludden’s daughter, also named Andrea, who shares her mom’s passion.

Today the Ludden family owns the world’s largest collection of pepper mills (1,500), but that’s just a fraction of the story. Their Salt and Pepper Shaker Museum in Gatlinburg, Tennessee, houses some 20,000 items from around the world. Opened in 2002, the unusual attraction has attracted international publicity, and a sister museum in Guadalest, Spain, holds another 20,000 shakers.

While pointing out the intricacies of a plastic salt and

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pepper shaker near the entrance of the museum in Gatlinburg’s Winery Square, the younger Andrea Ludden can barely contain herself. Then again, this is no ordinary table accessory. Mimicking an old-fashioned Singer sewing table, a miniature sewing machine descends into a table when the lid closes. Tiny drawers hold salt on one side, pepper on the other. “Who would have thought of making that?” marvels Ludden.

Elsewhere in the gallery, plastic TVs and laundry machines represent “gifts with purchase” from the 1950s. Snowglobes sit near Santas. Magnetic Siamese cats eye ceramic rhinoceroses. There are Pennsylvania Dutch rocking chairs cast in scrap metal and Native American drums made of leather and wood.

And that’s just in the first room. Turn the corner (and then another, and another) and the themed displays range from a vegetable patch “crawling” with snails and worms to a traffic jam complete with a helicopter hovering overhead. The transportation section is particularly, well, moving: wagons and bulls, trains and sports cars, witch’s brooms and roller skates—and a stork out on delivery.

A 3,000-year-old mortar and pestle holds court alongside a bag of 600-million-year-old Michigan salt. A chef holds up a black cat and a bird—a nod to the Great Depression when people would eat just about anything they could get their hands on. Says Ludden: “It’s a snapshot of what our society went through—in a salt and pepper shaker.”

The museum celebrates creativity and resource, but it also puts a spotlight on the material world: coal, onyx, marble, lucite. A Gatlinburg artist hand-drilled holes into a real eggshell and perched the delicate shaker on a ring of pearls. The final room, aka “the vault,” showcases riches including those made of cut crystal, gold, even titanium.

Elsewhere in the collection, kitties are dolled up with rhinestones and poodles have real fur. Souvenir shakers have come from near and far, from Dollywood—including a pair of butterfly wings autographed by Dolly Parton—to the Falkland Islands. A couple of hikers donated a basic set that traveled in their backpack the length of the Appalachian Trail. Shakers made of volcanic ashes commemorate the blasts of Mount St. Helen as well as Mount Vesuvius.

And if that’s not enough, the gift shop includes another 1,200 or so shakers for visitors inspired to start their own collection. Just don’t say the Luddens didn’t warn you: You might not be able to stop at one set.

SMOKY MOUNTAIN LIVING VOLUME 15 • ISSUE 2

Go visit:

461 Brookside Village Way, Gatlinburg, Tenn. Daily, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.; $3 admission; 12 and under free.

865.430.5515; thesaltandpeppershakermuseum.com.

SOUTHERN APPALACHIAN MOUNTAINS

AROUND BACK AT ROCKY’S PLACE The Ultimate Folk Art Gallery in the South!

Representing a plethora of self-taught artists. Best selection by artist “Cornbread” in the Universe! Established 2002.

3631 Hwy. 53 E. at Etowah River Rd. Dawsonville, Ga. • 706.265.6030 aroundbackatrockysplace.com Sat. 11-5; Sun. 1-5 DOGWOOD CRAFTERS Arts and crafts co-op featuring local artisans.

Stained glass, gourd art, handmade soaps, photography, painting, canned goods, metal work and more. Established 1976.

90 Webster St. • Dillsboro, N.C. 828.586.2248 • dogwoodcrafters.com

GUIDE The Southern Appalachians have a rich artistic history. As long as folks have lived in these majestic landscapes, they’ve been molding, shaping and putting together items that serve not only practical purposes but also aesthetic ones, too. From weavers to potters, painters to metalsmiths, glassblowers to woodcrafters, these artisans reflect generations of heritage and innovation. Promoting and perpetuating this beauty are the galleries that are as unique and varied as the artists themselves.

EXPLORE

EARTHWORKS ENVIRONMENTAL GALLERY Since opening in 1992, Earthworks has focused on artists who display stewardship of the Earth, whether through design or crafting techniques. Artisans from a variety of mediums grace the gallery’s collections.

Artists, both regional and from around the world, fit together at Earthworks.

21 N. Main St. • Waynesville, N.C. 828.452.9500 • earthworksgalleries.com MAHOGANY HOUSE ART GALLERY AND STUDIOS, THE The Mahogany House Art Gallery is located in the historic area of Frog Level in downtown Waynesville, N.C. Its brick plaster walls, dark plank wood flooring and embossed tin ceiling tiles lend a timeless appeal and complement the treasures of art displayed within. At present, the artist studios feature an encaustic artist, acrylic and oil artist, a cold wax and assemblage artist and two woodturners.

240 Depot St. • Waynesville, NC themahoganyhouse.com MARK OF THE POTTER The oldest crafts shop in Georgia in the old Grandpa Watts’ Gristmill, celebrating over 45 years in the same location. Mark of the Potter features handcrafted pottery, a potter working weekends, and other crafts. Don’t miss the best view on the Soque River with generations of huge brown and rainbow trout (protected, of course).

706.947.3440 • markofthepotter.com (and on facebook)

Southern Appalachian Galleries

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MUD DABBERS POTTERY Handmade stoneware pottery from a family of potters producing functional and contemporary designs including bowls, mugs, pitchers, dinnerware casserole dishes, sculptures, masks, raku and Brandon Mountain Gnomes.

20767 Great Smoky Mountain Expressway (U.S. 23-74 in Balsam) 828.456.1916 • muddabbers.com

THE FOLK SCHOOL

SEVEN SISTERS GALLERY Discover something different at Seven Sisters Gallery, a staple in charming, historic Black Mountain since 1981. The gallery has one of the broadest ceramics collections available, plus furniture, original artwork, jewelry, and more. Everything is made in the USA, and much of it is local.

117 Cherry St. • Black Mtn, NC 28711 828.669.5107 • 7sistersgallery.com Mon.-Sat. 10-6; Sun. 12-5

CHANGES YOU.

SUSAN MARIE DESIGNS With visionary talent and skills acquired in thirty-three years as an award-winning goldsmith, Susan Marie transforms nature’s most exceptional gemstones, diamonds and pearls into wearable contemporary elegance. As a G.I.A. Graduate Gemologist, she selects the most vibrant and highest quality cut stones to create fine jewelry.

Four Biltmore Ave. • Asheville, N.C. 828.277.1272

Engaging hands and hearts since 1925. Come enjoy making crafts and good friends on 300 natural, scenic acres in western North Carolina.

JOHN C. CAMPBELL FOLK SCHOOL folkschool.org BRASSTOWN

1-800-FOLK-SCH NORTH CAROLINA

86-40

Capturing Spring’sDance P HOTOGRAPHER: JOHN SMITH

“WHERE ART DANCES WITH NATURE” 98 N. MAI N ST. • WAYN ESVI LLE NC • OPEN MON.-SAT.10-5:30 828.456.1940 • W W W.T WIGSAN DLEAVES.COM 40

EXPLORE

TWIGS AND LEAVES GALLERY Stroll down Main Street in Waynesville to find a unique gallery where art dances with nature.

Browse through an unforgettable collection of nature-inspired works by 140 primarily regional artists and crafts persons. Take home a piece of art that echoes the wonder of nature.

98 N. Main St. • Waynesville, N.C. 828.456.1940 • twigsandleaves.com UPTOWN GALLERY (MACON COUNTY ART ASSOCIATION) Uptown Gallery showcases the work of local artists and presents Village Square Arts and Crafts shows in Highlands. Featuring an open studio and monthly presentations. Workshops and classes for adults are available, as well as children’s activities in cooperation with The Bascom, a center for the visual arts.

30 E. Main St. • Franklin, N.C. 828.349.4607 • uptowngalleryoffranklin.com VISIONS OF CREATION With over 40 years of experience, Roberto creates contemporary and one-of-a-kind fine jewelry in gold and silver. Each hand-crafted piece has its own unique properties. Most are Limited Editions and signed. Roberto is constantly creating, evolving and designing new and innovative pieces.

100 Cherry St. • Black Mountain, NC 828.669.0065 • visionsofcreation.com

Southern Appalachian Galleries

H ANDCRAFTED

IN THE

USA

FOR

OVER 45 Y EARS!

THE

Ultimate

MOONSHINER

By Marvin Bailey

Folk Art Gallery in the South!

SEE THE POTTER AT THE WHEEL

SAT. & SUN.

1793-20

EACH

3631 HWY. 53 E.

OPEN 7 DAYS PER WEEK

AT ETOWAH RIVER RD.

Experience Southern Appalachia as recorded, documented, and collected by the students of Rabun County, GA—and shared with the world through The Foxfire Magazine and The Foxfire Book volumes. Visit the legacy they created in honor of their neighbors and ancestors through 45+ years of work gathering and preserving their unique mountain heritage. Museum gift shop offers regional pottery, crafts, Foxfire & other books.

1793-57

markofthepotter.com | 706-947-3440 9982 Hwy. 197 N. | Clarkesville, GA

DAWSONVILLE, GA 706-265-6030 aroundbackatrockysplace.com HOURS: SATURDAY 11 TO 5 & SUNDAY 1 TO 5

Foxfire

Museum & Heritage Center Take US 441 to Mountain City, GA. Turn onto Black Rock Mtn. Parkway. One mile up, follow the brown signs.

Monday-Saturday 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. www.foxfire.org • 706.746.5828 75-32

EXPLORE

Southern Appalachian Galleries

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PHOTOGRAPHS BY SAM ENGLISH

“Goats have a devilish sense of humor,” says Jennifer Perkins, the cheese maker and owner of Looking Glass Creamery (above) in Fairview. Case in point: One recent visitor tried to photograph a “selfie” with one of the farm’s goats. “Right when she held her arm up and took the picture, the goat reached over and gave one of her braids a good yank. She was very surprised; the goat looked pleased.” In addition to comic relief, the goats set the scene for visitors who linger on the farm grounds over cheese plates paired with local charcuterie and wine.

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aking do has rarely been more delicious than at the farms and creameries of the Western North Carolina Cheese Trail. A deluge of dairy goods will take center stage at the inaugural Carolina Mountain Cheese Fest, to be held April 26 at Asheville’s Highland Brewing. Here, we give a few of the people and animals behind the scenes their turn in the spotlight.

SMOKY MOUNTAIN LIVING VOLUME 15 • ISSUE 2

Jersey and Holstein cows (below) have roamed the English family farm of Marion, North Carolina, since 1927. Back then, dairy production happened without electricity or refrigeration, and feed crops were planted and gathered with teams of horses and mules, or by hand. Times have changed considerably, but some parts of farming remain steadfast. “As the years go by,” says sixth-generation farmer Terry English, “I find that I am doing the same thing as my dad and granddad—using what is available to make a go of it.” Years of neighbors begging for the family’s cheese led them to their latest venture, English Farmstead Cheese, sold at the farm store on Fridays and Saturdays. Now as in 1927, it all comes down to the cows. “They are something special,” English says. “When you can look across the field and recognize a certain cow by her gait, stance, interactions, or markings, you understand that she is that way because you helped her become that way.”

Each of the Jersey cows at Yellow Branch Farm in Robbinsville, North Carolina, are named for flowers—Joe Pye, Tulip, Sassafras, Daisy, Forsythia, Chinquapin, Queen Anne’s Lace, and Honeysuckle.

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Bakersville’s OakMoon Farm and Creamery stands in the shadow of Roan Mountain, but don’t tell that to the farm’s star attraction. “Goats are demanding, loving divas,” says Cynthia Sharpe (bottom right), who first recognized her affinity for the animals at the age of ten. “They are considered to be dirty, smelly, and able to live on tin cans, when in reality they are finicky, very clean critters, and amazingly complex to manage and raise. I started in goats nearly 34 years ago, and they teach me something new every day.” With the help of a grant from the Tobacco Communities Reinvestment Fund, Sharpe and her husband, Dwain Swing, developed cheese-making and goat-husbandry workshops that draw “agritourists” from around the country. OakMoon is home to Swiss Alpine, Oberhasli, and Saanen goats, as well as LaManchas, the only dairy goat that originates in the U.S. Why these breeds? “For the same reason that I pick the caramels out of a box of chocolates while Dwain goes for the cremes,” Sharpe says.

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SMOKY MOUNTAIN LIVING VOLUME 15 • ISSUE 2

Consider Robbinsville’s Yellow Branch one-stop shopping for locavores. Here visitors can buy buttery farmstead cheese and a dish to serve it on, too. Bruce DeGroot handles the farm’s Jersey cows and makes the cheese, which includes varieties flecked with peppers or basil grown in the farm’s organic garden, while his wife, Karen Mickler, spends her days at the potter’s wheel creating functional stoneware. “Often we hear from our visitors, ‘pottery and cheese: two of my favorite things,’” DeGroot says.

As North Carolina’s first Grade A goat dairy, Round Mountain Creamery in Black Mountain teems with more than 300 Alpine and LaMancha goats. In addition to the creamery’s own lineup of soft goat cheeses, Round Mountain goat’s milk is the secret behind products across the state, from goat’s milk gelato to Looking Glass Creamery cheeses such as the Connemara. Named for the Flat Rock farmstead of Carl Sandburg and his wife, Lilian, this firm, aged cheddar won a 2015 Good Food Award.

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The Theater of War

As the Civil War drew to a close, a last stand at Waynesville proved more pomp than circumstance

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SMOKY MOUNTAIN LIVING VOLUME 15 â&#x20AC;˘ ISSUE 2

BY JEFF MINICK

ne hundred-fifty years ago this May, the final battle of the Civil War east of the Mississippi broke out here in Southern Appalachia.

The historic clash occurred at White Sulphur Springs, just outside the tiny mountain hamlet of Waynesville, North Carolina.

By May of 1865, the Confederacy was falling apart. On Palm Sunday, April 9, Gen. Robert E. Lee surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia to Gen. Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Court House. Less than three weeks later, near Durham Station, North Carolina, Confederate Gen. Joseph E. Johnston followed suit by surrendering to Gen. William T. Sherman. On the run in Georgia, Confederate President Jefferson Davis was soon to be captured by Union cavalry. In late April, Northern troops had also occupied and then pillaged Asheville, a Confederate stronghold in a region bitterly divided by four years of war.

After the fall of Asheville, Confederate Gen. James Martin determined to move his headquarters to nearby Waynesville. Pursuing him and his men were two Union regiments. On May 6, one of these attacking columns—the Second North Carolina Mounted Regiment, composed in part by Carolina men fighting against the Confederacy and led by Col. William Bartlett—entered Waynesville, which one account described as a “dirty hamlet of 15 to 20 dwellings.”

In opposition to this large force, Martin’s Confederates could muster only a meager, forlorn cadre, including the Cherokee Legion under William Holland Thomas. While maneuvering around Waynesville, Robert Conley—an aggressive and highly decorated Southern lieutenant—encountered part of Bartlett’s regiment at Sulphur Springs. Though outnumbered four to one, Conley ordered his men to volley-fire at the Yankees, and followed up with a bayonet charge that sent the Federals reeling back to Waynesville.

This marked the last armed clash between these two forces. The only casualty, a Federal soldier by the name of Arwood, today lies buried in Asheville.

BUT THE BATTLE HAD NOT ENDED. By that evening, Confederate forces controlled the hills around Waynesville and trapped Bartlett’s command in town.

Martin, abetted by his two commanders, Cols. James Love and William Thomas, then gave a performance worthy of Broadway. He sent word into town that Confederates were converging from all directions on Waynesville. Bartlett dispatched scouts to confirm the reports.

Even more effective than these false rumors, however, were the antics of Colonel Thomas’s Cherokee Legion. These men, who were devoted to Thomas, built scores of enormous bonfires on the hills around the town and then filled the dark night with war whoops. The Federal soldiers, including Bartlett himself, had heard tales of scalping by these fierce warriors, and believing themselves surrounded and outnumbered, surely passed an uneasy night.

On the morning of May 7, Bartlett arranged for a truce and a parley with the Rebel commanders. Accompanied by bodyguards, Martin, Love, and Thomas marched into town. Thomas spent a good deal of time haranguing Bartlett, calling him, according to one report, a “horse-thief” and promising—if he did not surrender—to turn his Cherokees loose on the town to scalp every Federal there. Like his beloved Cherokees, Thomas had

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Read All About It History buffs interested in learning more about the Civil War in Western North Carolina might begin with William R. Trotter’s Bushwhackers: The Civil War in the Western North Carolina Mountains. Part of a trilogy—the other two volumes cover the Civil War in Coastal North Carolina and the Piedmont— Trotter writes engaging popular history. John C. Inscoe and Gordon B. McKinney offer the more academic The Heart of Confederate Appalachia: Western North Carolina in the Civil War. E. Stanley Godbold Jr. and Mattie U. Russell give us an invaluable study of the life of Will Thomas in Confederate Colonel and Cherokee Chief: The Life of William Holland Thomas.

Although out of print, W. Clark Medford’s The Early History of Haywood County is available in public libraries.

Facing page: William Lebo Massie, a Haywood County veteran of the Civil War, visits the Battle of Waynesville memorial marker in 1938.

STATE ARCHIVES OF NORTH CAROLINA PHOTO

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Cherokee members of the Thomas Legion (69th Regiment) attend a Confederate Veterans Reunion in 1903. STATE ARCHIVES OF NORTH CAROLINA PHOTO

Like a Good Neighbor: THE EASTERN CHEROKEE & THE CONFEDERACY

N

ot all the Eastern Cherokee supported the Confederacy.

Several served with the Union army during the Civil War and were ostracized by the Confederate Cherokees after hostilities ceased. Some evidence exists that one of these Union soldiers brought smallpox back to the small band of Cherokees who survived the war, with devastating results.

Most of the Cherokee of Western North Carolina, however, supported the government of Jefferson Davis. Historians agree that the reasons for this support were complicated, yet if we look at the Cherokee in 1860, we may surmise some reasons for their loyalty.

First, they had suffered at the hands of the federal government, particularly during the Jackson administration with its Indian Removal Act. Though Southerners, particularly in Georgia, benefited from this opening of new lands, it was the 48

federal government that enforced the act and drove so many Cherokee from their native lands.

Motives of the human heart often drive unlikely alliances.

The neighbors of the Cherokee in North Carolina—men such as William Holland Thomas—respected the Cherokee.

Thomas’s adoration of the Cherokee and their reciprocal admiration for him and his efforts to help them retain rights and land are well documented. They were his friends in peace and his companions in war. These associations undoubtedly factored into Cherokee loyalties.

Finally, generally speaking, the South was often more receptive to Native American support than the North. Throughout the war, the North regarded the Cherokee troops, both those in the East and in the West, as “savages.” Thomas’s threat of unleashing his few Cherokee on a Union regiment in Waynesville played on this fear. An 1862 war against the Sioux in Minnesota, a barbarous conflict on both sides, may have contributed to this denigration of Native Americans.

With some exceptions, the South simply made more of an effort than the North to attract Native Americans to their cause.

The Confederate government signed treaties with different tribes, encouraged enlistment, and paid those Native Americans who did enlist the same salaries as other troops. Unlike the commanders of the North, certain Southern politicians and military commanders actively sought the help of the Cherokee.

SMOKY MOUNTAIN LIVING VOLUME 15 • ISSUE 2

Though outnumbered four to one, Conley ordered his men to volley-fire at the Yankees, and followed up with a bayonet charge that sent the Federals reeling back to Waynesville.

htoN Briga H Bemc oirs

Me

stripped to the waist for the occasion and was wearing the feathers and paint of a warrior. (Historians point to Thomas’s wild speech and dress as signs of the man’s impending madness. See “The Fall of Will Thomas,” page 50.)

Eventually, the disputants moved their discussion inside the Battle House, a local hotel. There, after another day of dickering and Bartlett repeatedly pointing out the hopelessness of the Confederate cause, Martin agreed to surrender his command. For his part, Bartlett promised to work to stop Union forces from ravaging the mountains and to withdraw his own men to Asheville. On May 9, the mountaineers and Cherokees signed their parole papers and began to go back to their homes while Bartlett and his troops returned to Asheville.

And so it was that the last “battle” of the Civil War was more a skirmish than true warfare. Some might even interpret it as farce, what with the bonfires and the war-whooping Cherokee, the small number of men engaged, and the fact that war was already over. Nevertheless, it is heartening to remember that 150 years ago the commanders of both sides met, and after some rancor, agreed amicably to end the depravations suffered by their men and by the civilians of the region.

They avoided unnecessary bloodshed and ended, at last, a conflict that had cost so many their lives and their fortunes.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Asheville writer Jeff Minick has long been a Civil War buff, with ancestors who fought on both sides, including a Confederate doctor and Northerners active in the Underground Railroad in Pennsylvania.

ARTIST OF THE

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The Fall of Will Thomas W

illiam Holland Thomas—a self-made, prominent businessman, a revered chief in the Cherokee tribe, a politician, and a colonel in the Confederate army—spent the final 20 years of his life fighting mental illness. He passed those years, as he put it, “in a mad man’s cell.”

No diagnosis of his condition exists, though biographers E. Stanley Godbold and Mattie U. Russell contend that Thomas was possibly suffering the tertiary state of syphilis, which causes erratic behavior and bouts of insanity.

Perhaps. But is it also possible that Thomas simply broke under the hardships of his life? Consider his trajectory: Thomas grew up fatherless on the frontier. He felt an enormous obligation to support his widowed mother and worked from his boyhood to assist her and to develop various businesses, including a store that served both settlers and Cherokees.

Thomas became a great friend of the Cherokee and was eventually adopted into their tribe. His unsuccessful efforts to fight the Cherokee Removal in the late 1830s must have broken some of his spirit. (To this day, some Cherokee refuse to carry a $20 bill with its picture of a fierce Andrew Jackson—the man who defied the Supreme Court, thwarted the efforts of men like Davy Crocket and Will Thomas to help the Cherokee, and forced the Cherokee and other Native Americans west).

In his late 50s, Thomas served through the hardships of the Civil War in Western North Carolina. Once again, as with the Cherokee cause, he suffered defeat. This defeat cost him the fortune that he had built up over a lifetime. Slandered, hounded by creditors, and sometimes cheated, he was a broken man financially by the end of his life.

To have watched the destruction of his Cherokee friends, to have witnessed the chaos brought to his beloved mountains by war and invasion, and to have lost the work of a lifetime by the end of that war: Surely the stress of these events took their toll on his health and sanity.

Col. William Holland Thomas.

STATE ARCHIVES OF NORTH CAROLINA PHOTO

In his late 50s, Thomas served through the hardships of the Civil War. Once again, as with the Cherokee cause, he suffered defeat. This defeat cost him the fortune that he had built up over a lifetime.

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SMOKY MOUNTAIN LIVING VOLUME 15 • ISSUE 2

Affairs to Remember Waynesville’s historic Shelton House, home to the Museum of North Carolina Handicrafts, hosts four weekends of Civil War commemorations this spring. y April 10–12 & April 17–19: To mark the 150th anniversary of President Abraham Lincoln’s murder, the Haywood Arts Regional Theatre presents “The Actor and the Assassin,” a play about the rivalry between John Wilkes Booth and his brother, actor Edwin Booth, which sets a Shakespearean backdrop to the assassination. y May 8–11: The Shelton House commemorates the Battle of Waynesville sesquicentennial with lectures, a reenactment and living history camp, and self-guided tours of local Civil War sites, including Waynesville’s stone monument to the "the last shot of the war between the states.” y June 12–13: Turning an eye toward reconstruction, the Shelton House provides programming that includes a lecture, reenactment, living history camp, and tours to coincide with Waynesville’s popular Appalachian Lifestyle Festival, a celebration of mountain heritage complete with clogging, music, storytelling, and traditional foods.

Men of all ages stand sentinel as keepers of Haywood County’s Civil War heritage.

CALLIE PRUETT PHOTO

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Getting That Second Wind THE LATEST RECRUITS TO MOUNTAIN COLLEGE TOWNS? RETIREES SEEKING HIGHER CALLINGS

BY ANNA OAKES

s baby boomers enter their golden years, the antiestablishment generation is proving it still has a few conventions to dismantle. Golfing and knitting still hold appeal in retirement, but don’t tell these folks to slow down.

“This group of baby boomers—they don’t want to sit or relax,” says Marian Schaffer, whose company SoutheastDiscovery.com, has been helping retirees relocate to the South for more than a decade. Many of today’s retirees, she says, eschew age-restricted communities in favor of the “vibrancy of being around younger adults.”

Enter Southern Appalachia, an all-ages playground for the active and affluent. People come to the Smokies and the Blue Ridge for the mild weather, a four-season climate, and beautiful scenery, of course. But retirees are migrating en masse to highland college towns with other motives in mind: They desire a physically, mentally, and socially active lifestyle.

Retirees who head for the nearest campus are on the “vanguard of a growing trend,” according to a recent Forbes article that cited Asheville, North Carolina, among the communities attracting lifelong learners.

“There are people coming from all corners of the United States to move here,” agrees Schaffer. Western North Carolina, for example, has long been a second home and retirement destination for Floridians, but lately, Schaffer has observed an uptick in relocations from California, Arizona, and Texas.

A Brookings Institution analysis of Census data found that “mid-South” areas such as the Carolinas, Georgia, Tennessee, and Virginia saw some of the nation’s highest growth rates in 65and-older populations between 2000 and 2010, including a 60

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percent increase in Raleigh and a 35 percent rise in the Southern Appalachian region near Chattanooga.

Towns with universities are a bonus to today’s retirees, because of multi-generational populations, diverse culture and activities, and plentiful opportunities to learn about new topics and hobbies. “In many ways, university towns are small towns with big-city amenities,” says Catherine Frank, the executive director of Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (OLLI) at the University of North Carolina at Asheville. “It’s a great way to have all of those wonderful things without some of the downsides of living in an urban environment.”

One of 119 similar programs across the country dedicated to enabling “members to thrive in life’s second half,” OLLI offers some 350 classes for older adults, ranging from the liberal arts to exercise to hands-on crafts, and helps connects eager volunteers

Sushen Huang and Larry Haas lead a discussion at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at UNC-Asheville. JOHN WARNER PHOTO

with schools and other organizations. Its peer-to-peer learning model is based on members sharing their areas of expertise with one another—with a membership that includes accomplished individuals ranging from a Nobel laureate and Smithsonian curator to an auctioneer and cartoonist, to name just a few examples.

In some cases, OLLI members are expanding on classroom lessons in the real world. Leading a writer’s workshop led retired teacher John Himmelheber to create the web-based Smoky Blue Literary and Arts Magazine. Now in its second issue, the magazine caters primarily to senior voices in Appalachia but has grown to attract submissions from as far-flung as Fuji Island. “It’s

SMOKY MOUNTAIN LIVING VOLUME 15 • ISSUE 2

Maggie Black worked as a geologist, massage therapist, and celebrity cook before honing her skills as a potter in the Patricelli Craft Enrichment Program at Appalachian State University. Now she owns her own pottery studio in nearby Foscoe and teaches the craft to others in the Craft Enrichment program.

PHOTO COURTESY OF APPALACHIAN STATE UNIVERSITY

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With his 70th birthday on the horizon, Bob Hinkle says “retirement” isn’t in his vocabulary.

The Asheville native hightailed it out of Western North Carolina after college, in pursuit of the bright lights of New York City (“I don’t even think I went to graduation; I just took off,” he says). He spent his 20s chasing fame as a guitar player on a tour bus, racked up recording industry credentials in his 30s and 40s, and eventually found himself in a VP role at a major record label on Times Square. Along the way Hinkle worked with music legends including Kenny Rogers, Etta James, Patti LuPone, and the Band (the rock group known best for touring with Bob Dylan), and helped launch Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen as celebrity twins. By his 50s he struck out on his own; by his 60s, Hinkle was ready for a slower pace. He and his wife, opera singer and therapist Kim Hughes, decided to decamp to Hinkle’s native mountains, trading the buzz of Manhattan for the tranquillity of Western North Carolina.

They bought a house in Black Mountain. For a few months they meditated and socialized, settling into small-town life.

That’s where the storyline twists. While meditating one day, Hughes couldn’t shake the phrase “White Horse Black Mountain.” A month or so later, a new friend showed them a derelict car dealership in the center of town with naturally strong acoustics—and an old poster of six white horses running through a meadow hanging on the garage door. “We figured some things in life should not be ignored,” Hinkle says.

Suddenly, the couple bent on slowing down found themselves in the throes of starting a music venue. In

like a part-time job,” says Himmelheber, who moved to Asheville with his wife from Maryland, near Baltimore, in order to better stretch their teacher retirement income. “I guess I can’t actually get into retirement fully—I’m retiring into something I already loved to do.”

Himmelheber and his magazine help back up OLLI’s mission, which is set on refuting two myths of aging: that aging is a process of loss, and that older adults are a drain on the community. “Engagement with new ideas and activities is really important,” Frank says. “Studies show that people who leave the workforce on their own terms and have something to look forward to live longer or have greater degrees of happiness.

And older adults are a great asset—they still have such passion and so much to give.

Being an older adult doesn’t have to look like you thought it did.”

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November of 2008, they opened White Horse Black Mountain. Six years later, the venue has proven “twice as labor-intensive as anything I’ve ever done,” says Hinkle, who applies his decades of experience picking talent to book five or six nights of performances each week. Hughes manages the venue’s social media and also keeps busy as a singer and therapist, even giving voice lessons to New York clients over Skype.

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Encore for a Music Lover

White Horse Black Mountain presents everything from jazz, classical, Celtic, folk, bluegrass, and world music to puppetry, storytelling, and theater. A frequent host of benefit events, the venue is currently in the process of forming a nonprofit branch to better support charity initiatives.

“It’s become more than just a place to come see music—it’s like a second or third home to a lot of people who come here,” Hinkle says.

And about that milestone birthday coming up: Hinkle will be celebrating it the way he knows best, with a blow-out party on May 9 for all comers at—where else?—White Horse Black Mountain.

Consider these three mountain metropolises that prove just that.

ASHEVILLE, NORTH CAROLINA “Like a kid in a candy store,” Cindy Berryman-Fink brimmed with youthful excitement at the thought of all the possibilities at OLLI—“all the courses I could take and possibly teach—the lectures, special interest groups. A place to meet other retirees.”

Berryman-Fink happened upon the institute after relocating to Asheville, her and her husband’s chosen retirement destination after 35 years in Cincinnati, Ohio. Their criteria included natural beauty, theater, restaurants, and four seasons, but milder winters than the Buckeye State. “The Paris of the South” fit the bill. She has since partaken in numerous classes from OLLI’s menu: nutrition, yoga,

SMOKY MOUNTAIN LIVING VOLUME 15 • ISSUE 2

“This group of baby boomers—they don’t want to sit.”

—Marian Schaffer, founder of SoutheastDiscovery.com

history, politics, literature, music appreciation, a course on significant Supreme Court decisions, plus a class on rock and roll.

Following a 31-year career as a communication professor, Berryman-Fink shares her expertise by teaching courses at OLLI, including one this spring called “Talk Is Cheap: Communication Challenges in Long-Term Relationships.”

In her new home, she has also embarked upon a new gig. “When I was planning to retire, I started keeping a list of things I could

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Weaving a Legacy A rocket scientist turned weaver would have made for an interesting enough story, but it didn’t turn out that way for Bill Carson.

The man who spent 32 years working for IBM on such groundbreaking projects as putting Americans on the moon had planned to spend his retirement in Colorado, taking up weaving as a new hobby. Instead, he and his family have spent the past two decades spinning a different kind of yarn in Little Switzerland, North Carolina.

They operate the Orchard at Altapass, a century-old apple orchard, preserve, and Appalachian heritage center showcasing traditional music, dance, storytelling, crafts, and more.

“I planned to be busy. I never planned for this,” says Carson, now 76 years old. Bill’s resume reads like an encyclopedia of scientific innovations. In the 1960s, Bill worked as the program manager responsible for the software on the Saturn booster that helped launch astronauts into orbit. In the ’70s, his team made recommendations to the U.S. Army on moneysaving hardware improvements to the Patriot missile system.

And in the ’80s, he helped develop GPS and air traffic control technologies.

Around 1990, Bill and his wife bought his ailing aunt’s house in North Carolina, where “we fell in love with the mountains and changed our plans.” No longer Colorado-bound, Bill was still intent on learning the loom: “I taught myself to weave and was all set to be a weaver, and was for a year or two.” Then one day, Bill’s sister, Kit, noticed a — Bill Carson newspaper ad for the sale of a 280-acre orchard property on the Blue Ridge Parkway. Two hours later, it was hers.

“We were fearful that it would be developed if we didn’t act quickly,” Carson explains. “That pretty well changed my life.”

An operating orchard since it was planted by the Clinchfield Railroad in 1908, the property had been unattended and inactive for about a decade. “We brought the orchard back, but we were more interested in preserving the culture and music and history of the area,” Carson says.

The Orchard at Altapass is now a nonprofit foundation, and Carson remains active giving hayrides at the orchard and traveling to schools and festivals to share the stories of the site, which has ties to the earliest North American settlers and the Revolutionary War. “The people that I see that seem to be happiest in their retirement are busy people, and most of them are busy doing things for others,” he says. “The unhappiest people are the least busy, and sometimes they don’t live very long.”

“I planned to be busy.

I never planned for this.”

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Cindy Berryman-Fink now runs a pet-sitting business after relocating to Asheville for retirement. She previously spent 31 years as a communication professor in Cincinnati. PHOTO COURTESY OF CINDY BERRYMAN-FINK

do,” she says. “I have always been a pet lover—always the person in the neighborhood who took care of neighbors’ pets when they went away.” Now she owns a pet-sitting business and cares for animals while their owners are away at work or traveling.

“I love it, because I get to spend my time with all these cool dogs and cats and meet some neat people,” she says.

Pet-friendly is among the attributes making Asheville a desirable location, not to mention its reputation as a foodie destination, its proximity to the Blue Ridge Parkway and outdoor adventure, cultural programs provided by the University of North Carolina at Asheville and Warren Wilson College in nearby Swannanoa, as well as cooler temperatures than other Southern cities. And while Asheville and Buncombe County exceed more than 220,000 residents, many smaller surrounding towns offer convenient access to the city’s amenities. Mission Hospital continues to expand on the services it offers, a boon for health care–conscious baby boomers, according to Schaffer.

Berryman-Fink’s advice to recent retirees is to “give yourself the freedom to try new things, but quit them if they don’t work.”

For example, she initially thought she might try her hand at brewing beer. “Then I moved to Asheville,” she says, “and realized, why would I do that with all the breweries here?” And while Berryman-Fink enjoys her new business and activity at OLLI, she makes sure to afford herself

plenty of time to read, travel, and relax, too.

“I feel intellectually engaged, and I’m in better physical shape than I’ve ever been in my life,” she says. “I probably wouldn’t have realized 20 years ago just how much fun it is to be retired.”

BOONE AND BLOWING ROCK, NORTH CAROLINA Forbes magazine listed Boone, N.C., among its “10 Best Places to Retire” in 2012, calling it an “affordable mountain town.” The article praised the home of Appalachian State University for its free local bus service and median home sale price of $215,250 in 2010, as well as its location “nestled in the Blue Ridge Mountains” near three ski resorts and the Blue Ridge Parkway.

Appalachian State University’s public activities include free lectures and film screenings as well as readings and meet-andgreets with visiting authors, and its Performing Arts Series and Appalachian Summer Festival bring world-renowned artists, dancers, and musicians to town. ASU’s Patricelli Craft Enrichment Program provides craft classes in multiple arts, including

grand view of a campus wrapped in mountain peaks and autumn arrays. Boone is an adventurer’s playground, offering convenient exercise opportunities at in-town parks and greenway trails and extended jaunts just minutes away in two state parks, the New River, the Linville Gorge Wilderness Area, and the multiple parks and trails adjoining the Parkway. In the summer, lawn chairs and picnic baskets are in regular rotation, with free outdoor music concerts taking place nearly every night of the week.

Nearby, the historic resort village of Blowing Rock frequently lands among publications’ top 10 lists as well: It has been named “North Carolina’s Prettiest Small Town” and also made a list of “America’s Prettiest Winter Towns.” Blowing Rock is recognized for its high-caliber restaurants, its

Johnson City—the largest of the trio located near Interstates 26 and 81—was founded in 1779 and is Tennessee’s oldest town. East Tennessee State University resides here, and its Mary B. Martin School of the Arts presents a full calendar of traditional, historic, and contemporary arts events, some with connections to its home region of Appalachia and the South and some that are farther reaching in scope. For example, the 2015 season ranges from folk music by the Kruger Brothers to a lecture on UFOs by author Nick Pope.

ETSU houses multiple museums highlighting natural history, Appalachian culture and heritage, and railroads. The Johnson City Community Theatre was established in 1885, and has been continuously performing shows since 1912.

“Being an older adult doesn’t have to look like you thought it did.”

—Catherine Frank, director of Osher Lifelong Learning Institute

architecture, basket making, drawing, glass work, jewelry making, painting, photography, pottery, video documentary production, spinning, weaving, metal working, woodworking, and even biodiesel production, with hobbyists, students, and novices learning alongside each other in small group settings.

Eric Reichard, director emeritus of the program, estimated that 15 to 20 percent of class enrollees are retirees.

“When we set the program up, I was thinking it would primarily be for students,” he recalls. “As it turns out, more than half of our participants are retirees or community folks.” And many convert their craft skills into supplemental income or even new careers. “I could probably name 25 people who have come though our programs that have started small businesses of their own,” adds Reichard.

Kidd Brewer Stadium is arguably the best in the state for taking in a college football game; carved into a hillside, the arena offers a

The Blowing Rock area appeals to all ages. TODD BUSH PHOTOGRAPHY • WWW.BUSHPHOTO.COM

iconic Main Street, festivals and events for every season, and destination spas and lodging facilities such as the Westglow Spa and Chetola Resort. Opening within a couple of years will be Chestnut Ridge at Blowing Rock, a new post-acute health care facility.

TRI-CITIES, TENNESSEE Located across the state line from Boone and Blowing Rock is the growing Tennessee Tri-Cities region of Johnson City, Bristol, and Kingsport, offering similar natural surrounds as their North Carolinian neighbors—but for a cheaper price tag.

“The cost of living there is lower; the cost to build a home is lower,” notes Schaffer. “That brings people to the other side of the mountain.”

WWW.SMLIV.COM

And while Nashville may be country music’s headquarters, Bristol highlights its history as the “birthplace of country music” with a new Smithsonian-affiliated museum. Held each September, the Bristol Rhythm & Roots Reunion has earned a reputation as a progressive music festival that showcases rising artists before they hit it big—Grammynominated country artist Sturgill Simpson serves as a recent case in point.

Recreational areas include the Appalachian Trail, Cherokee National Forest, multiple greenways, and several mountain lakes, while the region includes several top-notch medical centers, including a veterans hospital.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Boone journalist Anna Oakes wrote about trout derbies for the previous issue of Smoky Mountain Living.

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Eastern Tennessee

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BACKCOUNTRY DIARIES Following paths less traveled in Shenandoah National Park

SHENANDOAH NATIONAL PARK PHOTO

BY SUE EISENFELD

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SMOKY MOUNTAIN LIVING VOLUME 15 • ISSUE 2

SUE EISENFELD PHOTO

“The house is in there,” said Len, the man who knew more about the backcountry history of Shenandoah National Park than anyone else alive.

After stopping in the middle of Sams Ridge Trail, he saw something we did not.

He had recognized the turnoff for an old road trace, an unmarked, faded-away relic, a barely-there indent in the ground that had once hosted wagons and Fords, used to drive into the “neighborhood” to get back home. He had not been back to this place for more than 20 years, but he remembered the way the land came off the curve on the left side of the path, even though the last time he was there the trees were shorter, the underbrush hadn’t yet filled in the human space, and the road was as unequivocal and followable as Skyline Drive itself.

Our goal for the day was to find the house.

WHEN OUR GROUP began our hike that March day—me; my husband, Neil; our good friend Jeremy and his friend Lisa; our new friend Len; and his hiking buddy Kurt, whom we were meeting for the first time—we were like any other hikers in this park. We shuffled through the litter of fallen leaves on a known path and trudged uphill through the bare, undifferentiated trees on either side of the trail. We were experiencing the mountain as it was intended when the park opened in 1936—for Washington, D.C., professionals and others to get away from it all, to enjoy a day of recreation, freed from the burdens of everyday city life. A white sky dangled over us as we sweated and cooled in our water-wicking polypropylene and fleece layers.

But Len was ushering us into the other side of Shenandoah, the lesser explored of its two realities. This is the backside of the park that most people experience: the black ribbon of Skyline Drive winding through a dense, unknowable, impenetrable forest. A patchwork quilt of farm fields in the distance, with the Shenandoah Valley on one side of the ridge and the Piedmont Plateau on the other. Burnt, open meadows awash in Eastern bluebirds and whitetailed deer. The dirt paths of trails, blazed and groomed, taking visitors on wellplanned and well-specified routes through enchanted foggy forests that make me feel like a princess in a fairy tale and up the oldest mountains on Earth to rocky peaks so tough that reaching them makes me feel like a god, beholding all the splendor of the kingdom.

Looking the direction Len indicated, we struggled to see how we’d push through the brush. But we did, and once deep enough in the brown thickets and the burgundy spikes of blackberry stalks, we gleaned a glimpse of the old road as faint as seeing an object in the dark before harnessing your night vision.

The vines hung into the walking space like wires coming down from a ceiling. We ducked under them, pushed through the leafless branches, stepped over the fallen logs and scattered rocks and boulders. We could not see through to another side, to a destination, because the woods were so dark and thick.

“What else do you remember?” we coaxed after some time, some of us having already drawn blood from the thorns, Jeremy hobbling around with a healing broken ankle, and myself having just snapped some muscle fibers, like violin strings, in my calf.

“It was a curved road, coming off the main trail like a ‘U.’ On the lower half of the U was the house.”

Neil walked straight ahead until he came to a curve in the faint old road and then followed it to the right, not

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Once deep enough in the brown thickets and the burgundy spikes of blackberry stalks, we gleaned a glimpse of the old road as faint as seeing an object in the dark before harnessing your night vision.

knowing if he was going toward or away from the lower part of the U. After realizing it was the upper part, he reversed course, heading slightly downhill. I decided to bypass the longer U-shaped route, cutting straight through the middle of it to the lower half, following Neil’s voice. Kurt, Jeremy, and Lisa continued searching in other directions. At 82, Len decided the going was too tough after so much time and stayed put, waiting for our report.

When Neil’s and my paths met up, we each had different ideas of where to go from there, as the house was not directly on the road. We each followed our instincts. I came nearly immediately to a good first clue: an old metal washbasin on the ground. Then I saw what I thought was the house—what seemed like the stub of an old chimney. As I got closer, I realized I had indeed identified the land and some type of old building—a shed, maybe, but when I looked uphill, a large intact stone chimney, silhouetted against the sky by wild vines, rose up above all else.

Several big, squared chestnut timbers that had made up the body of the house still stood in place on top of the stone foundation, but a tree had fallen over the structure. Two clumps of daffodil greens, pieces of a wood stove, and a barrel stave littered the ground nearby. On our walkie-talkies, Neil radioed the rest of the gang, and we convinced Len to make his way to the grand home he remembered with its walls up so long ago. We gingerly made our way through thorns and brush for a perch on the house to take our lunch, our faces pointed south into the sun, overlooking a large expanse of a yellowed grassy lawn—still cleared after about 80 years of disuse—and a mountainous vista in the distance.

Off-trail discoveries in Shenandoah.

SUE EISENFELD PHOTOS

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SMOKY MOUNTAIN LIVING VOLUME 15 • ISSUE 2

WWW.SMLIV.COM

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Shenandoah: A Story of Conservation and Betrayal Sue Eisenfeld spent 15 years hiking in Shenandoah National Park before she learned the history of its creation—and of the thousands of mountain residents who lost their homes and livelihoods in the process. She and her husband, Neil, spent the next few years hiking and bushwhacking through the park in search of their stories, relics, and cemeteries, using historic maps and notes from earlier hikers as their guides. Eisenfeld sought to, in her words, “know the people who once lived here and the men who determined their fate” as well as to discern “the justice of what happened here.” Her new travel memoir, Shenandoah: A Story of Conservation and Betrayal, shares those on-the-ground experiences while navigating the tangled history of conservation in America. (University of Nebraska Press, $20)

The building of Skyline Drive (top left) and hiking trails (right) to create Shenandoah National Park displaced mountain residents like James Luther Corbin (top right) and Cutie Morris (left).

PHOTOS COURTESY OF SHENANDOAH NATIONAL PARK

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SMOKY MOUNTAIN LIVING VOLUME 15 • ISSUE 2

It was as close as Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d ever come to feeling what it might have been like to actually live in a full-bodied, modern-size stone and log house on a glorious plot of land in this park, as if we had stepped through the looking glass to another world. We were no longer simply off-trail in Shenandoah National Park, finding relics of the old days and the old ways, scattered amid the leaf litter: the farm implements and castor oil bottles and pottery shards and car batteries. We had been transported behind the scenes of the park, to the story thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s behind the scenery, on the other side of the curtain, behind the façade of the ordinary second- or thirdgrowth woods. This is what some would say is the real Shenandoah, a place where men cleared stones from their fields and built with them, a place where towering chestnuts once grew and people harvested them for work and food and shelter: a time and a place thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s not quite gone but not quite present either.

RECENTLY, Neil and I went back to visit the house on Sams Ridge with our nowfrequent hiking partners Kurt, his wife

This is what some would say is the real Shenandoah, a place where men cleared stones from their ďŹ elds and built with them, a place where towering chestnuts once grew and people harvested them for work and food and shelter: a time and a place thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s not quite gone but not quite present either.

Norma, and some other new friends of ours.

Hiking to it from the top this time, the groupâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;busy talkingâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;passed the turnoff without noticing it, but I recognized it as readily as if someone had left the lights on.

Neil and I shoved our way through the dense dead brush like we were following a path we had taken many times, and we found the house no worse for wear than two years earlier.

But time had passed, and Len was gone from us now. I had since written a book about moments like these in this park. I felt on the

precipice of some new life changes. I was two years older as well, and my knees were wearier, and the Earth continued its rotation around the sun, ever the same and ever changing. I no longer felt as if we were uncovering a secret. This time, ďŹ nding this home again felt as natural and familiar as breathing.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Sue Eisenfeld, the author of Shenandoah: A Story of Conservation and Betrayal (see page 66), is proďŹ led on page 9.

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FROM OUR READERS Community

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A Need for Shutter Speed This photograph of classic automobiles in the Smokies revved us up when Jon and Regina Phillips of J & G Photos recently posted it to our Facebook page. “These old cars were cruisin’ Cades Cove and the Smoky Mountains in some kind of rally tour,” wrote Jon about this shot from last June. “It was cool seeing them drive through Sparks Lane.”

From Our Pages to His Wall The August/September 2014 issue of Smoky Mountain Living profiled North Carolina artist Jo Ridge Kelley, who paints en plein air (outdoors). The article, called “Artists of Dusk and Dawn,” included a photograph of Kelley in action as she painted the vista on Waterrock Knob. She recently sold the completed painting and posted an update to our Facebook page: “The new Villa Studio on Big Stomp mountain in Waynesville is working out perfectly. Here is a photo on the porch this week, of one of my newest collectors picking up his latest piece—his third painting of mine.

Thank you, Michael Norris, for supporting the great tradition of painting on location—en plein air—capturing that moment in nature on canvas that will never happen again.”

Instant Smokies

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Need a Smoky Mountain Living fix between issues? Get daily updates and connect with our community at facebook.com/smliv, twitter.com/smokymtnliving, and instagram/smokymtnliving.

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Our latest adventure in social media has introduced Smoky Mountain Living to the addictive photo-sharing world of Instagram. Follow us @SmokyMtnLiving to see the Smokies through our managing editor’s phone lens— whether her view is of a plate full of food or a mountain vista, like this shot taken from a room balcony at Gatlinburg’s Lodge at Buckberry Creek. Tag your photos #smliv; we’ll repost our favorites.

SMOKY MOUNTAIN LIVING VOLUME 15 • ISSUE 2

ACROSS THE MOUNTAIN Crossword

Across 1 Season when wildflowers start to bloom in the Smokies 5 One of the first “pot herbs” available in spring (goes with 10 across) 9 Conger or moray 10 Goes with 5 across 11 Becomes a flower 13 In the center of 14 Crow’s cry 16 Cuts wood 17 Woodland 18 Yellow flower in the Smokies 19 Craft 23 Fail to include 25 Proud ___ peacock (2 words) 26 Greens 28 Writer’s tool 30 Echolocation-using mammal 31 Onion relative 33 Famous Appalachian blue ___ trees 34 Rickman of Harry Potter films 36 Cooking equipment 37 It melts on the lakes in spring 38 Waynesville’s historic ____ House which commemorates historic events in April, May, and June

DONATED PHOTO

Down 1 Traditional spring tonic (2 words) 2 ____ hills (small hills with gentle slopes) 3 Requisite 4 Obtain 6 UNC institute at Asheville enabling members to “thrive in the second half” (abbr.)

7 Conjure up 8 Romantic flowers 12 Confederate general who engaged in a final skirmish with Union forces at Waynesville 14 Base of a crocus stem 15 People in general 16 City map abbr. (short for heights) 17 Gourmet, slangily 20 Native environment 21 Old Testament book (abbr.)

22 Quilting basic 24 Musical scale note 27 Purplish flower 29 NC town listed by Forbes as one of the “10 best places to retire” 32 Opposite of WSW 33 “Poppycock!”

35 Roman 51 36 Letter afterthought Answers can be found on page 7. BY MYLES MELLOR • ILOVECROSSWORDS.COM WWW.SMLIV.COM

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SELECT LODGING Directory

HEMLOCK INN This historic inn, set just off Main Street in downtown Blowing Rock, is only steps from shopping, restaurants and event activities. Eighteen unique rooms, including suites with fully-equipped kitchens. All rooms are non-smoking.

Rooms feature private baths, cable TV, air conditioning, phone services, microwave ovens, refrigerators and WiFi. Take advantage of a variety of packages

offered throughout the year.

Downtown Blowing Rock, N.C. 828.295.7987 • hemlockinn.net MOUNTAIN JOY COTTAGES These cabins, located in Maggie Valley, N.C., offer all of the expected modern conveniences with year-round access and seclusion seldom found. Relax in a peaceful country setting surrounded by a panoramic mountain view. All of the cabins have wood-burning fireplaces, cable TV with HBO, BBQ grills, picnic tables, central heat and air, and fully equipped kitchens. Located in the center of activities and high in North Carolina’s Smoky Mountains, Mountain Joy Cottages is open all year.

Maggie Valley, N.C. 888.926.1257 mountainjoycottages.com SMOKETREE LODGE Smoketree’s cozy atmosphere and prime location gives visitors the choice of enjoying the peace and solitude of the Blue Ridge Mountains or the opportunity to partake in the many activities available in the High Country.

11914 NC Hwy. 105 S. • Banner Elk, N.C. 800.422.1880 • smoketree-lodge.com

THE SWAG COUNTRY INN Chosen by readers of Conde Nast Traveler magazine as the #2 Best Small Hotel in the Unites States, the secluded hideaway itself consists of 250 private acres. The main lodge and cabins, consisting of 15 rooms, are built of 17th and 18th century hand hewn logs and local field stone. For 33 years, visitors have been able to experience just how remote, rustic, refined and remarkable it can be at 5,000 feet. Three gourmet meals are served daily, with turn down service each evening.

Waynesville, N.C. 800.789.7672 • theswag.com THE WAYNESVILLE INN GOLF RESORT & SPA This resort has been welcoming visitors to the mountains with southern hospitality since the 1920s. Traditional resort amenities include historic and mountain view lodging, 27 holes of championship golf, restaurant and tavern, plus outdoor event space and pro shop. Convenient location provides easy access to shopping, skiing, fishing, hiking and more.

176 Country Club Dr. • Waynesville, N.C. 800.627.6250 • thewaynesvilleinn.com

Smoketree Lodge

11914 Hwy. 105 S. Banner Elk NC 28604

828-963-6505 Smoketree-Lodge.com Managed by Vacation Resorts International 70

SMOKY MOUNTAIN LIVING VOLUME 15 • ISSUE 2

1793-44

BOYD MOUNTAIN LOG CABINS AND CHRISTMAS TREE FARM Featured in Southern Living’s Best Weekend Getaways. Enjoy a peaceful country setting in charming authentic log cabins, 1-4 bedrooms, located on 130 beautiful acres. Full kitchens, wood burning fireplaces, Wifi, & A/C. The cabins overlook the Smoky Mountains, a Fraser Fir Christmas tree farm, 3 stocked fishing ponds, flower and vegetable gardens. Hiking trails to the top of Boyd Mountain, volleyball, basketball and badminton, swimming hole in the creek, sledding in the winter.

Open every season.

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STORIES Community

A Day at Devil’s Dip

BY JIM CASADA

I

n many ways Grandpa Joe was a boy trapped in an old man’s body. As full of tricks as a pet ’coon, tough as a seasoned hickory sapling, and imbued with 70-plus years of Smokies wisdom, he possessed an unflagging sense of adventure, especially when it came to hunting or fishing. On many of these sporting outings I enjoyed the great fortune of being his sidekick.

Grandpa had a knack for turning something simple—whether an afternoon of fishing in the Tuckasegee River, which flowed by his home, or a day spent in pursuit of squirrels—into grand enterprises. Alas, our escapades didn’t always work out as planned, and certainly that was the case one late spring day at Devil’s Dip. Named for its powerful hydraulics and strong backwater, which gave it the appearance of a whirlpool, Devil’s Dip swirled just a short walk downstream from Grandpa’s house. We had fished here before, but on this particular day the two of us ventured into uncharted territory. Hopping from one rock to another we went farther out on the shoals adjacent to the turbulent water than ever before. At one point, scared a bit by the nearby torrent, I commented to Grandpa: “If we aren’t careful we’ll fall in.”

He nodded in agreement before giving a response that settled matters as far as both of us were concerned. “You might be right,” he said, “but every time we move we catch more knottyheads.”

Sure enough, my prophecy came true. I’m not sure whether I slipped and grabbed Grandpa or if he fell and reached out to me. Whatever the case, the frigid waters of Devil’s Dip claimed both of us. We scrambled out, shaken and chilled but no worse for wear other than the fact that Grandpa had lost his straw hat. Purchased just the day before with hard-earned cash, the hat made four complete circles in the backwater while my erstwhile mentor tried unsuccessfully to snag it with his long cane pole. The fifth time around it caught the current and head downriver towards Fontana Lake, never to be seen again.

By that time both of us were shivering and dreading the coming confrontation with Grandma Minnie. Weighing at most 100 pounds, my tiny grandmother possessed a 300-pound temper and

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a tongue that could flay the hide off a razorback hog. The family in general—and Grandpa Joe in particular—stood in a constant state of awe at her wrath. We all did our level best to avoid being the focus of one of those eruptions.

We both knew that showing up on the doorstep of their home, looking like a pair of drowned muskrats, would earn us a tongue lashing of the first order. Grandpa acknowledged the inevitable, muttering, “They ain’t going to like this one bit.” Somehow in situations such as this, he found it more comforting to use an impersonal pronoun rather than her name.

I silently nodded in agreement and followed close on his heels.

Grandma met us at the door, and what I now realize was a millisecond of relief immediately gave way to rage. She directed her initial verbal sally towards me. Punctuating every word by poking me in the solar plexus with her gnarled index finger, she said: “The only thing worse than a young fool is an old fool.” Having switched to prodding her spouse in mid-sentence, she quickly added, “Here stands a matched pair.”

At that moment I dared a glance sideways to see how Grandpa was reacting, only to discover he was, while never breaking eye contact with Grandma, slowly retreating. I wasn’t about to be left alone to face her ire and forthwith moved to join him. As we backed through the doorway and around the corner into another room, Grandpa winked at me and whispered quite softly: “I reckon they won’t be cooking any fish tonight.”

We had cold cornbread and milk for supper.

MANDY NEWHAM-COBB ILLUSTRATION

The hat made four circles in the backwater while my erstwhile mentor tried to snag it with his long cane pole. The fifth time around it caught the current and head downriver towards Fontana Lake, never to be seen again.

SMOKY MOUNTAIN LIVING VOLUME 15 • ISSUE 2