Smoky Mountain Living, December 2014

SMOKY MOUNTAIN LIVING

CROSS-COUNTRY SKIING | KEPHART CLASSIC REISSUED | BEST’S BANJO DECEMBER 2014/JANUARY 2015

Celebrating Southern Appalachians THE

BLUE RIDGE MUSIC TRAILS • GIANT SALAMANDERS • MIGRATION & HIBERNATION • SOUTHERN LITERATURE • SURVIVING A BLIZZARD

Surviving the Season

Mother Nature keeps her brood safe & warm

BLIZZARD CONDITIONS

DECEMBER 2014/JANUARY 2015 • VOL. 14 • NO. 6

smliv.com

Will a trail guide and group of stranded campers survive?

COMPANY IS COMING OVER

Sweet potato-sour cream coffee cake that keeps

DOWNTON DOES BILTMORE Costuming an era with historical accuracy

© Bryan Koontz, 2011

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Contents

FEATU RE STO RIES

BLIZZARD CONDITIONS Surprise snowstorms have threatened lives in these mountains. Read these historical and harrowing tales of survival.

BY CARROLL MCMAHAN

PAGE

40

HOW LIFE THRIVES From migration to hibernation, the animal kingdom has many ways of making it through winter.

BY DON HENDERSHOT

PAGE

50

HELL BENT The Chattanooga Zoo works to preserve the world’s largest salamander—the hellbender.

BY CHARLI KERNS

PAGE

56

RESONATING NOTES The Great Smoky Mountain Association celebrates banjo great, Carroll Best, with a new release of music recorded for the Public Works Administration.

BY GARRET K. WOODWARD

PAGE

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SMOKY MOUNTAIN LIVING VOLUME 14 • ISSUE 6

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Contents MOUNTAIN VOICES

DEPA RTME N TS

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

Tennessee author Denton Loving faces one of life’s greatest questions

MOUNTAIN MUSIC

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

Explore the Blue Ridge Heritage Music Trail

OUT & ABOUT

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

Holiday spirit and Downtown style at the Biltmore Estate

OUTDOORS

Cross-country skiing on the Blue Ridge Parkway

ON THE COVER A house finch perches on a snowy evergreen bough.

PHOTO BY RYAN YODER YODERIMAGES.COM

Good Living 4

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

Cheese, collards and sweet potatoes are served

ARTS

30

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

Georgia’s Cabbage Patch Kids get back to their roots

MOUNTAIN VIEWS A cunning of age

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

Southern Literature survives

CUISINE

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24

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MOUNTAIN LETTERS

12

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34 72

Southern Appalachian Mountains Gallery Guide . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36 East Tennessee . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48 Crossword . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69 Select Lodging . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70

SMOKY MOUNTAIN LIVING VOLUME 14 • ISSUE 6

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p e rs p e ct i ve s :

FROM THE MANAGING EDITOR

There comes a time at which we each will question

Burdened by intelligence and rational thought, we evaluate our choices and consider the consequences. And sometimes it simply seems easier to die. Can the will to survive overcome an individual’s lack of want? Can biology prevail over brains? his leg but with greatly limited function. He never would be able to continue in his chosen profession. So he chose amputation. With the right prosthetic, Riffe thought he would be able to return to work.

And he did.

But policies and procedures have a way of side stepping change. Riffe was let go because he was deemed unable to perform his paramedic duties.

learn more:

COURTESY OF MEDICINEX.STANFORD.EDU

whether we have the will to survive. It’s a funny word—will.

Within it is grit, mettle and an ability to withstand. In nature, instinct predicates survival be it for the individual or the species. Eating, sheltering, breeding are not nature’s desires.

They are nature’s needs. Only we humans are faced with the additional complexity of wanting.

Burdened by intelligence and rational thought, we evaluate our choices and consider the consequences. And sometimes it simply seems easier to die. Can the will to survive overcome an individual’s lack of want? Can biology prevail over brains?

Survival stories always seem to hinge upon a great sacrifice— some such stories have become Sarah E. Kucharski legendary. Think of Aron Ralston, a solo climber who became trapped between boulders in a Utah canyon. Ralston survived for five days on the food and water in his pack while dangling 65-feet in the air with his arm crushed. He recorded goodbyes to his family.

But when he awoke the next day, he had an epiphany. With his body weight and torque, he could break his own arm—and use his pocketknife to amputate it. Hikers found him staggering out of the canyon six hours later.

One might argue that Ralston’s choice was only logical. Aside from the circumstances, it came down to this—lose his arm or lose his life. At least there are prosthetic arms. Science and medicine have yet to develop a replacement life.

Joe Riffe didn’t want a replacement life when he asked doctors to amputate his leg. A paramedic in Louisville, Ky., Riffe fell from the top of a waterfall while hiking. Rescued, hospitalized and stabilized, Riffe learned doctors could save

Crossword answers

Keep up with Joe Riffe at prostheticmedic.com and follow him on Twitter @ProstheticMedic.

Better yet, help Joe’s family get back on their feet with your own contribution at gofundme.com/FundTheRiffes.

His will and his want seemed for naught.

Or not.

Riffe has taken his experience and turned it into a different kind of survival story—one in which he’s helping others. He has become an advocate pushing for better access to quality prosthetics, and he now works as an onsite medical representative for Amazon.

Riffe isn’t just a character in some story to me. He’s also my friend. This issue of Smoky Mountain Living is all about survival—and it is dedicated to him.

— Sarah E. Kucharski, managing editor

Puzzle is on page 69.

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p e rs p e ct ive s :

FROM OUR READERS

I have been snatching a copy of this beautiful magazine from the store shelf. I’ve really enjoyed the mountain scenes of inspiration. I’m enclosing a subscription to enjoy through the year.

I live on Chandler Mountain, Steele, Ala. in the northeast. It’s been called the

“Toenail of the Appalachian mountains.”

I’d like to share some pictures of the mountain and my poem that I have enclosed.

Thank you for taking time to read my letter and for a wonderful magazine.

— Linda Templin

VOL. 14 • NUMBER 6 Publisher/Editor . . . . . . . . . . . Scott McLeod editor@smliv.com General Manager . . . . . . . . . Greg Boothroyd ads@smliv.com Sales Manager . . . . . . . . . . . Hylah Birenbaum hylah@smliv.com Managing Editor . . . . . . . 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 Editorial Assistant . . . . . . Glenda Kucharski Contributing Writers . . . . . . . . . Jim Casada, Don Hendershot, Joe Hooten, Holly Kays, Charli Kerns, Denton Loving, Carroll McMahan, Jeff Minick, Bill Studenc, Garret K. Woodward

From the Toenail of the Appalachian mountains: Chandler Mountain’s Soul Cry Bluff and Mushroom Rock (below) near Steele, Ala. PHOTOS COURTESY OF LINDA TEMPLIN

On The Threshold of a Mountain Dream High on Chandler Mountain, I planted a dream, To build a harp on the bluff, to help the angels sing, As the breeze gently mingles across the valley, To heights of the sky so blue, The harp’s vibrating strings will flutter From angel wings passing through.

The leaves will dance on the treetops so sweet, While the breeze elopes gently, back to the mountain’s feet Some will say it’s only the wind on the harp so new But secretly we will know—it’s the angels passing through.

— Linda Templin

I paid for three years, as I love your magazine. I missed getting to come up this year, as on April 28 our house flooded when Pensacola had 27 inches of rain in 24 hours.

Of course no flood insurance then (I do now!), so it may be a few years before I get to 8

Contributing Photographers . . . Max Cooper, Jo Harris, David Herasimtschuk, Holly Kays, Charli Kerns, Bill & Flo Martin, Micah McClure, Mark Peck, Gary Pinholster, Thomas Rank, Sherry Shook, Beverly Slone, Bonnie Waigland, Garret K. Woodward Contributing Illustrator . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Mandy Newham-Cobb Smoky Mountain Living is published bi-monthly

by SM Living LLC. 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 Smalley at 866.452.2251 or hylah@smliv.com.

For editorial inquiries, contact Sarah E. Kucharski at sarah@smliv.com.

Smoky Mountain Living assumes no responsibility for unsolicited manuscripts or photographs. Queries should be sent to Sarah E. Kucharski at sarah@smliv.com. ©2014-2015. All rights reserved. No portion of this magazine may be reprinted without the express, written consent of the publisher.

go “home.” My grandmother was born in Clyde in 1980. I have always felt that I was home when we got to go to the mountains!

Your magazine helps a lot.

— Debbie Nobles

SMOKY MOUNTAIN LIVING VOLUME 14 • ISSUE 6

Smoky Mountain Living is published bi-monthly (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.

p e rs p e ct i ve s :

ABOUT OUR WRITERS Jim Casada is a son of the Smokies, born and raised in Bryson City, North Carolina. A self-described “recovering professor,” he describes the region as “the home of my heart and the primary inspiration for my literary endeavors.” A full-time freelancer for the past decade and a half, his writing focuses on fishing, hunting, natural history, Appalachian folkways, and cooking nature’s wild bounty, along with history.

Images of America, a pictorial history of Sevierville,” published by Arcadia Publishing Co. and “Elkmont’s Uncle Lem Ownby: Sage of the Smokies,” a biography of the last resident of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, published by The History Press. He writes a weekly column, Upland Chronicles, a series that celebrates the heritage and past of Sevier County, published in the Mountain Press.

Jeff Minick

lives in Asheville, N.C., where he tutors home-educated students and writes for various publications. He is the author of two books, both self-published: “Amanda Bell,” a novel, and “Learning As I Go,” a collection of essays and reviews.

Don Hendershot is a freelance writer, naturalist and biological consultant living in Waynesville, N.C. He has written in magazines including Our State, Native American Journal, and Smoky Mountain Living. His weekly column, The Naturalist’s Corner, appears in The Smoky Mountain News. Hendershot was nominated by the Roosevelt-Ashes Society for Outstanding Journalist in Conservation 2010, yet his most beloved title is “Daddy” to daughters Izzy and Maddie.

Holly Kays

is a forester's daughter who came to the Appalachian South by way of the West via the mid-Atlantic. She’s produced award-winning work at newspapers in Idaho and Wyoming and now writes for The Smoky Mountain News in Waynesville, N.C. Happy to have returned to the land of many trees, she’s even happier to write about them. When, of course, she’s not hiking.

Charli Kerns, an outdoor sport and environmental science writer, has reported on events and issues in five countries, including India. She also worked as web editor for Canoe & Kayak magazine and Kayak Fish magazine in Orange County, Calif. A Knoxville local, Kerns received her bachelor’s degree in journalism at the University of Tennessee. Kerns also holds a master’s degree in science and medical journalism with a specialty in forest ecology from Boston University.

Carroll McMahan lives in Knoxville, Tenn., but grew up and works in Sevierville, Tenn., where he currently works for the Sevierville Chamber of Commerce and serves as Sevier County Historian. He is the author of two books, “Sevierville:

Denton Loving is the author of the poetry collection, “Crimes Against Birds.” He is also the editor of “Seeking Its Own Level: an anthology of writings about water.” He works at Lincoln Memorial University, where he co-directs the annual Mountain Heritage Literary Festival and serves as executive editor of drafthorse: the literary journal of work and no work. His fiction, poetry, essays and reviews are forthcoming in River Styx, CutBank, [PANK], The MacGuffin and Fiction Southeast.

Follow him on twitter @DentonLoving.

Bill Studenc

is senior director of news services at Western Carolina University in Cullowhee, N.C. Studenc, who grew up in Black Mountain, has worked as a reporter and editor at The Mountaineer in Waynesville, editor of The News Record in Marshall and sports reporter for the Asheville Citizen-Times. An unrepentant headbanger, he still listens to 1980s heavy metal bands.

Garret K. Woodward grew up in the tiny Canadian border town of Rouses Point, N.Y., spending his childhood on the shores of Lake Champlain and in the mystical woods of the Adirondack Mountains. When not wandering and writing, he spends his time seeing live music, running, hiking, and starting conversations with strangers over a cup of coffee at a diner.

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p e rs p e ct i ve s :

MOUNTAIN MUSINGS

Never letting up There’s one particular picture that speaks volumes about William John Studenc—known to my brothers and me simply as “Dad.” Of all the decades’ worth of photos in family albums, this single image defines my father, at least in my mind.

The photo, titled “Exhausted Runner,” is captioned thusly: “Bellaire High’s little Bill Studenc was an exhausted runner after finishing the mile Saturday.

Here he’s kept from falling to the cinders by Jack Teasdale, vice president of the Bellaire Touchdown Club. In a few minutes, Billy was okay again.”

If one were lucky enough to have known Dad, one Bill Studenc probably would understand why the black-and-white photograph from a yellowed and tattered newspaper clipping resonates with me more than Grandma’s faded snapshots from the 1960s, brother Greg’s wrinkled Polaroids from the 1970s, or my kids’ digital cellphone images from the 21st century.

To me, this photo captures the essence of Dad’s life, at least the 50-some-odd years I was fortunate enough to be in it. (And those who know my family and childhood will understand how odd some of those years actually were. But, I digress.)

Throughout his life, Dad gave it his all. He pushed himself to the limits. He went as hard and as fast as he could for as long as he could, willing himself to cross the finish line. He wanted very much to win. But more than that, he wanted very much to finish as strong as he could.

Despite the hurdles thrown in his way (track-and-field analogy on purpose, by the way), Dad just kept going forward. The hurdles were many. A humble childhood in an impoverished area of southeastern Ohio that my Dad and his siblings called “Cowshit Holler.” Finding his own father dead of a heart attack at the age of 40. Two

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SMOKY MOUNTAIN LIVING VOLUME 14 • ISSUE 6

children who died at or shortly after birth. A wife—my mother—whose own personal hurdles proved far too great for her to overcome and who died way too young.

Struggling to raise a family of three kids on a limited income. Helping care for a father- and mother-in-law as they battled old age or slipped into dementia. A heart attack of his own, in spite of the fact he was one of the healthiest people I know. Being forced into retirement a year later after almost 40 years at the same institution because of a change in ownership and a corporate desire to “go in a different direction.”

Those are just some of the hurdles of which I know. I am sure there were others. But no matter the number of hurdles, no matter how high, Dad kept moving forward. He kept his eye on the finish line.

To be sure, Dad’s sprint through the human race was not all hurdles. There were many bright spots. One child who overcame significant hurdles of his own to win regional and state honors as handicapped employee of the year. Two sons who went on to college.

He even went back to Asheville-Buncombe

Technical College himself as a non-traditional student and got a degree in accounting, graduating with honors. Four grandchildren.

Ten years of a second chance at life with a new spouse, and the love and acceptance of her children and grandchildren.

Unlike in the time-tinted image, Dad ran a marathon, not a sprint.

Even during the months after his cancer diagnosis and his surgery, he took the advice of Jim Valvano. I hope my fellow Tar Heel

“He went as hard and as fast as he could for as long as he could.

And when Dad finished, Dad finished strong. He gave it his all. He pushed himself to the limits.”

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fans will excuse me for quoting the former coach of the Wolf Pack, but it seems appropriate. Dad did not give up. He never gave up.

When I look at the old photograph of Dad, I don’t see a mere competitor. I see the epitome of a champion, the essence of Dad. He was like a Timex watch. He took a licking, and kept on ticking. My stepmom would call him the Energizer Bunny—he just kept going and going and going.

During his last few days in a deep, peaceful sleep, Dad’s feet would be moving, like he was still pushing forward, still running that race.

He went as hard and as fast as he could for as long as he could. And when Dad finished, Dad finished strong. He gave it his all. He pushed himself to the limits. Nonetheless, to me it felt like someone moved his finish line, and that the race ended before it should.

Shortly after 4 p.m. on Tuesday, Sept. 16, 2014, in a few minutes, Billy was not okay again. There was no vice president of the Touchdown Club to lift the exhausted runner from the cinders after he had crossed the finish line.

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p e rs p e ct ive s :

MOUNTAIN VOICES

Death rushes past, but why?

BY DENTON LOVING

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SMOKY MOUNTAIN LIVING VOLUME 14 • ISSUE 6

I

t is one week before my 38th birthday, a Sunday, and I am spending the evening with my dad while my mom attends the night service at church. She returns home a little after 7 p.m., but it feels much later, because the darkness comes so much earlier now.

Twelve miles of mostly straight, mostly two-lane highway, a ribbon of road well known to me, link my parents’ house to mine. The speed limit is 55, but vehicles’ actual speed varies widely, somewhere between 40 and 80. The slower ones back up traffic, leaving the faster ones to grow reckless in their anxiety to pass. Accidents are commonplace on this road. I have known people who have died on these twelve miles. But I am lucky. I’ve had few accidents in my life and none on this stretch of highway.

Tonight there are hardly any cars on the road at all, and I am over halfway home, driving about 60 in a brown 2009 Chevy Impala with hail damage on the side panels and a passenger-side backdoor lock that sticks. In this mile of road, between a country store and a saw mill, houses are visible but not close. Trees grow in the fence lines on both sides of the road, and the cow pastures behind those fences fade into dark country. I have just descended a slight hill when beams of headache-bright light attack my rearview mirror.

Sometimes, we see accidents before they happen, and we can react to what we see is happening; we can evade our futures if only temporarily. But tonight, in the darkening sky, the car behind me approaches like a predator, and there is no time to react. The lights are high in the air, so I think they must be from a truck, which I know is going to hit me. As fast as I can form that thought, I am hit.

The hit is hard and solid. It shoves me forward, setting me spinning, strapped in but turning in a way that cars are not meant to turn.

I don’t know how other people experience these moments, but for me time slows and fractures. Everything outside of the car blurs, but the inside of the car is visible and in focus. My foot is on the brake. My hands grip the steering wheel, but I know that I have no control. Somewhere in the hazy outside world, my car hits something hard—later I will find out this something is a guardrail—but the car keeps moving. I imagine it will never stop careening toward the solid things of the outside world, and yet, in this suspended time, I await another hit. One big slam is it. Even though the spinning stops, it takes a while for my mind and body to catch up to each other and the world.

There is a silence on the highway. The crashing sounds and violence have chased away the usual night noises. The Impala is perpendicular to the road, facing south toward a cow pasture. There are other cars—cars not involved in the accident, people driving home from Sunday evening services—that pull off onto the shoulder in both directions to wait and see what will happen. A woman I know, Karen, walks towards me. She tells me that before my car was hit, the driver of the other vehicle had passed her and another car on the shoulder.

Karen already has called 911, though she didn’t know it was me in the accident. An ambulance is on its way, though, I don’t know if I need an ambulance. I am standing. I am talking. I do not feel pain.

No blood. I’m just as alive as when I stepped off my parents’ porch, but the hows and whys of the accident are not yet clear to me.

The driver who crashed into me is a boy, 22 years old. He’s also

drunk. Before the police arrive, he throws a case of beer out of his gray SUV and across the guardrail on the opposite side of the road, which a dozen people witness, but it isn’t the worst decision he’s made tonight. It’s just an action that will not change the inevitable.

In the next hour, the boy tells at least three different stories to as many police officers about his speed and my speed, about the number of passengers in his vehicle, about how much he’s had to drink, about how it was my fault that he hit me. In front of them, he apologizes to me and extends his hand, but my hand stays at my side. The inside of my head is jarred, my neck muscles are tightening, and the cool night air is wrapping around my body—and I am not ready for what a handshake between men would imply.

It’s not that I’m not sorry for the kid. But it will take a while before I am comfortable with the knowledge that I’m standing upright and breathing regularly. It will take a while until I watch, first with indifference and then with what might be sympathy, as the boy fails the sobriety test, is handcuffed and led to the police cruiser, the trooper’s hand guiding his thin neck down into the back seat.

I’ve made some stupid, dangerous decisions in my life, and I can’t help but think how lucky I am to not be in this kid’s position. Or maybe I’m blessed. Maybe the difference between the two is just semantics. What I feel is protected by something beyond my understanding. And this isn’t the first time.

Two years ago, on a starless night and even closer to home, I had an accident of a different kind. A horse, running loose and terrified, struck like lightning—its hoofs shattering my windshield. The horse died, but just six inches closer to me and I would not have lived to live through this accident tonight.

In telling these accidents’ stories, I will not say, “I almost died.”

That isn’t what happened. I was in danger, but the danger didn’t last, didn’t cling to me in the darkening night; it brushed by me, shoved me hard, then rushed on down the road towards its next appointment. Death swerved on the highway, and I survived.

On my birthday a week later, I turn 38 years old. I eat birthday cake, and there is singing. I file insurance claims. I begin the search for a new car, but every car is too small or too big or too expensive or the wrong color. I go to work and to my parents’ house, and I pass the scene of the accident twice a day. It will take a while before I stop wondering—if I ever do—why I’m still here.

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“I’ve made some

stupid, dangerous decisions in my life, and I can’t help but think how lucky I am to not be in this kid’s position. Or maybe I’m blessed.

Maybe the difference between the two is just semantics. What I feel is protected by something beyond my understanding. And this isn’t the first time.”

13

Bonnie Waigland Barn at Cades Cove, Tenn.

Gary Pinholster

What does it mean to be alive—

is it simply to exist or persist or is it to thrive? Our readers share their views of the things that survive.

Bill & Flo Martin Icicles

Instead of working for the survival of the fittest, we should be working for the survival of the wittiest—then we can all die laughing.

— Lily Tomlin

Gary Pinholster

Sherry Shook Leicester, N.C.

My mission in life is not merely to survive, but to thrive; and to do so with some passion, some compassion, some humor, and some style.

— Maya Angelou

John W. Oliver delivering mail along Parsons Branch Road in Cades Cove, Tenn.

Courtesy of Steven Weber

Beverly Slone

Smoky Mountain Living’s upcoming February/March edition will be dedicated to the region’s unusual celebrations. Do you mark a birthday in a truly different way? Is there an anniversary tradition that keeps things interesting?

Are you a festival champion? Send pictures of unusual celebration to photos@smliv.com by December 15, 2015.

Reader submitted photos are unpaid but those selected are rewarded with publication in our nationally distributed magazine. Each submission must include information about where the photo was taken and by whom.

To connect with Smoky Mountain Living, visit smliv.com, facebook.com/smliv or twitter.com/ SmokyMtnLiving.

Gary Pinholster Old Mill, Pigeon Forge, Tenn.

Jo Harris Antiques at the Bean Barn, Greeneville, Tenn.

d e p a r t m e n t :

MOUNTAIN MUSIC

Blue Ridge F Music Trails of North Carolina

BY JOE HOOTEN

or most people, hiking around the stunning Blue Ridge Mountains is a convenient way to exercise and see the region in all its spectacular magnificence while enjoying the natural wonders of Western North Carolina. The most popular of footpaths, the Appalachian Trail is constantly visited by hikers and outdoor enthusiasts from all over the world and traversed by thousands every day.

Yet there’s another type of trail that has to do with music, and not many are aware that it exists. The Blue Ridge Music Trail in North Carolina is a musical guide established by the North Carolina Arts Council that is aimed at guiding visitors and residents alike to the region’s most authentic and traditional music. Its emphasis is on the musical heritage that is still celebrated in both the mountains and foothills of North Carolina.

The Blue Ridge Music Trails of North Carolina began as an initiative to benefit both the purveyors of traditional mountain music and dance as well as those who seek it out. The trail is more of an updated guide, both in print and online. Partnered with the area’s tourism agencies, arts councils, musicians, venue owners, event The Feed & Seed in organizers, and community activists, the North CarFletcher is a popular olina Arts Council and the Blue Ridge National Hervenue for the community’s musical itage Area Partnership provide dates, locations, and performances and descriptions of events taking place throughout Western doubles as a church.

North Carolina. The guide allows for visitors to search MAX COOPER PHOTO for happenings in a variety of settings and styles, from front porch jam sessions, to church-organized music festivals, to proper theater and auditorium-arranged performances. It is a fantastic way to take the road less traveled and venture into parts of Western North Carolina where musicians and dancers welcome those that are interested taking in genuine cultural experiences.

There’s plenty of interesting, and even unusual locales, like the jam sessions that take place at the Drexel, N.C., barber shop on Saturday afternoons or at the T.M. Rickman General Store outside of Franklin, N.C., in the historic Cowee community. If you’re looking for a little down-home BBQ and some good tunes, then head over to Sim’s BBQ in Granite Falls, N.C., where you’ll hear some great bluegrass and old-timey music and maybe some lively mountain dancing. There’s always a good time happening at the Stompin’ Ground in Maggie Valley on most Friday and Saturday evenings or you can check out the appropriately named Barn venue in Jerry Wilson’s front yard in Eden, N.C. The Blue Ridge Music Trail also highlights more formal venues, such as The Earle Theater in Mount Airy, the Stecoah Valley Cultural Arts Center in Robbinsville or the Blue Ridge Music Center in Galax, Va. There are many venues from which to choose, and part of the fun part is sitting down and planning your road trip.

learn more:

To purchase the book or view the interactive online guide, visit blueridgemusicnc.com.

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SMOKY MOUNTAIN LIVING VOLUME 14 • ISSUE 6

Bandleader for bluegrass/old-timey band Buncombe Turnpike

experience in this region. How you do you see this benefiting both tourists as well as local residents?

Tom Godleski: You are correct; the Blue Ridge Music Trails is an excellent way to find mountain music. Their website is very thorough, and concise. I was born and raised in Asheville, and there are venues on there that I didn’t even know about. I just think being able to go to the website, and look at all the venues is great. Most of the venues are within a few hours of Asheville. Another thing I like about the venue list is that there are not only concert venues on there, but informal jam sessions too. In other words, The Feed and Seed Jam Session in Fletcher is listed right up there with The Mountain Song Festival in Brevard. So, anyone can find any and all aspects of our music from jams to concerts. The Blue Ridge Music Trails is all about preserving the music. The Blue Ridge Music Trails is beneficial to anyone that is interested in the music.

Smoky Mountain Living: The Blue Ridge Music Trails is an excellent way to find traditional and authentic musical

SML: Not everyone can find authentic Appalachian music unless they venture off the main roads. What rewards would

There’s much to gain from this enterprise, both the region’s residents and musicians are encouraged to promote a creative environment that embraces the traditions that have remained the fabric of most communities in Western North Carolina. The project is also an ingenious way to expose young people to the customs that have been handed down from generation to generation; hopefully it will become the catalyst that invites creativity and interest among potential players. To sustain the rich traditions of the region, there must be opportunities to listen, to join in, and for visitors to take something of these traditions back home.

Q&A with Tom Godleski

travelers expect to find if they went on an adventurous diversion and took the road less traveled?

Godleski: I think that WNC is one of the most beautiful places on earth, so one of the rewards of traveling would be of course to find the music, but another is that you would get to see and experience the beautiful scenery in the WNC region.

Some of these venues are tucked away and could be hard to find.

I have a friend who is a retired dentist and a banjo player. His name is Robert Holmes. Dr. Holmes told me about the time he traveled through the mountains in a neighboring county looking for a jam session that was at a residence there.

This was back in the sixties. Dr. Holmes was driving a huge Pontiac Safari Station Wagon. He was dressed in Levis, a nice shirt, a cowboy hat, a denim jacket, and of course he was wearing cowboy boots.

He got lost, and stopped at a country store to ask directions. There were two mountain guys in front of the store. Dr. Holmes got out of the car and the two men looked him up and down. Dr. Holmes told them what he was doing and told them the name of the folks who

EXPLORE THE LIFE STORY OF LEGENDARY FIVE-STRING BANJO MASTER EARL SCRUGGS AND THE UNIQUE AND ENGAGING HISTORY AND TRADITIONS OF THE REGION WHERE HE WAS BORN AND RAISED. THE EARL SCRUGGS CENTER IS NESTLED IN THE HEART OF HIS HOMETOWN, SHELBY, IN THE HISTORIC CLEVELAND COUNTY COURTHOUSE, DOWNTOWN ON THE SQUARE.

WWW.EARLSCRUGGSCENTER.ORG | 704.487.6233 | 103 S. LAFAYETTE ST., SHELBY, NC WWW.SMLIV.COM

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d e p a r t m e n t :

MOUNTAIN MUSIC

Tom Godleski.

DONATED PHOTO

were hosting the jam. He asked them for directions.

They didn’t answer him at first, but asked him a bunch of questions like where he was from, and what he did for a living. He told them he was from Asheville, and that he was a dentist. The two men were friendly but, after a few minutes, they still had not given Dr. Holmes directions. When he mentioned that he was learning to play the banjo, they finally told him where the jam was.

Then later, they came to the jam, and winked at Dr. Holmes when they came in.

This story is an exception. The folks that host jam sessions are welcoming and happy to have people there. The more the merrier. Also at the jams, there is usually some kind of food. I’ve been to jams where there were anything from pretzels to pizza, fried chicken to lasagna, and there will always be some sweet tea. You can’t let the pickers and the visitors go hungry. I think maybe one of the biggest benefits of finding the music that is tucked away is the friendships and fellowships that will come out of the experience. You can make lifelong friends from going to find the music.

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SML: You play traditional music in your band Buncombe Turnpike. How long have you been doing so, and what makes this particular style so important to our region’s heritage?

Godleski: I began playing mountain music about 24 years ago. I grew up with it, but I got a late start at actually playing.

My mother used to take me to the Mountain Dance and Folk Festival when I was a child, and the first live music concert that I can remember going to is when she took me to see Doc Watson. I guess that is when I started loving the music. I have always sung, but never played an instrument.

A good friend and a great musician, James Hembree, loaned me an electric bass and gave me lessons. After a while, my wife bought me an upright bass. I am really fortunate to have the band because all the members of Buncombe Turnpike want to do original music. We do of course play traditionals too, but we play mostly originals. Many of our songs are based on true stories and are from WNC. I think traditional mountain music is so important because it preserves the stories and culture here. There are so many folks moving to the region that may not know about the history and culture—music is a great way to tell it.

SML: There’s a wide variety of venues listed on the Blue Ridge Music Trail, have you and your band found that playing in one setting is better than another?

Godleski: Well, the seated theater gigs are always the most rewarding. That’s where the folks have paid admission and are there to hear the music. They are the serious music lovers. They listen to the songs word for word; they clap during the song, after a lead instrument break. We have played other events, such as conventions, and sometimes the band is just background music. We do get paid for these, but they are not as fulfilling as playing for true music lovers. We do play

SMOKY MOUNTAIN LIVING VOLUME 14 • ISSUE 6

in church from time to time, and those shows are always good to do. The church members are very grateful that we are there. Going to jam sessions is a great thing as well. There are always different pickers there, and you can learn new songs or learn something about playing your instrument.

SML: Any of the venues listed on the guide bring back any memories?

Godleski: When I saw the list of venues on the Blue Ridge Music Trails website, I had to smile. We have played some of them. We played Mountain Heritage day at WCU last year, and have played it many times in previous years. It is a great experience. It is held on the campus at WCU. There are mountain crafts, food, all kinds of traditional mountain events, and even Cherokee stickball demonstrations, and there is plenty of bluegrass and mountain music too. We played the Mountain Dance and Folk Festival in Asheville. It is such a great time. It is kind of like a homecoming for musicians from the area. The Feed and Seed in Fletcher is a great place to play as well. This past

“I think traditional mountain music is so important because it preserves the stories and culture here. There are so many folks moving to the region that may not know about the history and culture—music is a great way to tell it.”

— Tom Godleski February, Buncombe Turnpike played there. We have a song about a soldier named Kenny Hess who was killed in Iraq in 2006. When we played the song at The Feed and Seed, the audience clapped for Kenny during the song.

After the set, a little elderly lady named Mrs. Waycaster came to me and told me how much she loved the song about Kenny. She then told me that her son was killed in Vietnam. “He was 22, and just had 30 days left before he was discharged” she said. I gave Mrs. Waycaster a CD. That was a pretty special memory.

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OUT & ABOUT

CENTERPIECE OF LOCAL GOVERNMENT HISTORY A U.S. Post Office the New Deal’s Public Works Administration (PWA) constructed in Brevard, N.C. in 1940 has been renovated and repurposed for the community.

“We also decided to approach this project in a way that honors the different lives this building has already had and its context within the history of the county,” said Mike Hawkins, Chairman of the Transylvania County Commissioners.

If the post office at 101 South Broad were a person, it would deserve a medal for public service.

It was the county library for more than two decades and voting place after that.

County Architect Richard Worley oversaw the renovation and was able to repurpose and recycle many of the building’s original materials to help keep costs in check. The original slate floor was refinished and marble from the post office counter was refashioned into desk surfaces.

The Federal/Greek Revival-style building’s crowning touch is an underutilized feature from its earliest days: a white cupola atop the roof. Inside, a light has been installed, a reminder to anyone who drives by at night that a once empty county building has been returned to the service of its citizens.

Vintage photography and exhibits in the public areas showcase the building’s history while modern updates ensure that the county’s administrative needs will be met well into the 21st century. Other thoughtful touches include a new public space behind the building: in essence, a mini-arboretum designed to reflect the nature of the county.

The space is landscaped with indigenous plants and trees and will have a water feature that celebrates the “Land of Waterfalls.”

“We thought the green space was important,” said Hawkins, “It reflects who we are as a county and I think it’s something everyone will be proud of.”

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COURTESY OF BILTMORE

Celebrate the holiday season at the Biltmore Estate

D

écor will create a sense of the Gilded Age, while incorporating elements that nod to George Vanderbilt’s legacy in Western North Carolina in “A Vanderbilt Christmas Celebration” at the Biltmore Estate this year.

Vanderbilt hosted his first family Christmas celebration in Biltmore House in 1895.

The event attracted media attention. According to the Asheville News and Hotel Reporter, “Tastefully draped garlands of evergreen and mistletoe, interspersed with the shining leaves and red berries of holly, created a scene beautiful to look upon.”

Modeled on that first Christmas and that newspaper description, displays will include the Banquet Hall’s vintage and opulent accents with burgundy, red, gold and blue ornaments tucked into the centerpiece 34-foot tall Fraser fir Christmas tree.

Guests will see 60 trees throughout Biltmore House, each intricately designed and decorated by members of Biltmore’s floral team. Miles of fresh garland and wreaths draped throughout the house yield a nostalgic yuletide scent.

Known as one of the Southeast’s most beloved and storied holiday vacation destinations, Christmas at Biltmore daytime tours run through Jan. 11.

A 55-foot Norway spruce tree, lit by 45,000 tiny white lights, displayed on Biltmore’s front lawn welcomes guests who visit Biltmore House for Candlelight Christmas Evenings. This unique holiday experience features local choirs and small musical ensembles stationed in the Winter Garden and throughout the house, performing music of the season. Candlelight Christmas Evenings includes an evening reservation to tour Biltmore House as well as daytime admission to Biltmore’s gardens, Antler Hill Village and Winery. Candlelight Christmas Evenings, offering evening candlelight tours of Biltmore House, run through Jan. 3.

In Antler Hill Village, Santa will visit with children and families from 1 to 5 p.m. on Saturdays and Sundays, Nov. 8 through Dec. 21, and also on Friday, Nov. 28. Cedric’s Tavern will host live music nightly.

Biltmore’s floral arranging and gardening experts will conduct free, daily seminars at A Gardener’s Place retail gift shop through Jan. 11. Seminars are “Winter Wreaths” at 11 a.m. and 2 p.m., and “Front Door Swags” at 1 and 3 p.m.

The Inn on Biltmore will offer its annual Gingerbread House Tea on Dec. 18-20.

Guests can assemble a gingerbread house with the help of a pastry chef while enjoying afternoon tea.

For more information, go to biltmore.com/visit.

SMOKY MOUNTAIN LIVING VOLUME 14 • ISSUE 6

“Dressing Downton: Changing Fashion for Changing Times� features more than 40 costumes from the popular PBS series “Downton Abbey,� showcased in rooms throughout Biltmore House in groupings inspired by the fictional show and by real life at Biltmore, the grand Vanderbilt estate of the same era.

The period costumes in the exhibition act as a window into history beginning in 1912 with the sinking of the Titanic, moving into the tumultuous years of World War I, and finally through the dawn of the Jazz Age in the early 1920s. The waves of social change felt abroad also had lasting impact on the Vanderbilts, their servants, and Biltmore as a whole.

The Vanderbilts’ home bears striking visual resemblance to the show’s setting at Highclere Castle, making it easy for visitors to blur storylines and experience for themselves a bit of life a hundred years ago. “The day-to-day running of the house was surprisingly similar to that of Downton Abbey,� says Biltmore’s Director of Museum Services Ellen Rickman. “Just

COURTESY OF BILTMORE

ALL DRESSED UP TO ASHEVILLE WE GO

like Downton has Mr. Carson and Mrs. Hughes, Biltmore had its own cast of fascinating characters. Displaying these fabulous costumes from the show gives us an unparalleled opportunity to delve into Biltmore’s stories.�

Exhibition costumes have been custom made or come from a stock of more than 100,000 costumes and accessories from renowned British costumer, Cosprop Ltd.

John Bright, an award-winning costume designer in his own right, founded Cosprop in 1965. The company specializes in creating costumes for film, television and theater pieces set from the 15th century to the swinging 60s. Reference for the company’s work comes from an extensive library and a collection of original garments — ensuring that any production Cosprop takes on is “correctly dressed.�

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d e p a r t m e n t :

OUTDOORS

Evolution of nature illustration Mark Catesby created this rendering of a banded watersnake and a pine lily between 1731 and 1743. DONATED PHOTO

A

new exhibit at the University of Tennessee’s McClung Museum of Natural History and Culture in Knoxville explores the intersection of art and science through natural history illustrations.

From 16th-century imaginings of fantastical beasts to accurate, detailed 19th-century renderings of plants and animals, the works highlight how

evolutions in science combined with increased access to travel, technology and books changed how the world was interpreted.

“Birds, Bugs & Blooms: Natural History Illustration from the 1500s-1800s” runs through Jan. 4, featuring more than 50 rare books, prints and objects.

For more information, call 865.974.2144.

Santa trains for his annual Christmas Eve marathon of chimney descents at Chimney Rock in North Carolina.

DONATED PHOTO

Watch Santa practice chimney-scaling It takes some practice for Santa Claus to work up the climbing skills necessary to descend the world’s chimneys, so he’ll be training at Chimney Rock State Park with multiple 200-foot rappels down the biggest chimney around Live holiday music, hot chocolate, cookies, kids’ activities and live critters will round out the festivities. Mrs. Claus will be there, and at each event, a raffle will reward one guest with a free two-hour climbing lesson for two with Santa’s professional helpers, Fox Mountain Guides.

Check out Santa’s skills from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Dec. 6 and 13 at Chimney Rock State Park near Lake Lure, N.C. or watch the descent on YouTube. Call 828.625.9611 for more information.

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SMOKY MOUNTAIN LIVING VOLUME 14 • ISSUE 6

Golden winged warbler.

MARK PECK PHOTO

BAD NEWS FOR BIRDS The National Audubon Society recently released a study examining the potential effect of climate change on bird species in the continental United States and Canada, and the prognosis doesn’t look good. The study shows that rising temperatures will threaten more than half of bird species living in that area.

The study examined 588 species and found that 314 are at risk, with 126 in danger of severe declines by 2050. A further 188 species face the same fate by 2080, with extinctions possible if habitat

changes due to global warming persist.

“The results of this study are our wake-up call,” said Audubon North Carolina Executive Director Heather Hahn.

Researchers analyzed more than 40 years of historical climate data and millions of historical bird records from the U.S. Geological Survey’s North American Breeding Bird Survey and the Audubon Christmas Bird Count to understand the links between where birds live and the climatic conditions that support them.

To read the report, visit climate.audubon.org.

DON’T BE BORED WITH THESE OUTDOORSY BOARD GAMES When days are short and temperatures freezing, getting outside can be a tall

order, but a series of board games bring some of the best things about our National Parks indoors. y Thru Hike: The Appalachian Trail Board Game is a recent release in which the goal is, fittingly, to reach Mt. Katahdin ahead of the other players. Players advance by answering trivia and species identification questions correctly or by drawing bonus cards.

Emergencies such as coming down with hypothermia or getting lost can mean backtracking. The game is available online at theatgame.com. y Jr. RangerLand Great Smoky Mountains Edition is geared toward children, challenging them to gather Explorer Cards to make their way through the park. Cards teach children about native Smokies species and help them discover historical and cultural information about the region. y Monopoly: National Parks Edition features more than 60 of the most celebrated sites in the National Parks system, including GSMNP. The game also incorporates the best-known animals that fill these landscapes, and a handful of National Monuments.

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Until you’re here,

we’re there for you.

We know that as much as you’d like to be here, perhaps you haven’t made Western North Carolina your home — yet.

However, you can still be a part of the community with the Smoky Mountain News, the region’s free weekly covering news, events and issues that affect life here in the mountains. And when the time comes to make Western North Carolina your permanent address, or maybe to just come back and visit, we will be here.

For subscription information, call 828.452.4251 or visit online every week at www.smokymountainnews.com.

144 MONTGOMERY ST. • WAYNESVILLE, NC

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629 W. MAIN ST. • SYLVA, NC

SMOKY MOUNTAIN LIVING VOLUME 14 • ISSUE 6

85-08

d e p a r t m e n t :

OUTDOORS

Ski the Smokies (cross-country style) B Y H O L LY K AY S

T

hrough the evening and into the night, snow softly fell outside my first-floor apartment, piling on 10 inches that transformed my Toyota Camry into nothing but a rounded lump in the well-covered driveway. Friends and co-workers in my little mountain town grew steadily more anxious as the chances of power outages and icy roads increased, but I progressively became more excited.

When I moved to North Carolina, I’d brought my cross-country skis with me, but I’d been skeptical they’d get any use so far south. As each snowflake fell, those narrow strips of fiberglass seemed more and more unfit to stay in the closet.

The next day, I put on my snowsuit and ski boots, threw the skis and poles in the car, and set off in search of a place to set them gliding. I began backing out of the driveway and—boom—the engine guard cracked against the buildup of packed snow. The plastic loudly dragged against the asphalt. There would be no highway travels that day.

Instead I trundled a half-mile down the road to the town’s greenway, tossed the skis on the snow, hooked my toes in, and grabbed the poles.

As I glided forward with my left foot, then my right, the crisp smell of winter and freshly fallen snow filled my nostrils and my body warmed from the exercise.

Cross-country skiing is a Until the trail ended, too soon, sporadically available sport in at a crowded apartment complex. the Smoky Mountains, since “Look, skis!” a child exsnow doesn’t often stick around claimed to her mother. People long enough to form a solid around here must not do this base and trails tend to be too much, I thought. steep for easy skiing. But it’s still Josh Whitmore, director of possible—and rewarding. outdoor programs for Western Carolina University, agreed.

Where to go: “There are folks I know that y The Blue Ridge Parkway, when we get 12 or 14 inches or especially the highermore, they’re out doing that elevation sections through kind of stuff,” he said. “It takes Western North Carolina a really special storm to make y Local greenways, which often provide easy access to flat that happen.” trails Special indeed. After getting y Roan Mountain State Park in my vehicle highway-worthy once Tennessee more, I set for the Blue Ridge y Moses Cone Memorial Park, Parkway. Since no salt is allowed which has 25 miles of on the Parkway, the road is maintained carriage paths closed when it snows, and I’d heard good things about the wide Where to rent: asphalt’s ski-worthiness.

Possibly the only place to rent “There’s some elevation there, cross-country skis in the and you don’t have to have a ton Southern Appalachians is High of snow on top of the paved road Country Ski Shop in Pineola, to get enough surface to do it a N.C. Skis rent for $18 per day, little bit,” Whitmore said. and lessons are available.

“As I glided forward, the crisp smell of winter and freshly fallen snow filled my nostrils and my body warmed from the exercise.”

Give it a try

For cross-country skiing in the Southern Appalachians, the Blue Ridge Parkway isn’t a bad bet. MICAH MCCLURE PHOTO

Higher elevations, particularly the Brevard area between intersections with N.C. 215 and U.S. 276 in North Carolina, are perhaps more recommended, but I didn’t really want to take my little front-wheel drive car up the windy access roads, never mind that I was fitting in my little jaunt amidst a workday, before the snow melted. Balsam Gap, located near the Haywood/Jackson county line in Western North Carolina, was my easiest point of access.

It was a gorgeous day—blue skies, temperatures in the high 40s turning the winter day to summer as I started to sweat from the workout, snow a little slushy with pavement peeking through in places, but the layer of white was plenty to keep me going.

My heart pumped and smile widened as I reveled in the best form of exercise yet invented (except for, perhaps, hiking). Reluctantly I turned around, responsibility calling me off the trail, but I’d got my first taste of skiing in the Southern Appalachians, and it wasn’t half bad.

I drove back to town daydreaming about riding out the next winter storm on the Parkway—woods silent but for the rhythmic squeak of waxed skis, drifts of white still layered on pine branches and bare limbs— and so began to wait for more snow.

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d e p a r t m e n t :

MOUNTAIN LETTERS

In search of the Southern word

BY JEFF MINICK

W

ill the South as a culture survive? More specifically, will readers a hundred years from now still identify certain contemporary writers as “Southern?”

The first question is too large to ponder here. It is safe to say, however, that in the last 60 years the American South has undergone a massive transformation. Segregation is a fading memory.

Cities continue to grow. Mass media has leveled some of the differences between the South and the rest of the country. The fried chicken and mashed potatoes of the Eisenhower era have made room for Pad Thai and guacamole.

Yet differences remain. The “grits” line between North and South still exists. There are still plenty of good old boys who hunt and fish and listen to country music. There are churches where one can find dinner on the grounds. And anyone with a car can still experience that wonderful feeling of flying along a country road in the summer at night with the windows open and the music blaring and the scent of honeysuckle and dew filling the air like the sweetest perfume on earth.

We can only see dimly into time, and prognostication is often a losing game, but it is safe to say that if the South does retain some of its identity as a region, then there will be Southern writers.

Certainly the literature that the South has already given to the world will act as a bulwark preserving both the South and Southern literature. Thomas Wolfe, William Faulkner, Tennessee Williams, Maya Angelou, Margaret Mitchell: these and many other writers continue to influence our own contemporaries, authors like Pat Conroy, Fred Chappell, Charles Frazier, Anne Tyler, and Alice Walker.

In “A Visitor’s Guide to the Literary South,” Trish Foxwell takes her readers on a wonderful tour of the homes and towns inhabited by some of our region’s finest authors. She has arranged her book alphabetically by state and city, and then proceeds to give thumbnail sketches of the authors who lived in these places and descriptions of their homes and any memorials raised to them by their fellow citizens. She also includes other nearby places of interest and even recommends various historical lodgings and restaurants.

One feature that marks this book as special are the enthusiastic tidbits of information Foxwell shares regarding both the authors she has selected and their homes. Many who live in Western North Carolina, for example, have read Thomas Wolfe’s novels and visited his home and his grave in Riverside Cemetery. Foxwell provides an unfamiliar snippet of a letter Wolfe wrote to his sister Mabel about their brother’s death: “I think the Asheville I knew

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died for me when Ben died.”

Though Foxwell focuses on the region’s indigenous writers, she doesn’t neglect those who settled or visited there. F. Scott Fitzgerald, who stayed in the Asheville area off and on for long periods of time while his wife Zelda sought treatment for her mental illness at Highlands Hospital, selected rooms 441-443 at the Grove Park Inn because the nearby stairs allowed him to avoid the public and because he could watch guests arriving and departing from his window. Foxwell takes us to Hemingway’s home in Key West, with its limestone exterior and swimming pool around which there still live descendants of Papa’s six-toed cats and to the Casa Marina, the grand old hotel Henry Flagler built where Hemingway often showed up in sandals and shorts for lunch.

“A Visitor’s Guide to the Literary South” also reintroduces authors who may be less known to contemporary readers. Robert

We can only see dimly into time, and prognostication is often a losing game, but it is safe to say that if the South does retain some of its identity as a region, then there will be Southern writers.

A Visitor’s Guide to the Literary South. 2013: The Countryman Press, 208 pages. $19.95.

Ruark from Southport, N.C., was a best-selling novelist in the 1950s, but the books that secured his reputation were the two reminiscences he wrote about his boyhood. Like Hemingway, Ruark loved the outdoors and traveled the globe, but it was his descriptions of his own backyard that proved his most lasting work.

Foxwell cites Ruark’s “The Old Man and the Boy:” “If you are a very small boy, being close to the water makes the summer a marvelous thing. There is something of the kiss of the sun on dancing little waves, fresh salt breeze in your face and sun on your head, the taste of salt fresh on your lips. It was like that this day when the Old Man taught me to use the cast net and all the fish were hungry for the little gray shrimp we had caught on the edges of steaming marshes.”

In these words, Ruark captured the South—or at least a small part of it. Foxwell’s wonderfully written and well-organized book should be appreciated by all readers who love literature, traveling, and the South. She has, as some people say here, “done us proud.”

SMOKY MOUNTAIN LIVING VOLUME 14 • ISSUE 6

Kephart classic gets reissue Great Smoky Mountains Association has released of a new edition of “Our Southern Highlanders,” the classic collection of essays on mountain life and lore by author Horace Kephart.

Kephart lived in the Hazel Creek and Bryson City, N.C., areas from 1904 to 1931 and advocated for the creation of Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Mt. Kephart, Kephart Prong, Kephart Prong Trail and Kephart Shelter are all park features named for him.

“This expanded third edition includes eight articles written by Kephart that were not included in any of the earlier editions,” said Steve Kemp, GSMA’s interpretive products and services director. “Newly included are stories featuring rifle making, moonshiners and revenuers, mountain culture, and Kephart’s feelings regarding a proposed new national park in the Smokies.”

“From the high divide that marks the

state line between North Carolina and Tennessee I heard the snort of a locomotive, one of those cog-wheel affairs that are specially built for mountain climbing,” Kephart wrote. “With a steam-loader and three camps of a hundred men each, it was despoiling the Tennessee forest. Slowly, but inexorably, a leviathan was crawling into the wilderness and was soon to consume it."

The entire book has been electronically typeset for the first time, said Kemp, making it much more readable than previous printings. Additionally, Bryson City author George Ellison has written an entirely new introduction for this edition, highlighting the fruits of recent research on Kephart and his work.

For the first time the book includes a comprehensive index and new photos by George Masa and others, and Bryson City watercolor painter Elizabeth Ellison,

author Ellison’s wife, illustrates the work with a specially-commissioned painting for its cover.

“There’s a reason this book has been in print for more than 100 years,” said Kemp.

“It is one of a handful of landmark works on southern Appalachian culture, written by someone who knew and respected the people and had the patience and skills to tell their story accurately and in great detail.”

Since its inception in 1953, Great Smoky Mountains Association has given more than $32 million to support the ongoing educational, scientific and preservation efforts of Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Support for the nonprofit association is derived primarily from online and visitor center sales of educational products and membership dues.

For more information about GSMA, visit SmokiesInformation.org or call 888.898.9102, ext. 226.

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Concord: 888-605-1994 29

d e p a r t m e n t :

MOUNTAIN CUISINE

Book series celebrates Southern traditions Each cookbook in the UNC Press Savor the South collection celebrates a beloved food or tradition of the American South. Written by well-known cooks and food lovers, the books brim with personality, the informative and often surprising culinary and natural history of southern foodways, and a treasure of some 50 recipes each—from delicious southern classics to sparkling international renditions that open up worlds of taste for cooks everywhere.

The series is now available as a set of the first 10 books published in the series: y “Buttermilk” by Debbie Moose, an award-winning food writer and author of five cookbooks, including “Deviled Eggs: 50 Recipes from Simple to Sassy” and “Potato Salad: 65 Recipes from Classic to Cool.” y “Pecans” by Kathleen Purvis, food editor of the Charlotte Observer and a member of the Southern Foodways Alliance, the Association of Food Journalists, and the James Beard Foundation. y “Peaches” by Kelly Alexander, whose work has appeared in the New York Times, Newsweek and O: The Oprah Magazine and is co-author of the New York Times best-selling barbecue cookbook “Smokin’ with Myron Mixon.” y “Tomatoes” by Miriam Rubin, a graduate of the Culinary Institute of America, was the first woman to work in the kitchen of the Four Seasons Restaurant, authored Grains, and writes the food and gardening column “Miriam’s Garden” for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. y “Biscuits” by Belinda Ellis, editor of Edible Piedmont, a North Carolina food magazine, and a member of the Southern Foodways Alliance. y “Bourbon,” also by Kathleen Purvis y “Okra” by Virginia Willis, who hails from Atlanta, Ga. and is the author of “Bon Appétit, Y’all” and “Basic to Brilliant, Y’all.” y “Pickles and Preserves” by Andrea Weigl, food writer for the Raleigh News & Observer. y “Sweet Potatoes” by April McGreger, founder-chef of Farmer's Daughter, a farm-driven artisan food business in Hillsborough, N.C. y “Southern Holidays,” also by Debbie Moose Cookbooks in the series to be released in 2015 will feature catfish, shrimp and gumbo. Keep up with and learn more about the series at facebook.com/savorthesouth.

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Connecting growers to new customers

T

wo of North Carolina’s leading local food and farmer advocacy organizations—ASAP (Appalachian Sustainable Agriculture Project) and RAFI-USA (Rural Advancement Foundation International)—have partnered for Connect2Direct, a major new initiative to increase farmer direct sales and expand local food access.

The goal for the collaboration is to support and build equitable community-based local food economies. ASAP has nearly two decades of local food systems development experience and RAFI is a national leader in farmer-led policy and market reforms.

Demand for locally grown food continues to grow and direct farm sales are an important connector between farmers and the community. North Carolina is home to a variety of direct markets including on-farm stores, roadside stands, community supported agriculture programs (CSAs), and according to the USDA’s Farmers Market Directory, nearly 250 farmers markets. “There are tremendous opportunities for farmers to increase direct sales” said ASAP Executive Director Charlie Jackson. “We’ve just scratched the surface of potential for North Carolina farms and communities and efforts to expand access through outreach and food assistance programs are good for our farms, our health, and our local economies,” notes Jackson.

Connect2Direct aims to dramatically increase farm to consumer direct sales and the usage of EBT/SNAP at farmers markets in North Carolina—by more than 100 percent within two years—by providing training and technical assistance to markets and market vendors, creating effective marketing and outreach campaigns, facilitating the transactional process for EBT/SNAP, and building statewide capacity and efficiency to sustainably ensure that all North Carolinians have access to fresh foods grown by local farmers.

For information about upcoming workshops and announcements, visit connect2direct.org.

SMOKY MOUNTAIN LIVING VOLUME 14 • ISSUE 6

MEDITERRANEAN

ITALIAN CUISINE

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d e p a r t m e n t :

MOUNTAIN CUISINE

Savory and southern Sweet Potato-Sour Cream Coffee Cake If you have weekend houseguests, this is the cake you want on your pedestal. It is a fuss-free keepers and sublime with a cup of coffee. Even the best coffee cake can be improved by the addition of sweet potatoes, which offer additional moisture and a gorgeous autumnal color.

Makes 8-10 servings For the Topping ¼ cup all-purpose flour ¼ cup brown sugar 1 ½ teaspoons cinnamon 2 tablespoons cold unsalted butter, cut into small pieces 1 cup chopped pecans For the Coffee Cake 2 cups sifted cake flour ½ teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg 1 ½ teaspoons baking powder ½ teaspoon kosher salt 2 sticks unsalted butter, at room temperature 2 cups sugar 4 large eggs, at room temperature 1 cup sour cream 1 ½ cups mashed sweet potatoes 1 teaspoon vanilla Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

Butter and flour a 10-inch tube pan.

To make the topping, in a small bowl, combine the flour, brown sugar, and cinnamon with your hands. Pinch in the butter until the mixture is crumbly, then mix in the pecans.

To make the coffee cake, sift together the flour, nutmeg, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. In the bowl of a stand mixer, cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy. Beat in the eggs one at a time until well blended.

Turn the mixer on high and beat 1 minute.

With the mixer on low speed, alternately add the flour mixture and the sour cream.

Then gently fold in the mashed sweet potatoes and vanilla until well blended.

Pour three-quarters of the cake batter into the prepared tube pan. Top with three-quarters of the streusel, then add the remaining cake batter and sprinkle the remaining streusel on top.

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Bake 50-60 minutes or until a cake tester comes out clean. Cool in the pan on a wire rack for 15 minutes, then remove from the pan and place on the rack to cool completely. Transfer to a cake stand or serving platter, streusel side up, and top with powdered sugar or a simple glaze if you like.

From April McGregor’s Sweet Potatoes cookbook.

Apple and Bacon-Stuffed Collard Roll Ups My husband, a born and bred southerner, hates collards. I took this attitude as a challenge. This recipe was inspired by Greek stuffed grape leaves, and it received my reluctant collard eater’s seal of approval. Use small or cabbage collards for tender leaves.

Makes 6 appetizer servings 2 cups cooked brown rice 3 tablespoons peeled, finely chopped apples 4 slices cooked bacon, crumbled 3 tablespoons chopped toasted pecans ½ teaspoon black pepper ½ teaspoon salt, or to taste 1 tablespoon olive oil 6 small collard leaves In a bowl, combine the rice, apples, bacon, pecans, pepper, salt, and olive oil.

Steam the collard leaves on a rack over boiling water in a covered pot for about 5 minutes, until they’re bright green and soft but not limp. Don’t overcook them.

Place a leaf on a cutting board and use a sharp knife to cut away the center stem, cutting each leaf in half lengthwise.

Discard the stem. Spoon a scant ¼ cup of the filling in the center of each half. Fold the short ends of the leaf over the filling, then fold the bottom up and roll. Tuck in the top of the leaf and place the roll seam-side down on a serving plate.

Repeat with the remaining leaves and filling.

Serve immediately or cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate for up to 2 days.

From Debbie Moose’s Southern Holidays cookbook.

SMOKY MOUNTAIN LIVING VOLUME 14 • ISSUE 6

CATVIBE.COM PHOTO

Asheville embraces its cheese culture The WNC Cheese Trail will hold its first annual festival of cheese in April at Highland Brewing Company in Asheville, N.C. The Carolina Mountain Cheese Fest advances the mission of the WNC Cheese Trail, which promotes the production and sale of local cheese, facilitates consumer education and encourages tourism to the region. There will be numerous opportunities for festivalgoers to learn more about, taste and purchase local, artisan cheeses.

The family-friendly festival will also include a wide variety of producers from the industry such as bread and crackers, meats, pickles and jams. Festival attendees can sample and purchase cheeses, speak with cheesemakers, have an up close view of dairy animals and attend workshops and panel discussions on topics such as cheese making, cheese tasting and cooking demonstrations using local cheeses.

Various activities leading up to the festival will include progressive dinners at Cheese Trail member farms and businesses.

For more information, visit mountaincheesefest.com.

Give the gift of radio and keep WNCW 88.7FM broadcasting strong another year.

Pledge online at www.wncw.org

The Octopus Garden Smoke Shop 210 Rosman Hwy Suite C, Brevard, NC 28712 - (828) 884-8796 2000 Spartanburg Hwy 300, Hendersonville, NC 28792 - (828) 697-1050 140 Airport Rd. Suite M, Arden, NC 28704 - (828) 654-0906 1062 Patton Ave, Asheville, NC 28806 - (828) 232-6030 660 Merrimon Ave, Asheville, NC 28804 - (828) 253-2883 80 N. Lexington Ave, Asheville, NC 28801 - (828) 254-4980 1269 Tunnel Rd. Suite B, Asheville, NC 28805 - (828) 299-8880 -

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• Find restaurants nearby • Read descriptions and explore menus • View photos and interactive maps It’s that simple!

An online dining directory for Western North Carolina and Eastern Tennessee ADVERTISING INQUIRIES: 866.452.2251

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d e p a r t m e n t :

128 million kids and counting

MOUNTAIN ARTS

S

ince their introduction in 1983, more than 128 million Cabbage Patch Kids have been adopted into homes worldwide. But the origin of their family tree goes back to 1978, when artist and entrepreneur Xavier Roberts first opened the doors of BabyLand General Hospital in the small mountain community of Cleveland, Ga. For more than 36 years Xavier’s company, Original Appalachian Artworks, Inc. has continuously created hand stitched, one of a kind works of soft sculpture art and made them available to the public. In the beginning these unique “born in the USA” works of art were called the Little People and Xavier shared his legend of finding them in a Cabbage Patch.

In 1983 the company signed a license agreement that would allow replication of these individual works of art in a smaller form with vinyl heads and soft bodies. At that time their name was changed from the Little People to the Cabbage Patch Kids.

In 2014, the all soft sculpture, one of a kind works hand-stitched-to-birth in Cleveland, Ga, once again became known as “Little People.”

Although Cabbage Patch Kids can be found in many places around the world, these made in the USA original Little People can only be adopted at BabyLand General Hospital or online at cabbagepatchkids.com.

Perhaps no one remembers Cabbage Patch Kids quite as well as those who were children in the 1980s. Hand-crafted kids are “born” in Georgia. DONATED PHOTO

Embracing storytelling’s potential The International Storytelling Center (ISC) and Dollywood’s DreamMore Resort will join forces in the coming year to highlight the art of storytelling at Dollywood’s newest destination in the Great Smoky Mountains.

Opening Summer 2015, Dollywood’s DreamMore Resort is inspired by Dolly Parton’s warm childhood memories of life growing up in the Smokies and telling stories on her family’s front porch.

Located just minutes from Dollywood’s award-winning theme parks, the new resort is committed to maintaining and building new multigenerational storytelling traditions. It has

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partnered with ISC to assist with training, performances and other special activities.

“Dolly Parton’s story, and her legacy as a songwriter and a storyteller, is an inspiration to people all over the world,” says Kiran Singh Sirah, ISC’s Executive Director. “We’re delighted to have the tools to support the DreamMore Resort in its vision of using storytelling as a way to bring families closer together.”

For more information on the International Storytelling Center in Jonesborough, Tenn., visit storytellingcenter.net. For more information on Dollywood’s DreamMore Resort, visit dreammoreresort.com.

SMOKY MOUNTAIN LIVING VOLUME 14 • ISSUE 6

Dolly Parton appears on screen in Dollywood’s musical show at the Dreamsong Theater during a special performance prior to announcing the creation of a new resort property for which plans include incorporating East Tennessee's oral history and storytelling traditions. SARAH E. KUCHARSKI PHOTO

‘Tis best to give & receive!

Purchase a Two-Year Subscription

to Smoky Mountain Living magazine and receive a FREE One-Year Subscription to give to a friend!

SUBSCRIBE at smliv.com

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d i re cto r y :

MOUNTAIN GALLERIES 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

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.

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EXPLORE

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 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 GOLDEN CARP, THE Specializing in local and American watercolorists, exhibits of local and global artisans in basketry, pottery and fiber arts, and unique home accessories and fine gifts.

107 Webster St. • Dillsboro, N.C. 828.586.5477 • thegoldencarp.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, acylic and oil artist, a cold wax and assemblage artist and two woodturners.

240 Depot St. • Waynesville, NC themahoganyhouse.com

Southern Appalachian Galleries

More than 2,000 sq. ft. of fine American crafts.

A destination in Black Mountain for over 33 years.

117 CHERRY ST BLACK MOUNTAIN, NC

828.669.5107 s e v e n s i s t e r s g a l l e r y. c o m

EXPLORE

Southern Appalachian Galleries

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THE

Ultimate Folk Art Gallery in the South!

THE BEST SELECTION IN THE UNIVERSE by artist “Cornbread”

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

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

85-03

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

3631 HWY. 53 E. AT ETOWAH RIVER RD.

DAWSONVILLE, GA 706-265-6030

aroundbackatrockysplace.com

HOURS: SATURDAY 11 TO 5 & SUNDAY 1 TO 5

26 Lodge Street Asheville, NC 828-277-6222

www.craftguild.org

B I LT M O R E V I L L AG E

WWW.CRAFTGUILD.ORG

For more fine crafts visit: Allanstand Craft Shop at the Folk Art Center Milepost 382 BlueST Ridge Parkway | 828-298-7928 26 LODGE ., ASHEVILLE , NC

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 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

828-277-6222

Guild Crafts OPEN Rd MON .-SAT.: 10AM-7PM, 930 Tunnel | 828-298-7903 SUN : 12-5PM 38

EXPLORE

Southern Appalachian Galleries

ARTIST OF THE

BLUE RIDGE

“Into the Smokies” Colored Pencil Drawing 30th Anniversary Commemorative Print

84--06

15 N. Main Street Waynesville, NC (828) 452-9284 tpennington.com

85-50

A Gallery

Art

Dances WITH WHERE

Nature — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —

“WHERE ART DANCES WITH NATURE” 98 NORTH MAI N STR EET • WAYN ESVI LLE • NC

828.456.1940 OPEN MON.-SAT.10-5:30 W W W.T WIGSAN DLEAVES.COM

EXPLORE

Southern Appalachian Galleries

85-42

240 Depot St. Waynesville, NC

(828) 246-0818 themahoganyhouse.com 39

Surviving a Smoky Mountain blizzard

BY CARROLL MCMAHAN

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SMOKY MOUNTAIN LIVING VOLUME 14 • ISSUE 6

“All living things contain a measure of madness that moves them in strange, sometimes inexplicable ways. This madness can be saving; it is part and parcel of the ability to adapt. Without it, no species would survive.”

— Yann Martel, Life of Pi

Blizzard conditions in the Smoky Mountains sometimes create unimaginable obstacles for individuals who are caught unexpectedly in the fury.

AUTHOR’S COLLECTION

WWW.SMLIV.COM

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In the winter of 1875, Polly Maples had an ominous feeling as her husband prepared to leave her, their children, and the warmth of the hearth in their humble mountain cabin. The previous night, a traveling salesman had boarded in the Maples family home just north of Gatlinburg, Tenn., and Polly’s husband had agreed to guide him across the rugged mountains to Cherokee, N.C. Perhaps Polly had observed the rhododendron leaves curling into tight pencil shaped rolls, unusual squirrel and bird activity, or one of numerous other folk signs pioneers relied on to predict the weather. Or possibly she had an unexplainable gut feeling she could not shake. Despite his wife’s misgivings David Crockett Maples had promised the salesman he would lead him to North Carolina and a mountain man’s word was his bond.

Born Oct. 20, 1838, David Crockett Maples grew up in the Banner community about two miles from the Gatlinburg Post Office. As a boy he learned to trap, hunt, and fish throughout the Smokies, and to tame the rugged terrain into productive farmland. He was a skilled outdoorsman and confident in his ability to survive in the harsh, uncertain times in which he lived.

Known as Crockett, the 6’3” tall, blue-eyed, blond-haired young man was 21 years old when he married 25-year-old Mary “Polly” Ogle on March 17, 1860. Polly was expecting their second child when Crockett enlisted in Company H, 9th Tennessee Cavalry on Oct. 18, 1863.

As a Union soldier, Crockett served under the command of Colonel Joseph H. Parsons. Inadequately equipped, the ragged regiment was assigned to small communities across East Tennessee, Eastern Kentucky, and Southwest Virginia.

The soldiers were hungry, cold and sometimes barefoot throughout the Civil War. By the time Maples was discharged in 1865, he was no different than most mountaineers: independent, stubborn and a born fighter. If the war had done anything, it had strengthened his belief that he could face any adversity.

In the dozen years following the Civil War, Crockett and

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Polly had six more children. In addition to their farm, the couple supported their growing family with a small supply store at the foot of Mt. LeConte. They earned additional income offering room and board for hungry, tired travelers who wandered into the mountains, and providing stables and feed for their horses. They were widely known for the hearty breakfast they served their boarders.

Occasionally, a sojourner would ask Maples to provide guide services to various locations throughout the Smoky Mountains. Since he was familiar with the mountain trails, Maples was more than willing in order to earn a little extra money.

Such was the case on that fateful day in 1875 when Maples, then 38, started out with the traveling salesman to show him the way to Cherokee. Even if the weather changed before he returned, Maples was confident enough in his well-earned survival skills to make it back home unharmed. Poor Polly, pregnant with her eighth child at the time, remained behind with the children, ages 1 to 15.

The two men left the Maples’ place on horseback before dawn and traveled south through Gatlinburg and the Sugarlands community heading up to the crest of the Smokies. Before they had gotten to Newfound Gap, nature had ambushed them. Snow fell steadily, and visibility had decreased. Heavy winds had created massive snowdrifts and the temperature had dropped drastically.

When at last they had reached Newfound Gap, Maples had decided to head back toward home. To his companion, he pointed out the path to Cherokee and started down the mountain. The storm was relentless, and Maples could no longer see the trail. Having concluded that he could not continue, he found a hollow log, crawled inside, and doubted he would see the light of another day.

At home, Polly had watched as conditions had deteriorated. With no means of communication with neighbors, she had prayed and worried, hoped for the best and feared the worst.

Maples awoke the next morning amazed he had not frozen to death in the night—but both his legs were numb. He mustered the will and strength to mount his horse, which had survived the night by having continued to stomp and move around, and rode several miles down the mountain to the nearest house, David Brackins’ homestead, located just above the present-day Chimney’s picnic grounds.

Suffering from exposure and severely frostbitten, Maples collapsed onto the Brackins’ porch. They brought Maples into the warm cabin, and the family sent word to Polly, who sent some of her relatives to the Brackins’ home.

Maples was strapped to a homemade litter and carried home. The family summoned a doctor—gangrene had set in to Maples’ severely frostbitten feet. The doctor observed the gravity of the damage and told the family he had no choice but to amputate both feet.

At the time, surgery killed as many as it cured, mostly due

SMOKY MOUNTAIN LIVING VOLUME 14 • ISSUE 6

Both of David Crockett Maples’ feet were amputated as a result of frostbite caused from exposure to a blizzard in the Smoky Mountains in 1875. He lived 53 years using homemade wooden feet and walking canes to get around.

COURTESY OF KIRBY SMITH

A blizzard to remember

T

he Storm of the Century, also known as the Great Blizzard of 1993, dumped more than nine feet of snow in the higher elevations of the Smoky Mountains, and threatened a school group’s lives.

Although the National Weather Service meteorologists predicted a significant snowstorm, some people were taken by surprise. Such was the case for a group of more than 100 students and faculty members from Cranbrook Kingswood Upper School—an exclusive prep school in Bloomfield Hills, Mich.—that became stranded as the result of the enormous accumulation.

The deadly storm struck on Friday, March 12, and continued to pound the Smokies with relentless force on Saturday. According to the Weather Channel, the astounding snowstorm buried Mount LeConte, elevation 6,593 feet, underneath 60 inches of frozen white powder. Compounding the problem were enormous snowdrifts that added in some places as much as 10 additional feet to the already staggering numbers.

According to newspaper accounts, the group of hikers from Michigan was in the rugged Smoky Mountains near the Tennessee-North Carolina border as part of a schoolsponsored Wilderness Expedition. The 10-day backpacking and camping trip was to develop students’ outdoor skills, positive attitudes towards challenging situations, and ability to meet the physical demands the environment brought.

When the hikers arrived by bus on Saturday, March 6, they divided into groups of eight and 10 and set off for hiking and survival training. Despite the rugged ridges, all was going well, and the weather was unseasonably warm for early March. The group had no warning of the impending blizzard—an event the National Snow and Ice Data Center defines as a violent winter storm lasting at least three hours and combining below freezing temperatures and very strong wind laden with blowing snow that reduces visibility to less than a mile. Some even had braved frigid mountain waters for a swim before the snow began to fall.

As the snow came down, Danielle Swank, age 15 of Libertyville, Ill., suffered her second asthma attack of the trip, forcing a hockey player to take on the added weight of her backpack as onward they trudged. In order to gain the true wilderness experience, the students had come without tents and instead used tarpaulins that they spread over a rope to create shelter. When the ferocity of the storm hit around three o’clock the next morning, the snow’s massive weight caused their tarpaulin cover to collapse.

At daybreak, the half-frozen hikers decided to go for help and headed down the mountain. By afternoon, Danielle and an instructor, James Woodruff, had fallen behind and snowfall had covered the footprints of those ahead of them. They soon found themselves lost and alone.

Cold, wet and exhausted, the two pitched their tarp. Swank couldn’t get one of her boots off and Woodruff, showing signs of hypothermia, didn’t even try. The next morning, Danielle couldn’t get that boot back on, so Woodruff decided to strike out alone hoping to find the others. He left Danielle with the tarp, food and his sleeping bag.

Nearly four days passed as Danielle faced unbearable cold and an unsure future. There were crazed moments during which she railed at the bitter weather and the vastness of the white landscape. On Monday, March 15, around 2 p.m., a National Guard medical helicopter located her, and another chopper picked up the rest of her group about 45 minutes later. Eventually, doctors had to amputate all five toes from Danielle’s right foot, which had been frozen inside her boot. Woodruff and all the others made full recoveries.

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to sepsis. But with no other option to save his life, Maples was carried out to the woodshed.

They poured enough moonshine down his throat to knock him out before the dreaded procedure began, and with a crude hand saw, the doctor sawed off the bottom third of Maples’ legs.

Maples survived the ordeal. By spring he had sufficiently recovered and had enough strength and pluck to design a pair of wooden feet to fill his boots. He strapped the homemade feet to his legs, and, with the help of two canes, he was once again mobile. Within a short time he was attending to many of the tasks he had done before the incident.

For the next ten years, he and Polly raised their family together and operated their store and boarding house. Travelers unfamiliar with the

Millions of visitors have ridden the Sky Lift up Crockett Mountain since Rel Maples built the attraction in 1953 and named the mountain overlooking Gatlinburg in honor of his grandfather Crockett Maples. AUTHOR’S COLLECTION

story were amazed when they met Maples and duly impressed with his dogged determination.

It was Polly who died first, on April 17, 1885 at age 51.

The following year Maples married Lucinda King, who was 20 years his junior. Together they had eight children, making Maples progenitor of a large, widespread mountain family of 16 children, the last of which was born in 1902 when Maples was almost 64. It seemed his fortitude knew no bounds. Later in his life a doctor removed one of Maples’ eyes, again without anesthesia. One oral tradition maintains that when Maples was well into his 60s and unable to carry a rifle, he killed a bear while armed only with a knife.

SMOKY MOUNTAIN LIVING VOLUME 14 • ISSUE 6

Successful rescue

E

ric Johnson and Randy Laws, both Eagle Scouts, went into the Great Smoky Mountains National Park on Thanksgiving weekend 1974 to hike a stretch of the Appalachian Trail. A winter storm blew in, dumped several feet of snow and whipped up drifts approaching five feet. Johnson and Laws thus were stranded at the Tricorner Knob Shelter along the trail.

When the boys’ parents discovered the storm had closed Newfound Gap Road, which prevented them from meeting the boys at the predetermined trailhead, they turned to park rangers to help find their sons.

Deep snows hampered searchers. On December 2, 1974, three days after the boys headed down the Appalachian Trail, a Chinook helicopter crew from Ft. Campbell Airbase spotted them. The crew, along with park rangers, hoisted the boys into the hovering chopper and whisked them to safety.

Every Dec. 3 since the boys were rescued, Eric’s

mom, Wanetta Johnson of Johnson City, Tenn., has had a poinsettia delivered to park headquarters near Gatlinburg, in appreciation of her son’s rescue. As for Eric, the ordeal 40 years ago did not scare him away from the outdoors. Now a retired special agent from the Drug Enforcement Administration, he went on to climb Mt. Rainer as well as peaks in South America.

Eric Johnson, left, and Randy Laws are pictured in the hospital following their rescue from a Smoky Mountain snowstorm in 1974. COURTESY OF KNOXVILLE NEWS-SENTINEL

WWW.SMLIV.COM

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For several days the entire Sugarlands community was abuzz about the unfortunate victim’s fate, but no one in the community knew him or who his relatives might be.

The grave of Edd McKinney was unmarked for 60 years before his family learned that he had died of exposure during a late-spring snowstorm in 1915.

COURTESY OF ARTHUR MCDADE

Unfortunate event

N

ot all stories of people caught in snowstorms in the Smoky Mountains have a happy ending. In an article published in the Upland Chronicles column of Sevierville, Tenn.’s, Mountain Press on March 3, 2013, writer Butch McDade said that on April 2, 1915, two men, Jim and Joe Cole were returning home from a hunting trip on the North Carolina side of the mountains when they found a young boy frozen to death.

The brothers found the body under an overhanging rock, beneath which the boy had sought protection from a snowstorm.

They rigged up a stretcher and dragged the corpse over the mountains to their Sugarlands community just south of Gatlinburg. Along the way, the men passed one resident who said the boy had gone by his cabin several days earlier and had refused to heed his warning to turn back despite the bad weather.

For several days the entire Sugarlands community was abuzz about the unfortunate victim’s fate, but no one in the community knew him or who his relatives might be.

Furthermore, they were not aware of anyone who was missing that fit the boy’s description. Reluctantly, members of the community dressed the boy in new clothes and gave him a decent Christian burial.

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Sixty years passed before the mystery was solved. In May 1975, Virgie F. Smith of Knoxville, Tenn., walked into the Sugarlands Visitor’s Center two miles south of Gatlinburg and told Ranger Glen Cardwell she was looking for information about her long-lost brother who had reportedly vanished somewhere in the Smoky Mountains six decades earlier. She was attempting to bring closure to a family tragedy that had haunted her for so many years.

Smith said that at the time of her brother’s disappearance her family lived in Blount County, Tenn. She had always heard that in the spring of 1915 her brother Edward McKinley, who his family called Edd, had gotten into an argument with their father. As a result of the altercation and with the idea of living with relatives in North Carolina, Edd took off into the mountains alone. That was the last the family ever saw of him.

Luckily, Cardwell remembered a letter telling the story of the body of an unidentified boy being found in the Smokies many years earlier. He found the letter and reviewed its contents with Smith, then located Earnest Ogle, who had been about 10 years old when the tragedy occurred and had helped dig the unidentified boy’s grave. After several meetings and comparisons of facts, individuals involved concluded that the mystery had been solved. Several months later Virgie Smith and other members of her family gathered with park officials at the gravesite and erected a gravestone.

SMOKY MOUNTAIN LIVING VOLUME 14 • ISSUE 6

His large brood of children, grandchildren, and greatgrandchildren greatly admired Maples. They rallied around him in his old age, and he became quite a fixture in Gatlinburg—an aging man walking around on wooden feet and supported on two canes. He died at the ripe old age of 90 on December 30, 1928; 53 years after that fateful snowstorm that almost ended his life.

Kirby Smith poses in front of the wooden statue of his greatgreat grandfather Crocket Maples at Crocket’s 1875 Breakfast Camp in Gatlinburg.

AUTHOR’S COLLECTION

MAPLES IN MODERN DAY As the years passed, David Crockett Maples’ family, friends, and neighbors perpetuated his legend. Several family members were instrumental in Gatlinburg’s development, and often cited him as their inspiration. One of his grandsons, Rel Maples, named Crockett Mountain, on which he built the Gatlinburg Sky Lift, in honor of his beloved grandfather.

Hattie Ogle McGiffin, one of Crockett Maples’ grandchildren, was a leading businesswoman in Gatlinburg throughout her 104-year-long life. She loved to tell the story of her grandfather’s survival and often credited her grandfather as a major influence in her life.

Hattie had begun working in her father Squire Isaac’s general store when she was 14. After she married Charlie Ogle and raised her children, Hattie had entered the business world by opening a craft shop. Once she had realized visitors needed a place to stay; she had opened and operated a tourist home. She then had added two motels and an RV park to her growing business empire. She rented her apartment for $35 a night and slept on a cot in the laundry room to bring in additional income for her investments.

Pledging to deliver quality food and service and to honor the legacy of Crockett Maples, a group of investors that includes some of his descendents, recently opened Crockett’s Breakfast Camp on the Parkway in Gatlinburg. A life-size wooden statue of the remarkable Crockett Maples stands in front of the business. Kirby Smith, great-great-great

Mistaken identity In the fall of 1940, Pulitzer Prize winner Ernie Pyle—a journalist who was known for his columns as a roving correspondent for Scripts-Howard newspaper chain— visited Gatlinburg. During that time he wrote 11 columns about Gatlinburg, the native people, and the trip he took to Mount LeConte. In one of those columns he wrote about the Maples family: “Maples—There are two brothers of the older Maples generation. One is Squire I. L. Maples, who once owned a store (I don’t know how the Ogles allowed that) and was once postmaster. The other brother is David Crockett Maples. They are direct descendants of the famous Davy Crockett, who died at the Texas Alamo.”

grandson of Crockett Maples and an owner of the Breakfast Camp said, “Growing up hearing the stories of my ancestor Crockett Maples, I’ve always admired his fortitude. I have a tremendous respect for him and other mountaineers like him who faced unimaginable obstacles to scratch out an existence in the rugged mountains.”

No doubt he made the statement about the Ogles because the family had operated a store in the settlement for several generations.

Whether Pyle was told the story or he assumed the Maples brothers were descended from Davy Crockett is debatable. Regardless, the story is erroneous. The mail carrier Pyle wrote about was David Crockett Maples, Jr., a son of Crockett Maples who survived the snowstorm ordeal. The senior was named after his uncle David Crockett McMahan, one of his mother’s brothers who was born in Virginia in 1796 when the famous Davy Crockett was only 10 and living in obscurity in Tennessee. Because of the sensational survival story and the coincidental name, many have assumed or repeated the tale that he was related to the famous frontiersman.

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HOLLY KAYS PHOTO

Winter

How critters cope with chilly weather

BY DON HENDERSHOT

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SMOKY MOUNTAIN LIVING VOLUME 14 • ISSUE 6

Do I stay or do I go? And if I stay, do I just sleep through it all?

The Southern Appalachians are home to a large and diverse fauna, and as winter sets in, that fauna gets to work surviving.

Groundhogs’ heart rates may drop from between 80 and 100 beats per minute to five. Their body temperature, normally around 98 degrees Fahrenheit may drop to as low as 40 degrees Fahrenheit. It generally stays at just a few degrees above the ambient (the temperature surrounding them) temperature in their burrow.

Painted turtles generally hatch in September or October but the babies don’t head for open water. “They will stay in their nests all winter, and they produce a natural kind of antifreeze that prevents their cells from freezing,” said Landon Ward an instructor at University of North Carolina Asheville’s Department of Environmental Studies.

Honeybees cluster together in the hive using their collective body heat and food stored in the hive to make it through. On the other hand, bumblebees are basically done for except for a few queens that retreat deep into the nests and hibernate over winter.

Perhaps the most obvious creatures to coalesce to the cold, are the birds—like kindly grandparents from Florida, they head south when the temperatures start to fall. The forests and fields across the Southern Appalachians empty and become quieter and more still.

Simon Thompson, owner of Ventures Birding Tours and coowner of Asheville Wild Birds Unlimited, said “a full 70 percent of the birds that nest in the forests of the Blue Ridge migrate.”

These birds, known as neotropical migrants, nest in North America but spend their winters in Central and South America.

That means that each fall, within a few short weeks, millions of birds vacate the Southern Blue Ridge. The brightly colored warblers, like chestnut-sided, black-throated blue, black-throated green, Canada, hooded and many, many more that danced and sang outside your tent at dawn every morning of your backpacking trip in the Smokies are gone. The scarlet tanager that blazed through the green treetops at your favorite overlook along the Blue Ridge Parkway—gone; the rose-breasted grosbeaks that stopped to pick black oil sunflower seeds from your backyard feeder—gone; the golden Baltimore orioles that nested at Beaver Lake Sanctuary in Asheville, N.C.—gone; the eastern kingbirds that patrolled fields and meadows hawking insects—gone; the raincrow (yellow-billed cuckoo) that called softly from the woods before every thunderstorm—gone; and that irrepressible iridescent indigo bunting that bounced around and sang from the clearing down by the lake—gone.

How does that happen? How do millions of songbirds (passerines) up and leave and hardly anyone notice? They leave under the cover of darkness, literally. They migrate at night.

Thompson noted a few reasons for that. “There are fewer

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Monarch on goldenrod.

THOMAS RANK PHOTO

DID YOU KNOW? The monarch butterfly that returns to Mexico each fall is anywhere from four to six generations removed from the monarchs that first arrived in North America in the spring.

Through the spring and summer the monarch’s life cycle is like most butterflies. As an adult, it reaches North America in the spring. It mates and dies. The caterpillars hatch, pupate, emerge as adults, and continue the northward trek. By autumn, some monarchs have made it as far north as Canada.

The last emerging monarch of the summer doesn’t just mate and die. It is not sexually mature when it leaves the chrysalis. Instead, it turns south, and as an adult, routinely migrates as many as 2,000 miles, back to traditional wintering grounds in Mexico. Here it overwinters in colonies of hundreds of thousands. When spring arrives, this adult, now six to eight months old and sexually mature, begins the cyclic migration northward.

Monarch swarm.

A. GUNTHER/CREATIVE COMMONS PHOTO

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A kettle of broad-winged hawks. STEVE BAKER/ MACKINAC STRAITS RAPTOR WATCH

DID YOU KNOW? Migrating raptors in a thermal are called a kettle.

Kettles can range in number from a half-dozen birds to thousands. Birds in a kettle rise or bubble up like boiling water in a kettle. When they reach the top of the thermal (sometimes three miles high) they set their wings and stream out, letting gravity take control. Raptors can often stream, or glide, for miles depending on the height of the thermal and weather conditions. It’s easy to see how kettling and streaming can be a very energyefficient mode of travel for large raptors.

A black bear.

STEVE HILLEBRAND/ U.S. FISH & WILDLIFE SERVICE

The scarcity of food is the primary impetus for migration and/or hibernation. It is not uncommon in the Deep South—Louisiana, Florida, Georgia—for male bears to be active all year if food is available. Females will still den, however, to give birth.

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predators at night, and many birds use the moon and stars to help them navigate,” he said. Nighttime also, generally, makes for a smoother ride because the atmosphere is more stable. It also appears to help the birds keep their cool. “Birds use an immense amount of energy during migration and migrating at night, at higher altitudes, where temperatures are cooler helps keep them from overheating,” Thompson said.

Now, all neotropical migrants aren’t fly-by-nights. Raptors (birds of prey) are diurnal migrants—they migrate during the day. And while songbirds migrate at night to avoid thermals (rising currents of warm air,) diurnal migrants seek them out.

“Raptors utilize thermals and mountain updrafts to aid in migration—the idea is to use as little energy as possible,” Thompson said. Birds can soar on currents from thermals and/or updrafts for miles at a time never having to flap their wings. Broad-winged hawks are the only true neotropical raptor that nests in the Smokies and they have usually all disappeared by mid-October.

And not all migrants are neotropical migrants. Some birds move just far enough south to find ample food. For example we often wind up with more sharp-shinned and Cooper’s hawks in the winter months than we have in the summer. There is also an “elevational migration” in our mountains. High-elevation nesters like dark-eyed juncos, yellow-bellied sapsuckers, golden-crowned kinglets and others move down the mountains in the winter.

There are at least 50 species of birds that stay with us yearround. Some of these are Carolina chickadee, tufted titmouse, song sparrow, northern cardinal, eastern towhee, eastern bluebird, northern mockingbird and at least five species of woodpeckers. But even these residents show wintertime adaptations. Some add extra down-feathers during their fall molt to increase insulation. Others like robins and eastern bluebirds shift from an animal diet (insects and/or worms) to more berries and seeds. Groups of eastern bluebirds will roost together in the same cavity if it gets especially cold. Some birds like Carolina chickadees can slip into torpor—a state where their metabolism rate is greatly lowered and body temperatures are dropped—to conserve energy.

And birds aren’t the only creatures that fly away. While the mechanics and logistics are still uncertain, biologists are sure that a number of dragonfly species migrate in the fall. Some migrant dragonflies found in the region include green darner, wandering glider, black saddlebags, and spot-winged glider.

These bugs head south in great swarms in the fall and it is known for sure that green darners and black saddlebags make it as far as Mexico.

But without a doubt the royalty when it comes to migrating insects is the monarch butterfly, King Billy. Early colonists dubbed monarch butterflies “King Billy” because the glistening orange color reminded them of William of Orange, King of England. Monarchs that routinely make it as far north as eastern Canada in the summer, turn, fly, waft and glide as far as 2,000 miles south to their primary wintering grounds in the

SMOKY MOUNTAIN LIVING VOLUME 14 • ISSUE 6

Michoacán mountains of Mexico. One monarch tagged in Central Park on August 27, 2005, was recaptured at El Rosario Monarch Sanctuary on February 14, 2006, a trip of more than 2,100 miles. Monarch migration brings a steady stream through Western North Carolina from mid-September through mid-to late October. (While huge numbers of migrating monarchs are not common across the region, I do remember one early October day a few years back when a group of us, looking for migrating birds, encountered large swarms of monarchs at the Pink Beds along Highway 276 in the Pisgah National Forest. Monarchs were dancing in the breeze from the treetops to as high as we could see.) Migrating monarchs have been recorded at altitudes above 11,000 feet during migration.

And of course bugs are just like all other animals in the fact that they’re all different. Dragonflies, monarchs and some others may migrate but other insects employ different strategies to get through the winter. Some, many actually, don’t get through the winter. Insects have, relatively speaking, short lifespans—their primary evolutionary calling is to perpetuate the species and most adults die after breeding, but many overwinter as eggs (praying mantis) or larvae (woolly worms) or nymphs (mayflies, stoneflies) or pupae (pipevine swallowtail.) The adults that make it have different strategies. Mourning cloak butterflies may not be as sexy as King Billy, but they are usually the first butterflies to appear in the region in the spring because adults hibernate, often in tree cavities, over the winter.

Seasonal patterns reflect changes in required resources—food, water, habitat. Subtle clues such as the change in temperatures, photoperiodism (change in number of hours of daylight and dark) and even the tilt of the Earth’s axis that seem to alert animals to the fact that precautions must be taken. Before electricity, Henry Ford, assembly lines and factories, most people fell into those same kinds of circadian and seasonal rhythms—spring was a time of awakening, summer was a time of labor, fall was a time of harvest and winter was a time of rest, contemplation and preparation.

When it comes to migration, herds of wildebeests and gazelles in Africa or pods of whales in the open ocean are likely most commonly known. The only mammal in the Smokies region that might be considered a migrant is the bat and that is murky waters. We have red bats here that migrate farther south and we have red bats that migrate here from farther north then hibernate. We also have lots of little brown, big brown and tricolored bats (formerly eastern pipistrelle) that migrate here to hibernate in caves alongside resident bats. However, once here for the winter, bats in the region are mainly hibernators.

Hibernation is a fascinating winter-coping tool. Most warmblooded animals (endotherms) that hibernate, like groundhogs and chipmunks, are able to slow their metabolism and lower their body temperature to just a fraction of what it was while they were last active. Dr. Lisa Muller, associate professor of Wildlife Management at the University of Tennessee, said that hibernation “…is really about how much food it takes to retain a body temperature that sustains life.” So if animals like

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Eastern king snake.

VIRGINIA DEPT. OF GAME AND INLAND FISHERIES

DID YOU KNOW? Different species of snakes—like rat snakes, king snakes, rattlesnakes and copperheads—often den/hibernate together. Landon Ward, instructor of environmental studies at the University of North Carolina at Asheville, says there is no validity to the old tale that king snakes and/or rat snakes are “pilot” snakes, leading other snakes to good denning spots. “They end up denning together because it’s a good site—they’re all looking for the same thing; somewhere dry with a good ambient temperature.”

Monarchs that routinely make it as far north as eastern Canada in the summer, turn, fly, waft and glide as far as 2,000 miles south to their primary wintering grounds in the Michoacán mountains of Mexico. One monarch tagged in Central Park on August 27, 2005, was recaptured at El Rosario Monarch Sanctuary on February 14, 2006, a trip of more than 2,100 miles.

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A tri-colored bat with white-nose syndrome.

NATIONAL PARK SERVICE PHOTO

DID YOU KNOW? White-nose syndrome, named for the fungus Pseudogymnoascus destructans, has killed millions of hibernating bats across 25 states and five Canadian provinces since the winter of 20072008. The disease is known for the white fungus that infects the muzzle, ears and wings of hibernating bats.

All caves in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park and many others on private and public lands throughout the Southern Appalachians are closed or closely monitored to try and stop the spread of this deadly disease.

chipmunks and groundhogs and other hibernators are able to drop their metabolic rate, “…that’s a good idea,” she said because that means less food (nourishment) is required to keep the animal alive.

One conundrum regarding hibernators in the Southern Appalachians is the black bear. Whereas critters like chipmunks (true hibernators) almost always have a stash of food in their den and have to awaken periodically to go to the bathroom and have a midnight snack—black bears generally never eat nor urinate nor defecate during their entire “big sleep.” Plus, while the bear’s heart rate might drop from 65 beats per minute to 12 or 15, it’s body temperature may only fall by 10 or 15 degrees to around 85 or 95 degrees Fahrenheit. While this provides a lot of watercooler banter for biologists’ in their offices, it means something different to people like Joe Yarkovich, wildlife biologist for the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Yarkovich has spent many winters following and monitoring bears in the Smokies, getting measurements and changing out telemetry collars and such, and he notes that one always has to be careful when approaching a “hibernating” bear.

The black bear’s warm body temperature during hibernation is also critical for the species survival because black bears give birth in their dens, in the winter. Most Southern black bears give birth from late December through February, and it’s their relatively high body temperature that allows the mother bear to be alert enough to care for her young. And that can be a demanding task. Newborns will nurse every 10 minutes or so. As they get older the intervals between feedings will grow giving the mom time to nap while the cubs nap.

Jumping mice join chipmunks and groundhogs and bats as hibernators in the Southern Appalachians while skunks, raccoons, possums, rabbits, squirrels (flying squirrels too,) river otter, mink, bobcats, coyotes, white-tailed deer and the newly

Deer in Cades Cove.

BRIAN STANSBERRY/ CREATIVE COMMONS PHOTO

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SMOKY MOUNTAIN LIVING VOLUME 14 • ISSUE 6

released elk in Cataloochee Valley join those creatures that carry on through the winter months.

Just because they carry on doesn’t mean they don’t make allowances for winter. Dr. Muller points out that while whitetailed deer don’t hibernate their metabolism slows down and they don’t have to forage as actively as they do in warmer months. And Yarkovich notes that the newly released elk are, “…built for winter. They’re cold weather animals,” he said.

“They molt twice a year and their winter coat consists of a woolly undercoat covered by thick guard hairs. I have seen them in the fields at Cataloochee many times with an inch or so of snow on their back that doesn’t seem to melt because they’re so insulated.”

Reptiles and amphibians are known as “ectotherms.” This means that they are cold-blooded—they have no way of internally regulating their body temperature. For most ectotherms, surviving the winter means finding a hibernaculum (den site) where the ambient temperature is above freezing.

Most aquatic reptiles and amphibians seek out deep pools below the frost line. They can settle in to an ambient temperature that requires little in the way of energy to sustain their metabolism but keeps them above freezing. Sounds good, but how do they breathe? Well, Mom Nature is pretty resourceful—turtles have special tissues with minute blood

vessels in their throat cavities and near their anus that allow them to extract oxygen from the water. Amphibians like frogs and salamanders can actually absorb oxygen through their skin.

Ward, an instructor specializing in “herps” or reptiles and amphibians, said that for most the goal is to avoid freezing because freezing creates ice crystals that rupture the cells and cause death. However, Ward said there are a few herps that ‘ain’t scarit.’

He noted that wood frogs, quite often, freeze at some point during winter. “They freeze solid,” he said. “Their heart stops beating and for all practical purposes they are dead.” But the wood frog is able to produce certain proteins (ice nucleators) and other anti-freezing agents that restrict the size of the ice crystals and determine where they might form so they do no harm to the cells. When ambient spring temperatures rise above freezing, wood frogs hoppily strike out seeking mates.

The Southern Appalachians

are home to a large and diverse fauna, and as winter sets in, that fauna gets to work surviving.

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Is anything out there?

The Chattanooga Zoo’s salamander guru tries to find the hellbender’s last holdout in Middle Tennessee

BY CHARLI KERNS

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SMOKY MOUNTAIN LIVING VOLUME 14 • ISSUE 6

E

Eastern hellbender.

DAVID HERASIMTSCHUK PHOTO

ven on a hot July day, the creeks of Roane County are cold enough to need thick wetsuits. Outfitted with snorkels and fins, divers explore the shallow creek’s rocky bottom on a hunt for the elusive hellbender, North America’s largest salamander species.

Guide David Hedrick, lead ectotherm keeper at the Chattanooga Zoo, has dedicated his life to studying hellbenders. Earlier this year, he received a one-year grant to conduct new research that may be the start to bringing the hellbender back to Walden Ridge and preventing their extinction in Tennessee.

“We need to identify the healthy populations and move toward preserving the best habitat and maintaining numbers there,” Hedrick said.

Averaging 15-19 inches long, the hellbender lives to about 50 years old in the wild and has existed the last 150 million years on earth.

Searching for the salamanders feels like combing a great green field for a four-leaf clover. During the day, hellbenders reside underneath boulders where their flat, mottledgray bodies provide perfect camouflage.

Hedrick and his co-researcher, Michael Freake, biology professor at Lee University, lift rock after rock for hours in search of hellbenders.

David Hedrick on the hunt for hellbenders.

DAVID HERASIMTSCHUK PHOTO

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Above: A resident of the Chattanooga Zoo’s Hellbender Facility. CHARLI KERNS PHOTO Below: Hellbender survey work during the 6th Meeting of the Hellbender Symposium, hosted in Chattanooga last year. COURTESY OF BOB BROADMAN

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Hedrick’s fascination with hellbenders started when he read the Guinness Book of World Records as a child. “I saw those old photographs of the world’s largest salamanders, the Chinese giant salamanders; I was stoked on that and talked about them with my dad,” he said. His father then told him stories about how he and many older locals used to catch several back in the 1970s.

“When I was a kid, every time we drove across the south Chickamauga bridge heading to downtown Chattanooga, I would peer through the window to see if I could find one,” Hendrick said. In 1986 at 13 years old, Hedrick caught his first hellbender while fishing on the Hiwassee. “It felt unreal to catch something like that, which was such an enigma to me,” he said.

Now, 30 years later, he still looks for hellbenders, but with a new piece of technology instead of a net. Environmental DNA determines if hellbenders inhabit the stream by finding any DNA floating in the water from shed skin. Using this technology and catchand-release, Hedrick tracks hellbenders, their age and any sign of eggs to determine if research sites are home to old salamanders, none at all or a breeding population.

“I’m looking at Walden Ridge creeks to figure out if these streams have been restored enough to support hellbenders,” Hedrick said, as he took a break by the side of the water.

“Really what it boils down to is should we do anything here or not?” The pool he was searching looked pretty good. The water was clear enough to have seen the many swimming bass and logperch darters and have found species such as the native freshwater mussel and its non-native cousin the Asian freshwater mussel, as well as crayfish, which make up much of a hellbender’s diet. Hedrick and Freake logged everything. Over the next year, their information collected from eight similar river bodies will help piece together the most up-to-date picture of the status of Cryptobranchus alleganiensis in Walden Ridge and Tennessee.

Historically the picture has looked pretty grim. Before the 1960s, hellbenders were common creatures, and their habitat range spanned from Alabama up to New York and over to Arkansas. Then during the 1970s and ‘80s their population took a devastating hit, which researchers attribute to several factors include siltation from dams and increased land development that dirty the water, which hellbenders need to be clear for oxygen filtration. Fertilizers from agriculture run into streams, causing algae to grow and use all the oxygen hellbenders and other species need.

“We need to identify the healthy populations and move toward preserving the best habitat and maintaining numbers there.”

Hedrick showing off a recently caught hellbender.

— David Hedrick

DAVID HERASIMTSCHUK PHOTO

Coal and copper mining runoff have polluted much of Middle Tennessee’s watersheds.

Because of these impacts, most all of Tennessee’s streams west of Chattanooga have no hellbenders, save a few lone, old ones in random pools high in the watersheds.

The last hellbender strongholds border between east Tennessee and western North Carolina. Oddly enough, Tennessee’s biggest haven for hellbenders is the dammed Hiwassee River. In the 1940s, the Tennessee Valley Authority built hydroelectric dams on the Hiwassee, which changed the river’s temperature and killed off most of the native fish. The water was cold enough for stocked fish such as rainbow and brown trout, however, and the Tennessee Wildlife Resource Agency took advantage. Now, the TVA works with the TWRA to manage the Hiwassee as a river system for a trout fishery, which also makes a great environment for hellbenders. Hedrick says the Hiwassee is an example where fishermen and environmentalists ultimately want the same thing: a healthy watershed. In terms of river management goals, Hedrick said, “What’s good for the trout is good for the hellbender.”

Hellbenders mark the health not only of good stock-fish habitat but of the entire watershed and local forest ecosystem. “I look at things like hellbenders as the canary in the mine,” said Steve Scarborough, cofounder of

David Hedrick showing off the first hellbender he ever caught at age 13. COURTESY OF DAVID HEDRICK

Dagger Canoe Company. Hellbenders are so sensitive to environmental changes that a reproducing population means everything flowing into the watershed is clean and healthy. Seeing no hellbenders where history shows they once existed means trouble.

“As the river gets worse, you lose all the hellbenders, then the next species goes and the next until eventually the canary is you,” he said.

Scarborough volunteers for a few conservation groups including non-profit company Conservation Fisheries. He also joined his local community’s effort to shut down ATV access to upstream watersheds, which are intregal to the health of the overall WWW.SMLIV.COM

watersheds. For example, a few months after the Cherokee National Forest Service shut down ATV access, fishermen in Tellico Plain, Tenn. noted the Tellico River’s quality had improved.

Hedrick and Freake look to supplement these preservation goals with an eventual reintroduction program to bolster hellbender populations at Walden Ridge and in other areas of Tennessee. In 2012, the Nashville Zoo successfully bred the first eastern hellbenders in captivity using hormonal injections. The Chattanooga Zoo has 10 resident salamanders, four of which are in a 40-foot pool while the others remain in tanks.

Hedrick has spent the last three years tweaking water temperatures, oxygen levels and pH levels to make the perfect breeding and egg-producing environment so that he will not have to use hormones. “Hellbenders are incredibly picky,” he said.

However successful preservation and reintroduction are, the hellbender likely never will see healthy numbers again. Hedrick says the huge fragmentation of the East Coast’s river systems has dealt a heavy blow both to hellbenders and to all native animals.

“You’ll always have to monitor these populations because most of our stream miles have been so negatively impacted,” he said.

“It’s like the entire eastern United States is one compromised ecosystem.”

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Music is like a memory— each performance a moment preserved, notes recalled but replayed never quite exactly the same way. And like a memory, music survives long after its makers.

From left: French Kirkpatrick, Carroll Best, and Carroll’s daughter, Alpha, in the Best family’s living room, 1959.

COURTESY OF LOUISE BEST.

“He was the most, probably without a doubt, the most creative banjo player I was ever in a room with,” said acclaimed musician French Kirkpatrick, 75, as he relaxed back into his couch, smiled, and began to reminiscence about his late friend, Carroll Best.

“When you hear somebody put a string of notes together that just keeps rolling, and he just keeps rolling—it was amazing,” Kirkpatrick said at his home outside Waynesville, N.C. “[Carroll] was not restricted to one style of music. It was phenomenal what he did on a banjo.”

Regarded as one of the all-time great and influential banjoists, Best, a Western North Carolina native, was known for his signature “fiddle style,” which was a melodic, syncopated three-finger stroke he evolved and perfected. Best’s style meant he could follow fiddle tunes note for note.

“Carroll was a gifted, regional banjo player who influenced national musicians. He was among the first, if not the very first banjo player to move three-finger hillbilly ‘pickin’ toward jazz and melodic melodies requiring a sophisticated ear and independent dexterity given only to few,” said Marc Pruett, Grammy Award-winning banjoist of Balsam Range and, like Best, a Haywood County, N.C., native. “He farmed, he worked in the local mill for years, and to those of us lucky enough to have known him, he freely shared his music.”

Storied “song catcher” Joseph S. Hall captured Best on a reel-to-reel tape during two recording sessions in 1956 and 1959. Hall gathered a handful of Haywood pickers, including Best and Kirkpatrick, to sit around a living room and simply play the melodies they knew and loved.

Some of the recordings were kept in Hall’s personal and extensive archives, while others were sent directly to the Library of Congress in Washington D.C. for posterity, and as a historical record of Southern Appalachian culture.

Ted Olson, professor of Appalachian studies at Eastern Tennessee State University in Johnson City, recently dusted off those old tapes, and with the help of the Great Smoky Mountains Association, a nonprofit preserving the culture of Southern Appalachia, released a 37-song collection of Hall’s recordings—“Carroll Best and The White Oak String Band, Old-Time Bluegrass from the Great Smoky Mountains, 1956 and 1959.”

“The Smokies could not have found a better friend for preserving their history than with Hall,” Olson said. “The Smokies have always

WWW.SMLIV.COM

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DOWNTOWN WAYNESVILLE, NC HISTORIC MAIN STREE T

Get the Season Started with a Selection of Events PHOTOGRAPHY BY ED KELLEY • EDKELLEY.COM

Historic Downtown Waynesville is a vibrant friendly small town with many fine shops, galleries, & restaurants.

There are many venues offering entertainment throughout the holiday season, live music, theater, movies & more!

Please refer to our website for the latest calendar.

“HOLLY DAYS” — Friday December 5th - Monday December 8th A long weekend of happenings beginning with ART after DARK, on Friday evening; musical venues, fine eateries, tastings, movies, & shopping ending with the CHRISTMAS PARADE right down Main Street on Monday evening.

“A NIGHT before CHRISTMAS” — Saturday Evening, December 13th • 6-9pm Streets lined with luminaries, Horse drawn wagon rides, Tour of Bethlehem, a Live Nativity, Carolers & Musicians, and Mr & Mrs Santa.

Shops, galleries & restaurants OPEN LATE.

“ALL through the TOWN” — December 1st-31st A month long extravaganza of downtown businesses and churches invite you to join them for a multitude of activities through the end of the year.

See all that awaits you at downtownwaynesville.com

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Come Downtown, Come Inside, Consider Us a Warming Station!

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had such a rich and beloved music history, and were one of the least understood regions of music in the Appalachians, and the Hall recordings have brought such appreciation to the music of this area.”

The recordings are evidence of the past surviving, even as things continue changing, and much of their wealth is in helping people understand from where they’ve come. “To witness other people get reconnected to their family members and their stories, to bring this musical heritage to a new generation has been really gratifying,” Olson said.

WHO WAS THE ‘SONG CATCHER?’ In 1937, Californian Joseph S. Hall was a 30-year-old graduate student the National Park Service hired for the summer to seek out and capture the Southern Appalachians’ unique people, places and things.

With notepad in hand, he jumped into a pickup truck and headed into the isolated landscape, to return with innumerable pages of stories told in an unique dialect—one that evolved partly out of the Scotch-Irish and German ancestry of mountain settlers, and partly, it seemed, from the mountains themselves.

“He loved his work, and the mountain people loved him,” said Steve Kemp, interpretive products and service director for the GSMA. “He spent months in the work camps, at people’s houses, in the fields, at church and funerals. He immersed himself in the culture.”

The people he interviewed had a variety of distinct accents and created beautiful music, things that ink and paper couldn’t do justice.

He knew he had to come back, and did in 1939. Gathering up his primitive recording equipment (which included phonograph cylinders), Hall set out again for the Great Smoky Mountains, this time to be a fly on the wall, simply letting the music play and speak for itself.

Those initial recordings were held at the

Top: Joseph S. Hall leaving the Hannah home on Cove Creek, in Haywood County, N.C., after recording the Hannah brothers (in the background). Left: Teague Williams’ house, where the White Oak String Band recordings were made. COURTESY OF TED OLSON

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more online: To watch an interview with French Kirkpatrick, visit youtube.com/smokymountainnews.

GARRET K. WOODWARD PHOTO

The boy from Laurel Branch French Kirkpatrick just wanted to play music.

“I kind of wanted to be a singer, but I couldn’t sing worth a hoot,” the 75-yearold chuckled. “I wanted to be a regular picker, a banjo player, I even tried to play the fiddle one time, played the harmonica—I was a multiple-testing type of person.”

At his home in Ironduff, in the rolling countryside of Haywood County, N.C., Kirkpatrick has spent his life soaked in the sounds of Southern Appalachia.

Growing up the rural community of White Oak, he remembers being a toddler hearing his father and siblings play the Saturday Night Roundup on WWNC in Asheville, N.C. “The music was an integral part of our lives. I listened to them on the radio, and being a 3-year-old kid hearing your daddy play banjo [was great],” he smiled.

Like most pickers raised in Western North Carolina, music was something that was constantly around. Before Interstate 40 was constructed, the main route from Asheville to Knoxville or Nashville was

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through Newfound Gap. Kirkpatrick’s father William, a musician himself, would house innumerable other performers passing through the area to and from shows.

“Daddy didn’t even lock the doors in the house,” French said. “That’s just who we were. [All these musicians would] stop by, get a meal, [stay the night] — he just wanted these guys to be taken care of.”

Whether it be a neighborhood meeting up on the weekends for some porch sessions or simply crossing paths with an instrument in your household, the melodic sounds of the mountains have always rung true.

“Music is an expression of the soul with what you can do,” Kirkpatrick said. “If you’re a musicians, it’s part of your DNA— it’s part of who you are.”

In his formative years, Kirkpatrick was taken under the wing of renowned Haywood County banjoist Carroll Best, who taught the teenager his signature three-finger style, which incorporated fiddle notes into banjo playing—a concept as wild for the time as it was intricate.

“I wanted to play banjo and [Carroll] taught me the three-finger stroke, but Carroll did so many syncopated type licks and stuff,” Kirkpatrick chuckled, referring to Best’s astounding pickin’ talents.

It also was Best who would bring a

SMOKY MOUNTAIN LIVING VOLUME 14 • ISSUE 6

young Kirkpatrick along on the weekends to play gigs around the region. Eventually, Kirkpatrick joined the Mountain Valley Boys, a group who toured the Southeast, opening for the likes of Porter Wagoner and Dolly Parton—two of the biggest names in the music industry at the time.

“We did go out and did a few things, but we were never stars,” Kirkpatrick modestly said. “It was a hobby, we wanted to play, never made no money out of that, just something fun for us to do.”

And as the usual wear and tear of old age takes its toll on Kirkpatrick, he still picks up his banjo or guitar and plucks some tunes, even if it can be a tad painful.

“This’ll go, it all goes sooner or later,” he said, raising his hands to show their wellearned wrinkles and calluses.

Kirkpatrick has lived and thrived in Western North Carolina, a region filled with folks as genuine and uniquely talented as they are real.

“Everybody has got their mind set in the right direction, just salt of the earth people, people that want you to succeed, want for you to have a roof over your head,” he said. “It’s that unselfish attitude that circulates through Southern Appalachia. It’s not that I was born here, it’s that I was never going to leave here—I would have never left these mountains.”

Carroll Best in the mid-1980s.

COURTESY OF LOUISE BEST

“When you hear somebody put a string of notes together that just keeps rolling, and he just keeps rolling—it was amazing. [Carroll] was not restricted to one style of music. It was phenomenal what he did on a banjo.”

Library of Congress, until the GSMA compiling them into the album “Old-Time Smoky Mountain Music.” That record went on to receive a Grammy Award nomination for “Best Historical Album” in 2012.

“When people look back at what was happening [with these recordings], they will see a major link between the [old-time] Appalachian music and how it ties into the bluegrass music that came out of Kentucky,” Kirkpatrick added. “These guys were not copying Earl Scruggs or Don Reno’s versions, these guys wanted to make their own sound.”

Given the album’s success, Olson, the Hall estate and GSMA decided to dig a little deeper and see what other treasures were waiting to be discovered in Hall’s archives— which was how tapes of Carroll Best and The White Oak String Band surfaced. His collection “balances a sense of awe and respect with what continues to be a fair and empathetic representation of the Smokies,” Olson said.

After his trips to the Smokies in the 1930s, Hall became utterly fascinated with the mountains and its people. He never forgot the lifelong friendships he forged, many of which he nurtured until his death in 1992, at age 85.

He cherished his time in Southern Appalachia and made several trips over the decades, as a National Park Service employee or freelance researcher, to continue recording as much of the culture as tapes could contain.

On July 21 and Aug. 5, 1956 and July 22, 1959, Hall hauled his recording equipment to the home of Teague Williams (Best’s brotherin-law) in Upper White Oak, a community just outside the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. It’s thought Hall knew Williams from his travels around the mountains during the 1930s recording sessions.

“Teague set up the sessions, brought Hall in to make the recordings, and called up the musicians to come and play,” Olsen said.

“There really was an atmosphere of trust between Hall and Williams and Williams with the local musicians.”

A seemingly “honorary Appalachian,” Hall found himself consistently in folks’ good graces.

“I remember [Hall] had a good demeanor about him, he wasn’t a know-it-all person, he just wanted to do a good job,” said Kirkpatrick, who was just a teenager when he

— French Kirkpatrick

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‘I’ve got this,’ he always tried to met Hall. “He was a real pleasant, make the next time better than he easy going person. He would did the last time and that’s what make you feel like he was your really identifies a good musician.” uncle.”

Following the recording “[Hall] was deeply respected sessions, The White Oak String and loved,” Olson added. “He Band continued to play together gained a deep sense of trust with for a time before splitting up and the families in the Smokies. He going their separate ways, but earned it and maintained it over each member continued to the years.” perform and over the years they Carroll Best and The White would cross paths and jam Oak String Band appear on Hall’s together again.

July 21, 1956 session. Only 25 Though many feel, even today, years old at the time, Best played Best never got the credit or alongside 27-year-old success he deserved, those in the fiddler/rhythm guitarist S.T. know, including banjo legends Swinger and another guitarist Tony Trischka and Bela Fleck, simply noted as “Joyce.” Best’s point to Best as an immediate new bride, 18-year-old Louise, Louise Best, 2014. Louise accompanied husband Carroll on a couinfluence on them and banjo also joined in on the recording, ple of ballads during the July 21, 1956 recording session.

GARRET K. WOODWARD PHOTO sound. singing a couple of ballads.

“This is an extremely important During the Aug. 5, 1956 session, album for banjo players, and really for anyone with an interest in 24-year-old rhythm guitarist Don Brooks joined Best and historically significant old-time, country and bluegrass music,” Swanger and Teague Williams jumped on the microphone for Trischka said of Best’s recently released recordings. “Carroll Best “More Pretty Girls Than One.” single-handedly created a unique banjo style that allowed one to play fiddle tunes note for note. He could also burn in a more LIGHTNING STRIKES TWICE Scruggsy sort of way, as these recordings will bear out.”

In 1959, Hall returned to the Smokies for another round of Throughout his life, Best played all around the Southern recordings at the Williams household. “Back in those days, we Appalachia region, winning banjo competitions, ultimately played every Friday and Saturday night at somebody’s house, and pushing his reputation as one of the finest pickers into the it might as well have been at Teague Williams’ recording as industry. anywhere else,” Kirkpatrick said.

Tragically, his life was cut short at age 64 when he suffered an And so, Williams got hold of the boys on the party line untimely death. (multiple household phone line) on July 22, telling them to get “Carroll Best was the ‘best,’” said Steve Sutton, Grammydown to his house to record with Hall. nominated banjoist of Whitewater Bluegrass Company and “[Hall] had this humongous reel-to-reel recorder, and I thought, ‘my goodness, what’s this guy going to do with this,’” Kirkpatrick chuckled. “He told us he’d put the music in the Library of Congress, and I really didn’t think much of it.”

Kirkpatrick noted that one has to put things in perspective as to why it seemed such an out-of-this-world notion that the sounds he and his musician friends made would end up in the national archives.

“You’ve got to think back to the 1950s. There was not many televisions around then and the records you got were 78 rpms,” Kirkpatrick said. “I mean for somebody to want to record you on a reel-to-reel recorder and put it in the Library of Congress of the United States, well, that was big stuff, man.”

Listening to the recordings, one hears the band’s youthful exuberance and the foundation of lifelong melodic talents— especially from Best.

“He really went on to reinvent himself and take his music to another level,” Kirkpatrick said. “He was never comfortable to say — Marc Pruett, Balsam Range

“As I close my eyes and

remember Carroll, those shards of memory morph into sparkling music notes, diamonds almost. Then, I begin to hear a banjo rippling and pinging through cool night air at a Crabtree farm. And I see Carroll Best smile again, surrounded by family and friends he loved.”

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SMOKY MOUNTAIN LIVING VOLUME 14 • ISSUE 6

Haywood County native. “We played together under a tree at Merlefest the evening before his death. It was tragic and such a loss in so many ways. [He made] the most beautiful sounds to ever come from a banjo. He showed me just how versatile the instrument could be—he was a one-of-a-kind.”

Of those Hall recorded, French Kirkpatrick and Raymond Setzer and Louise Best, Carroll’s wife, are still alive—but the music continues to survive. Best’s grandson, Jerry, can pick up the banjo and play just like his “papaw” did, and the recently released recordings will keep handing down the tradition. “Younger people can hear them; children can hear what their ancestors did,” Louise Best said.

And though Best is physically gone from the earth, the sounds of his body, mind and soul echo deep into the history and backwoods of Southern Appalachia, a strong undertow in the vast, melodic ocean of mankind, one that will be felt for countless future generations. Even 19 years after his death, Pruett’s heart still holds a piece of Best in it.

“After a person is gone, their individual human history decays into little shards of memory in the minds of loved ones and friends,” he said. “As I close my eyes and remember Carroll, those shards of memory morph into sparkling music notes, diamonds almost. Then, I begin to hear a banjo rippling and pinging through cool night air at a Crabtree farm. And I see Carroll Best smile again, surrounded by family and friends he loved.”

Bring it home “Carroll Best and the White Oak String Band, OldTime Bluegrass from the Great Smoky Mountains, 1956 and 1959,” includes 37 songs and a 64-page booklet with photographs of the musicians, as well as extensive notes detailing their histories, their styles and the songs they played.

The album is available at all Great Smoky Mountains National Park visitor centers, by visiting smokiesinformation.org or calling 888.898.9102 (x226).

Liner notes included with the album are available online at smliv.com, so read up on the band’s complete history, its members, as well as the life and work of “song catcher” Joseph S. Hall.

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Holiday Performances Unique Gift Shops Holiday Tours Horse & Carriage Rides Tree Lighting

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SMOKY MOUNTAIN LIVING VOLUME 14 • ISSUE 6

Check out

Across 1 Energy and enthusiasm 4 Severely testing, as terrain 8 LeConte mountain boasts the highest ____ in the eastern United States 9 Fortitude 10 Apple pie maker 12 Reached the top, of a mountain ridge, for example 15 Wedding promise (2 words) 17 Name 18 Indigenous to a local environment 20 North Carolina musical guide, named after local mountains (goes 26 down) 21 “Where ___?” (2 words) 22 “___ Skylark”: Shelley 24 Fade 25 Bunny that keeps on keeping on 27 Took in sustenance 28 Awards for bravery 31 Remain steadfast 33 Arts degree 34 On the other hand 35 Jazz tune 36 Mountain near Gatlinburg, named after a local mountain man who survived a huge storm 37 Area close to a cliff face

c ro s swo rd :

ACROSS THE MOUNTAIN

MICAH MCCLURE PHOTO

Down 1 2 3 5 6 7 9 11 13 14 16 19 22 23 26 28 29 30 32 33

Hellbender, for one Never-say-die Frozen lake surface Showing no fear 1993 weather event in the Smoky Mountains (2 words) Dawn to dusk ____packing “War of the Worlds” is one ___-zero temperatures Opposite of survive Poorly lit Harry is one, near Gatlinburg Chinaware used for drinks, scones etc. (2 words) Long time periods See 20 across Deface Medical man who saves lives Survival boat, in the Bible Harass Time period a long time ago

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d e p a r t m e n t :

MOUNTAIN VIEWS

Of an old man, hog feeding, and lessons learned

BY JIM CASADA

G

randpa Joe offered a study in character contrasts. Though easygoing and soft-spoken, he was mule stubborn.

Similarly, while tough as a well-seasoned hickory shaft and seldom given to shows of emotion, he could be wonderfully patient and tenderhearted with his adoring grandson. Fiercely independent, Grandpa wouldn’t labor under the supervision of another man. Yet he possessed an admirable work ethic comprised of pure grit, keen understanding the wisdom inherent in “making do with what you’ve got,” and sharply honed survival skills developed during a lifetime of living in close harmony with the land.

He epitomized the mountain description of “quare,” but in my eyes he had endearing traits. Those included being full of tricks as a pet ‘coon; possessing endless quantities of that most precious of assets, time; and in some senses, just being a boy trapped in an old man’s body. One sunny September afternoon all these qualities coalesced in unforgettable fashion.

We were in the cornfield of his tiny farm along the banks of the Tuckasegee River near Bryson City, N.C., pulling red-rooted pigweed and gathering inferior pumpkins scattered amidst rows of towering Hickory Cane corn. The corn had already “made” and awaited storage of cobs in cribs and fodder in shocks. It was hard, dirty work, made even tougher by the possibility of stings from packsaddles and certainty of encounters with razor-sharp edges of dry corn leaves. To me, none of that mattered.

There were ripe ground cherries for a snack, one of Grandpa’s rich store of tales to nurture the mind, and treasure from his memory to stir the soul. We were gathering the weeds and pumpkins to feed hogs, part of a fattening-up process that would conclude with killing day come the first strong cold snap in November. Then the whole extended family—my grandparents, mother and father, aunts and uncles, along with any cousins old enough to help—would put in an extended day of labor spent processing from six to eight hogs, using, as Grandpa put it, “everything but the squeal.”

As was often the case in such settings, Grandpa started reminiscing about the days when hogs roamed free and fattened to prime bacon perfection on chestnut mast. The subject was a deeply moving one for him. Invariably he became a bit mistyeyed and had a catch in his voice as he looked back in forlorn longing to the demise of the American chestnut. He would recall

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how it was a staff of life providing cash money from sale of acid wood, shakes for roofing, rails for fences, lumber for barns, nuts to sell to city markets, and, of course, food for hogs.

Troubled by the visible sorrow his recollections had brought to the surface, I abruptly changed the subject with mention of one of my fondest ambitions. “Grandpa,” I said, “I sure do wish I could throw a rock all the way across the river.”

Shedding his mantle of painful nostalgia, he chuckled and responded: “Why that’s easy. I can throw one all the way over to the mouth of Deep Creek” (which entered the river across from his home).

With youth’s endless enthusiasm and woeful lack of insight, I seized on that seemingly ludicrous statement. After all, Grandpa was bent with age, had never completely recovered from a hip shattered while out hunting in the snow, and to my knowledge possessed no throwing ability whatsoever. Impulsively I stated, without even thinking about a quid pro quo should he fail: “Grandpa, I’ll pull pigweed, shell corn, and slop the hogs by myself for a week if you throw a rock across the river.”

Having duly offered the bait and suckered his grandson into taking it, the family’s grand sire muttered a favorite phrase.

MANDY NEWHAM-COBB ILLUSTRATION

“You’ll learn,” he said, as he opened his Barlow knife to cut down a particularly long corn stalk. After stripping the leaves he trimmed the stalk to about eight feet and carefully carved a notch near its small end.

We then walked to river’s edge and, after careful scrutiny, Grandpa selected a stone. Fitting it into the notch, he drew back the corn stalk and launched his donnick. The rock was still rising when it reached the opposite side of the river. Turning to me with that sly grin I had seen so many times before, Grandpa said: “Son, things ain’t always what they seem. I reckon you best get to pulling pigweed.”

He left me in my crestfallen misery for what seemed an eternity then chuckled: “Go ahead and get busy now, but I’ll help you.

Next time though, you might want to remember to pause and ponder before you open your pie hole.”

SMOKY MOUNTAIN LIVING VOLUME 14 • ISSUE 6