Smoky Mountain Living, October 2015

OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2015

Celebrating Southern Appalachians THE

MADE IN THE MOUNTAINS | HISTORIC RUGBY, TENNESSEE | VIRGINIA CREEPER TRAIL | FALL RECIPES

20+ MADE IN THE

SMOKIES

ARTISANS

Who Make Us Proud

OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2015 • VOL. 15 • NO. 5

smliv.com

SMOKY MOUNTAIN LIVING

AUTUMN PHOTOS | RAIL TRIPS | WOOLLY WORM LORE | BIKE TRAILS

Heirloom apples & hard cider, pumpkin pie & persimmon bread

WICK & GREENE JEWELERS —

For

EXTRAORDINARY

LOVE

121 PATTON AVENUE ASHEVILLE, N.C. 828.253.1805

wickandgreene.com

fall foliage primer Featuring weekly fall color reports starting September 23 thru November 4. These reports include photos, scenic drives and festivals. You’ll find it all at FallFoliagePrimer.com.

Visit any Mast General Store for everything you need to savor Mother Nature’s colorful party before winter’s slumber— maps, jackets, birding and trail guides, footwear, packs and outerwear, and perhaps a little something for a picnic.

Waynesville • Asheville Hendersonville • Valle Crucis Boone • Winston-Salem, NC Greenville • Columbia, SC Knoxville, TN MastStore.com •

Contents

FEATU RE STO RIES

MADE IN THE SMOKIES From baskets to blue jeans, guitars and kayaks to hot sauce—our picks for the region’s best artisanal goods put fresh spins on time-honored craftsmanship.

PHOTOS BY KATHRYN RAY

PAGE

48

APPLES TO APPLES Albemarle and Stayman and Limbertwig, oh my: Heritage apple varieties bear fruit for Southern Appalachian farmers. Plus: Hard cider makes waves in Western North Carolina.

BY BRUCE INGRAM

PAGE

68

LET THE SPIRITS MOVE YOU Historic Rugby, Tennessee—the most haunted town in America, according to some—summons creative forces as well as the enduring legacies of its 19th-century founders.

BY AMY GREENE

PAGE

74

Serving fine guests like you for 50 years!

Established in 1966, Joey's Pancake House has become a Maggie Valley landmark.

With a history of serving top notch breakfasts coupled with good old fashioned customer service Joey's is a tradition with visitors and locals of our area.

From our signature pancakes and golden waffles to our country ham and hashbrown casserole you are sure to find a favorite that will keep you coming back for more. And of course every single dish is served with love!

Photo by Paul M. Howey

October: Open Daily 7 am until 12 pm Closed Thursday

4309 Soco Rd. Maggie Valley

(828) 926-0212 Reservations Accepted

WINTER HOURS: November - February Open Friday - Monday 7 am until 12 pm

Contents SWEET APPALACHIA

DEPA RTME N TS

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

17

Comforts for the mountain soul—from pumpkin and persimmon recipes to regionally inspired books to read this season. A vintage photo offers a window into the daily struggles of early life in the Smokies, and our folklore columnist sizes up the woolly worm and its place in fall forecasting and festivities.

MOUNTAIN EXPLORER

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

27

Autumn brings out the best of the region, whether you’re taking in the foliage by bicycle on the Virginia Creeper Trail or riding a train on the Great Smoky Mountains Railroad. More reasons to rove these hills and valleys: Stop and smell the witch hazel flowers, discover Native American petroglyphs in South Carolina, admire whimsical metalwork in Tennessee, wander a fairy garden in North Georgia, and take a break for beer and pie in Sylva, North Carolina.

ON THE COVER Asheville-based luthier Elizabeth Jayne Henderson plays one of her hand-built ukuleles, featuring ornate inlay work on the headstock and fingerboard.

PHOTO BY KATHRYN RAY

Good Living 4

FROM THE MANAGING EDITOR . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 CROSSWORD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

AT THE PARK. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 MEET OUR CONTRIBUTORS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11

PHOTO ESSAY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 STORIES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80

Southern Appalachian Mountains Gallery Guide . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42 Visit Eastern Tennessee. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66 Select Lodging. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79

SMOKY MOUNTAIN LIVING VOLUME 15 • ISSUE 5

Have a Creative Vacation in a Small Town

Bryson City is much more than a scenic outdoor playground. Indoors, our artists and crafters are creating unique works of beauty and utility for the home. Don’t miss their shops and galleries.

Visit GreatSmokies.com for a complete guide to restaurants, shops, events, activities and lodging in the North Carolina Smokies. 800-867-9246 The Stecoah Arts & Crafts Drive-About Tour of studios and galleries is November 27 and 28. Details are on our website.

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5

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customerservice@beverly-hanks.com SMOKY MOUNTAIN LIVING VOLUME 15 • ISSUE 5

FROM THE MANAGING EDITOR Community

I’ve never been much of a maker, though that’s not for lack of trying. An VOL. 15 • NUMBER 5 Publisher/Editor . . . . . . . . . . . Scott McLeod scott@smliv.com General Manager . . . . . . . . . Greg Boothroyd ads@smliv.com Sales Manager . . . . . . . . . . . Hylah Birenbaum hylah@smliv.com Managing Editor . . . . . . . . . Katie Knorovsky editor@smliv.com Editor-at-Large . . . . . . . . Sarah E. Kucharski sarah@smliv.com Art Director . . . . . . . . . . . Travis Bumgardner travis@smliv.com Graphics . . . . . . . Micah McClure, Emily Moss Finance & Admin. . . . . . . Amanda Singletary Sales . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Greg Boothroyd, Whitney Burton, Amanda Bradley Distribution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Scott Collier Contributing Writers . . . . . . . . . Jim Casada, Annette Saunooke Clapsaddle, Rachael Crowe, Ashley English, Dawn Gilchrist, Linda Goodman, Amy Greene, Jo Harris, Don Hendershot, Bruce Ingram, Holly Kays, M. Linda Lee, Jeff Minick, Tim Osment Contributing Photographers. . . . . Joy Boren, Dawn Gilchrist, Alicia Goodson, Bruce Ingram, John Northrup, Tim Osment, Gary Pinholster, Kristina Plaas, Kathryn Ray, Betty Shelton, Beverly Slone, Bonnie Waigand Contributing Illustrators . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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

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

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

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

artistic streak got me through graphic design courses in college and these days keeps my home stocked with odds and ends from the hobby shop. My sewing machine collects dust next to yards of colorful fabric. Dried-out paints clutter spare drawers in my basement.

Years-old canvases, still wrapped in cellophane, remain at the ready.

When it comes down to actually making something, my inner perfectionist almost always gets in the way. My mom, on the other hand, has been quilting for decades, carrying on a tradition passed down by her mother. Mom times her quilting endeavors so that the coldest months can be spent hunkered down on the couch with a piecedtogether project on top of her.

Her father carved beautifully, chiseling intricate designs into wooden plates and boxes. Santa Claus was his specialty; each year he whittled and painted one for each of us grandkids. For a few years, my dad bonded with him over the hobby. Grandpa was a more confident carver, having honed the skill over many years, but Dad has always been a natural with the paintbrush.

Indeed, making is about so much more than the end product. Though the act itself can be isolating, art forges connections. My dad learning how to carve from his father-in-law.

My mom hand-piecing quilts to keep her children and grandchildren wrapped in love.

In this issue, we celebrate those connections by spotlighting some of the region’s best makers. There’s Billie Ruth Sudduth the basketmaker, who weaves together mathematical theories and time-honored Appalachian techniques. Knoxville designer Marcus Hall invests in his community with denim. Joel and Tara Mowrey’s hot-sauce company convenes the worlds of farming and artisan food buyers, spice addicts and holistic health believers.

The daughter of a master luthier, Elizabeth Jayne Henderson puts her own spin on that legacy with one-of-a-kind guitars and ukuleles. Likewise, outdoorsman Adam Masters also builds on the family business: His dad revolutionized the kayak manufacturing industry in the 1970s; now he has shaken up the sport itself with belly-down kayaks.

Each of these people—not to mention the countless other artisans who call these mountains home—share stories that reveal as much about this region as the products they make. Indeed, that’s the beauty of a handcrafted object. Beyond its skillful craftsmanship, there’s a story folded in.

Of all the items in my home that tell stories, my dining table is the pièce de résistance.

Handcrafted a few blocks down the hill from my house at the Old Wood Company in Asheville’s River Arts District, the table gives new life to lumber reclaimed from a heritage barn in East Tennessee.

The varied grains, knots, and pockmarks of this weathered wood bring a sense of the past into my dining room. In these nooks and crannies, I can see the future, too: the spills and sorrows, the laughter and celebrations. Quality craftsmanship ensures that this table will last my family through years—even decades—of joys and frustrations.

Its story goes on.

— Katie Knorovsky, managing editor

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

Crossword answers

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

Puzzle is on page 9.

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7

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SMOKY MOUNTAIN LIVING VOLUME 15 • ISSUE 5

Across

Crossword

KATHRYN RAY PHOTO

1 Asheville-based business producing custom-made guitars 9 Function 10 Lawyers’ grp.

12 Custom broom and hiking stick makers at Route 321's Arts and Crafts Loop 13 Kayak you ride on your stomach, created by Adam Masters from Weaverville, N.C. 15 Titanium symbol 17 Compass point 18 Leave 19 Asheville banjo-making company run by Patrick Heavner and Topher Stephens 21 Douglas or noble 22 Christmas visitor 24 Adverb ending 25 Turned 26 Founder of Marc Nelson Denim (custom-made jeans) based in East Knoxville, goes with 32 down 30 Deli offering 32 Rows of bushes 34 The Smokies’ ___ River Gorge 36 Craftsman of stringed instruments 37 What an artist depicts 39 “I did it __ way” 40 Couple running Smoking J's Fiery Foods from their farm in Western North Carolina

ACROSS THE MOUNTAIN

Down 1 Makers of lightweight, durable hammocks, for short 2 Kayak bottom 3 Mariner's heading 4 Bird's home life 5 Sink, as a tide 6 Frivolous gal of song 7 Word from a con 8 Business that makes a lot of dough 11 Pesto herbs 14 Time 16 Art___ (creator) 18 Engine need 19 Cooking vessel 20 Deer, turkeys, etc.

22 Home basket weaver from Bakersville, North Carolina, Billie Ruth _____ 23 U.S. capital 27 French sculptor, Jean 28 Money to the bottom line, for short 29 Stringed instrument, for short 30 High school, for short 31 Coastal features 32 See 26 across 33 Uplift 35 Edge 37 Patch 38 Garden of Eden resident

Answers can be found on page 7. BY MYLES MELLOR • ILOVECROSSWORDS.COM

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9

HIGH UP IN THE CHIMNEY TOPS One of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park’s most-loved trails, Chimney Tops, has re-opened following nearly three years of rehabilitation. The to-do list for the highly eroded trail was extensive: Construction included 367 steps of 300pound rocks, 1,600 feet of uphill drainage ditches, and 6 million pounds of rock crush fill, which volunteers made by hand on-site.

The effort was funded by Friends of the Smokies’ Trails Forever program, a $5 million endowment that pays for a fulltime crew to reconstruct and rehabilitate the park’s most impacted trails. Next up? The five-mile Alum Cave Trail, which also provides access to Mount Le Conte. The two-year project began this summer and will mean trail closures Monday through Thursday, May to November. —HK

Take Better Photos This Fall

W

ith crisp blue skies and a riot of colors in the treetops, fall in the Smokies is a photographer’s paradise. But with more than 800 square miles to chose from, where should an aspiring shutterbug start? Knoxville photographer Kristina Plaas, who works as a media volunteer for the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, shares some of her favorite vantage points.

GO HIGH: “During mid-October I love to go to high-elevation vista locations and admire the tapestry of color as it progresses down the slopes,” Plaas says.

10

On a Butterfly’s Wing

A

little white sticker on the ground might not seem like an exciting find, but when journalist Jaimie Maussan found the 14-year-old tag on the floor of a Mexican forest, he quickly realized he held something amazing. The sticker had once adorned the wing of a migrating monarch butterfly, stuck there in 2001 by a volunteer in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

“It tells the story of a sunny October day in 2001, a little butterfly that made it to Mexico, and a storm that killed a lot of monarchs,” says Wanda DeWaard, outdoor educator at the park and leader of its Great Smoky Mountains Monarch Watch Project, about the tag.

A longtime fan of the monarch’s beauty and complexity, DeWaard has spearheaded the park’s Monarch Watch efforts since 1997. Over the years, she and monarch-loving volunteers have tagged as few as eight and as many as 300 butterflies as they pass through en route to their wintering grounds in Mexico. The tags, placed on the butterfly’s lower wing, have codes that connect to information about when and where it was applied.

“The tagging can give us a lot of information about how the butterflies accomplish their travel and how fast they do it,” DeWaard says.

That information has become increasingly

important in recent years, because monarch butterflies are in trouble, as DeWaard has seen firsthand through the Smokies’ tagging project.

“Their numbers are way down,” she says.

A lot of the population decrease has to do with habitat destruction. Monarch butterflies rely on milkweed, a plant that supplies monarch caterpillars’ only food source. But milkweed populations are decreasing, a phenomenon largely blamed on agricultural practices that use “Roundupready” crops. These plants are engineered to be immune to the herbicide, so the fields can be sprayed indiscriminately without harming the crop.

Milkweed is often a casualty.

Other factors, such as increased development in open spaces where milkweed grows, have also played a part.

Monarch enthusiasts like DeWaard hope that by involving more people in the effort to understand this remarkable insect, those trends might reverse, or at least slow down. “It’s America’s most famous butterfly—it’s iconic,” she says.

Monarch tagging in the park will take place during September and October, with dates to be announced. Check www.gsmit.org/ CSMonarchTagging.html or contact tiffany@gsmit.org to sign up. —Holly Kays NPS PHOTO

Community

KRISTINA PLAAS PHOTO

AT THE PARK

Middle Prong at Tremont for late October and also likes Walker Camp Prong along Newfound Gap Road in mid-October.

“Water shots are best captured on rainy, cloudy days, though skilled photographers can get away with dappled sunlight with the right gear,” she says.

HONOR HISTORY: Framing fall No hiking is required to take in the views at Clingmans Dome, the park’s highest point, but for those willing to take a walk, Newfound Gap, Charlies Bunion, Mount Le Conte, and the Chimney Tops trail are rewarding options.

GET WET: Fall colors over water can make gorgeous shots. Plaas favors the

SMOKY MOUNTAIN LIVING VOLUME 15 • ISSUE 5

colors around historic buildings, such as those in Cades Cove and Cataloochee, allows for interesting composition. “Early morning or late afternoon offer the best light for photographing buildings, especially if the sun is reemerging after rain,” Plaas says.

Weekly fall color reports are available at nps.gov/grsm/planyourvisit/fallcolor.htm and on the park’s Facebook page. —HK

MEET OUR CONTRIBUTORS Community

Amy Greene

I

n “Let the Spirits Move You” on page 74, bestselling novelist Amy Greene explores historic Rugby, Tennessee, and how its sense of place affects her as a writer.

It’s a topic she comes to authentically: In her breakout novel, Bloodroot, and last year’s Long Man, Greene writes with deep love and knowledge of the mountains and hollows of her native East Tennessee.

She also weaves in the folklore and legends passed down by her father, a factory worker, and her mother, who worked in tobacco.

“We have such a rich oral storytelling tradition here, and a heritage of folklore going all the way back to our Scots-Irish ancestors,” she says. “There's plenty of literary territory to mine.”

According to Greene, those passed-down stories and wisdom create a pervading sense of those who came before. “Appalachia is a mystical place where folk magic remains a part of our daily lives.”

Along with her husband and children, Greene lives in the Smokies foothills town of Russellville, Tennessee, the farming community where she grew up. She is currently finishing her third novel, the story of a girl growing up in a small Appalachian town who loses her family to an industrial accident. Learn more about Greene at amygreeneauthor.com.

Linda Goodman

I

n this issue’s Stories column, Linda Goodman recounts a personal tale of family and feline companionship. A writer and touring storyteller, Goodman taps into her upbringing as the daughter of a coal miner in the mountains of Virginia as well as a woman of Melungeon descent.

“When I was a child, I hated the word ‘hillbilly’ because it was always preceded by the adjectives ‘dumb’ and ‘dirty,’” Goodman says. “Thank God for my father’s stories, which told about people who were strong and brave—people who could get food from rock. It is because of my father's stories that I am a storyteller today.”

Though her story on page 80 shares a lighthearted memory, Goodman says she is best known for her Appalachian women’s monologues. “I want my

daughter and grandchildren to know that they are descended from survivors and to be as proud of their heritage as I am,” she says.

Goodman now lives in Waxham, North Carolina, and is a member of the North Carolina Storytelling Guild. This Halloween weekend, she will hold court at Waxham’s Created in the Carolinas, an artist co-op and gift shop, to share scary stories for adults and children. Learn more about Goodman and other upcoming appearances at lindagoodmanstoryteller.com.

Kathryn Ray

W

hen photographer Kathryn Ray set out to capture the portraits of the artisans and entrepreneurs featured in this issue’s cover story, “Made in the Smokies,” she expected to be inspired. What she didn’t anticipate: the humble beginnings they all share.

“I pictured each of them having an amazing and unique story that would just blow me away,” Ray explains, “but the true simplicity of their paths ended up being that much more incredible to me. There were no special tips or tricks to follow. They worked hard—to learn and to grow at what they love—and life just flowed with their efforts. I found this so relatable and honest.”

Making these sorts of connections drives Ray as a portrait photographer. “During photo shoots, I get the chance to be a part of someone else’s story,” she says.

“Usually at the end of each shoot, I leave feeling as if I have gained a new friend. It couldn’t get much better than that.”

A native of Waynesville, North Carolina, Ray studied photography at Appalachian State University and has traveled widely with her camera in tow. Learn more at kathrynrayphotography.com.

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Bonnie Waigand Foothills Parkway, Tenn.

Autumn lights up Southern Appalachia in a burst of color and activity.

Our readers share their favorite scenes of this showstopping season.

John Northrup Sunset at Clingmans Dome.

Bonnie Waigand Wears Valley, Tenn.

It was still late summer elsewhere, but here, high in

Appalachia, fall was coming…A few leaves near the treetops had turned, but most were full and green…It was a transitional period, when the world changed its cycle and opened a window during which people might also change, if they had the inclination.

— Alex Bledsoe, excerpted from Wisp of a Thing: A Novel of the Tufa Gary Pinholster Jim Bales Place Roaring Fork, Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

Alicia Goodson Cataloochee Valley, Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

Gary Pinholster Tremont, Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

Then summer fades and passes and

October comes. We’ll smell smoke then, and feel an unexpected sharpness, a thrill of nervousness, swift elation, a sense of sadness and departure. –Thomas Wolfe

Each issue of Smoky Mountain Living features photographs taken by our readers. For the December 2015/January 2016 issue, send us pictures depicting wintry displays of reflection and resolve. Email photos to editor@smliv.com by October 14; include information on where the photo was taken and by whom.

Reader-submitted photos are unpaid but may be rewarded with publication in our nationally distributed magazine.

Connect with us at smliv.com, facebook.com/smliv, and on Twitter and Instagram @SmokyMtnLiving.

Beverly Slone Rock pool at High Falls.

Joy Boren Waynesville, N.C.

John Northrup Mount Cammerer, Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

SWEET APPALACHIA COMFORTS FOR THE MOUNTAIN SOUL

IT’S A WASH Minnie Reed Quilliams prepares for washing day in this 1927 image by prolific Smokies photographer Laura Thornborough. Mike Aday, the librarian-archivist for the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, describes doing laundry in those days as a “grueling and never-ending” job. Residents such as Quilliams would draw water from a nearby creek, carry it to a big metal pot such as the one pictured, and bring it to boil over an open fire. Homemade lye soap, a washboard, and plenty of elbow grease were needed to keep a family in clean clothes. “Many of us romanticize life in the mountains—we imagine idyllic days and cool mountain breezes, pastures of plenty, and a cozy cabin. What we don’t think about are all of the tasks that our ‘modern conveniences’ make bearable,” Aday says. “When I look at this image my first thought is how hard her day was going to be. My second thought is that I need to be more appreciative of my washer and dryer.”

NPS, GREAT SMOKY MOUNTAINS NATIONAL PARK PHOTO

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THE VIEW FROM HERE Sweet Appalachia

MEG REILLEY PHOTO

The Great Pumpkin

BY ASHLEY ENGLISH

18

E

veryone has his or her heartfluttering produce. Spring enthusiasts get downright giddy at the first sign of strawberries. Summer lovers are prone to spontaneous happy dancing whenever watermelons make their debut. Winter fans throw up their hands in praise when blood oranges and Meyer lemons go on display at the market.

For me, it’s all about pumpkins and winter squashes. When the nights begin to get a bit cooler here in the Southern Appalachians and the fireflies bid the nighttime scene adieu, area farmers market tables begin groaning under the weight of members of the genus Cucurbita and the family Cucurbitaceae. That’s where I find my bliss.

Pumpkins and “winter squash”—a catch-all term that includes acorn, butternut, candy roaster, delicata, kabocha, red kuri, spaghetti, turban,

SMOKY MOUNTAIN LIVING VOLUME 15 • ISSUE 5

MEG REILLEY PHOTO

½ cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, chilled and cubed 1 /3 cup + 2 tablespoons ice water 15 fresh sage leaves, minced

Sage Crust Pumpkin Pie

I

love using fresh herbs in desserts.

Here I’ve tucked a generous helping of sage into the crust of a pumpkin pie. The herb’s earthy, grounding flavor is a good foil to the sweetness of the pie filling. If you’d like to impart even more flavor, consider adding an additional tablespoon of minced sage to the filling.

Makes one nine-inch pie

YOU WILL NEED:

FOR THE CRUST 1 ¼ cups all-purpose flour 1 teaspoon sea salt

FOR THE FILLING 2 cups pumpkin puree* ¾ cup light brown sugar ½ teaspoon ground cinnamon ½ teaspoon nutmeg ½ teaspoon ground ginger 1 teaspoon sea salt ¾ cup heavy cream ½ cup milk 2 eggs, beaten 2 teaspoons vanilla extract *TIP: For pumpkin puree, cut a baking pumpkin (5-6 pounds) in half. Place flesh side down on a rimmed baking sheet and roast at 425 degrees F until the flesh has softened, about 45-50 minutes. Cool slightly, then remove the seeds, scoop the flesh out of the skin, and puree it in a food processor until smooth. Or you can simply use solidpack canned pumpkin, or cooked and pureed cushaw squash.

TO MAKE:

PREPARE THE CRUST 1) Mix the flour and salt together in a medium-large mixing bowl. Using a pastry cutter or two forks, incorporate the butter until the mixture resembles a coarse meal (you should still have rather large bits of butter when you’re done).

and an heirloom varietal long familiar in Appalachian foodways, cushaw—are rich in nutrients, subtle and sweet in flavor, and robust in color and ornamentation. They are hardy, sturdy, and equally welcome adorning an autumnal porch display or roasted, mashed, and baked into a pie or savory dish. To me, they’re quite possibly the perfect food. My belief in this is so strong, in fact, that a baked and pureed butternut squash, grown in my garden, was the first solid food I gave to my son at age 6 months.

More than beauty and flavor endears these harbingers of autumn to me. It’s their stalwartness, if such an anthropomorphic characteristic can be bestowed onto a family of vegetables. They take their time getting to the right size and heft, if the vine borers don’t take them out first, and then they last. They stick around—holding out and hanging on and preserving until you’re ready for them. In that sense, you might consider them the workhorses of the vegetable patch. Lacking the soft, watery, ephemeral flesh of their summer kin, pumpkins and winter squashes can meet your edible needs for months, once properly cured and stored.

That staying power, shared also by their autumnal cohort, the apple, pushes pumpkins and winter squashes out of the fair-

Slowly drizzle in the ice water. Stir with a mixing spoon until the dough starts to clump.

2) Transfer the dough onto a floured work surface, and fold it together into itself using your hands. The dough should come together easily but should not feel overly sticky. Shape the dough into a flattened disk. Place in the refrigerator and chill for at least an hour.

3) Remove the chilled pie dough disk from the refrigerator. Roll it out into a 12inch circle on a lightly floured surface.

Scatter the minced sage evenly over the surface of the dough and, using the rolling pin, press in the sage until it becomes incorporated throughout.

4) Transfer the pastry dough to a lightly buttered nine-inch pie pan. Trim the overhang to one inch and crimp the edges decoratively. Place the pan in the refrigerator to chill while preparing the filling.

PREPARE THE FILLING Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Combine all of the filling ingredients in a medium-size mixing bowl. Whisk until well incorporated.

ASSEMBLE THE PIE Pour the filling into the chilled crust. Bake at 350 degrees F for 60-70 minutes, until the filling has set and doesn’t wobble in the center when gentle touched. Cool at least one hour before serving.

When the nights begin to get a bit cooler here in the Southern Appalachians, area farmers market tables begin groaning under the weight of members of the genus Cucurbita and the family Cucurbitaceae.

That’s where I find my bliss. weather-friend zone and places them front and center in the triedand-true realm. In a culture besieged by here-and-gone media and rapid-fire conversations, these guys are the antidotes—the slow pokes whose company enriches and enlivens. Beautiful to behold, delicious to eat, and in it for the long haul, pumpkins and winter squashes are the true edible friends you need in your life.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Candler, N.C., homesteader Ashley English is the author of seven books. See smallmeasure.com.

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FARM TO TABLE Sweet Appalachia

A Passion for Persimmons

BY JIM CASADA

T

he unusual characteristics of the persimmon, along with its widespread presence in Southern Appalachia, have long made it a prime contender for mountain folklore and folkways.

Like the American holly, persimmons have distinctive sexual identities, and only “she” persimmons bear fruit.

Old-timers often checked persimmon seeds—much like they observed the location of hornet nests, thickness of corn shucks, or the coloration and stripes of woolly worms—as a means of predicting winter weather. When a seed is cut open, it contains a kernel-like image in its middle. A spoon shape meant lots of wet, heavy snow; a knife shape indicated biting, icy winds and bitter weather; a fork shape signified sparse snow and a mild winter.

From a more practical standpoint, the dense wood of the slowgrowing tree was sometimes used to fashion a wedge for splitting

Smoky Mountain Persimmon Bread YOU WILL NEED: 2 brimming cups of persimmon pulp (fruits should be squishy ripe; incidentally, pulp freezes well) 3 ½ cups flour 1 teaspoon salt 2 teaspoons baking soda pinch (half a teaspoon or so) nutmeg or allspice 2 cups sugar (brown or refined sugar) 1 cup (2 sticks) melted butter (cool to room temperature) 4 large eggs, lightly whisked 2 cups pecans or English walnuts, chopped and lightly toasted 2 cups dried fruit such as apricots, raisins, yellow raisins, or dates 2/3 cup bourbon (a cheap brand is fine)

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TO MAKE: Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Butter a pair of loaf pans or use non-stick pans.

Sift flour, salt, spice, soda, and sugar into a large plastic mixing bowl. Whisk in the butter, eggs, bourbon, and persimmon pulp until thoroughly mixed. Add and whisk in nuts and dried fruit. Place batter in pans and slide into oven. Check periodically as bread begins to brown by inserting a toothpick. When it comes out clean the bread is ready. Cooking time varies depending on configuration of pans used.

NOTE: Once cooled, wrap to keep moist. The bread will keep several days (but likely be eaten much sooner), and it freezes well.

— Jim Casada

SMOKY MOUNTAIN LIVING VOLUME 15 • ISSUE 5

1796-98

firewood, and until modern times the woods used by golfers featured heads made of persimmon. A craftsman with sufficient patience could carve a well-seasoned chunk of persimmon into a highly effective turkey call in the form of either a box call or suction yelper. Persimmons were also of interest to hunters in another regard, because all sorts of game animals—deer, bear, ’coons, and ’possums— consumed the fruits once they fell to the ground in late fall. Indeed, sportsmen sometimes referred to ripe persimmons as “animal candy.”

The fruit likewise figured prominently in a traditional mountain diet. To be sure, many country cousins hazed their cityslicker brethren with an introduction to the persimmon that was anything but a treat, for the lovely orange globes are incredibly astringent until fully ripe. Unknowing folks would be encouraged to

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An Asian persimmon dwarfs the native, wild variety of the fruit. Opposite: A basket of ripe Asian persimmons. JIM CASADA PHOTOS

take a bite and then would spend the next five minutes trying to rid themselves of the taste. Biting into one produces an immediate, unwelcome understanding of the phrase “pucker power.”

Once persimmons ripen, though, a magical transformation occurs. The soft fruit provides a sweet, sticky treat with overtones of honey. Delicious eaten raw, persimmons can also be dried and preserved as fruit leather, used to make a mead-like beer, or best of all, to form the key ingredient of breads and puddings, such as the recipe at left.

Tip: Asian persimmons taste every bit as good, are far larger than their wild cousins, lack seeds, and sometimes can be found seasonally in grocery stores.

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

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21

READING LIST Sweet Appalachia

Great Scots

BY JEFF MINICK

F

rom Georgia to Pennsylvania and maybe even up to Maine, the ScotsIrish largely settled these mountains in which we live, the Appalachians. Arriving too late to settle in the coastal plains or the piedmont of the English colonies, these Ulster-based people traveled into the mountains, expanding westward in their search for land and livelihood.

Because of their history, these Scots-Irish pioneers proved to be the ideal people to face the rugged terrain, the frequent battles with Native Americans, and quarrels with politicians back East. They were a hard-bitten, hardscrabble lot, often fiercely Calvinistic Presbyterians. Their history included fighting and raiding, distaste for government, and a bountiful sense of clan and family.

Myriad historians have tackled the stories of this endlessly fascinating people. Here are two favorite books on the topic.

In The Steel Bonnets: The Story of the AngloScottish Border Reivers, George MacDonald Fraser gives us the history of the Lowland Scots who would eventually make their way first to Ulster and then to the New World. Best known for his highly recommended Flashman Papers series of novels, Fraser here chronicles a people caught up in almost constant fighting as England and Scotland finally entered into a union under James I of England.

Fraser shows us how the battles against the English created strong family clans Skyhorse Publishing, 2008. in conflict with the govern432 pages, re-release. ment—Armstrongs, Elliots, Grahams, Johnstones, Maxwells, Scotts, Kerrs, Nixons, and other families whose names still echo in our hollows and valleys—and why these families became border raiders known then as reivers.

These reiver families on both sides of the border lived in times—

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particularly during the 16th century—when murder, arson, theft, and kidnapping were commonplace. To go unarmed in this environment was to risk your life. To leave cattle or other goods unguarded meant their likely disappearance.

Jim Webb’s Born Fighting: How the Scots-Irish Shaped America, offers a vivid history of how these Scots came first to Ireland and then to America, and the enormous imprint they have left on American culture.

Webb—a Naval Academy graduate, decorated veteran of the Vietnam War, former Secretary of the Navy, one-term United States senator, and now a Democratic candidate for the presidency in 2016—brings the gifts shown in his novels to this account of the ScotsIrish. The book details their settlement on plantations in Ulster under James I, their savage conflicts with Irish Catholics, their migration to the American frontier beginning in the 18th century, and their subsequent impact on American history from that time until the present.

Webb, an outspoken defendant of a people many outsiders had labeled as hillbillies, shows us how the Scots-Irish were key to the success of the American Revolution, why they supported the Confederacy in spite of Broadway Books, 2005. 384 pages. the fact that the vast majority owned no slaves, and why they continued to fight in overwhelming numbers in America’s wars.

Webb also offers individual mini-biographies to reveal to us how this culture shaped the country. Andrew Jackson, for

Webb gives us the cultural contributions of the Scots-Irish to America: writers, actors, politicians, musicians. Sometimes people forget, for instance, that country music came out of the mountains around Bristol, joining with the technology of the time—radio and records— to sweep the nation.

SMOKY MOUNTAIN LIVING VOLUME 15 • ISSUE 5

New Novels Add a Chill to Fall CUT TO THE BONE Known by locals as the “body farm,” the University of Tennessee at Knoxville’s Forensic Anthropology Research Center once again surfaces as the chilling setting of Jefferson Bass’s newest installment of the Body Farm series, The Breaking Point.

The real body farm is a place where experts and forensic anthropology students study the forensics of human decomposition. Begun in 1971 by forensic anthropologist William M. Bass, it doubles as the setting for a series of novels co-authored by Bass and Jon Jefferson. Under the pen name Jefferson Bass, they have combined Bass’s scientific knowledge and Jefferson’s storytelling skills to create nine novels that follow the studies, cases, and adventures of the fictional Bill Brockton. In their newest tale, Brockton’s life is thrown into turmoil as his professional career and world-renowned Body Farm research facility comes under question, a long-forgotten enemy threatens his life, and even his marriage is not quite what it seems. Jefferson Bass has created yet another novel that combines the eeriness of this local landmark with the fast-paced thrill of a crime novel.

maintenance man. When someone begins kidnapping the children of the estate, only she knows who is responsible: the man in a black cloak who stalks the shadowed corridors of her home at night.

Beatty exhaustively researched the history of the house and visited the estate more than 50 times to ensure that he was accurately depicting the chateau and this period in history. In the process, he adds some thrill to one of Western North Carolina’s most storied places. Serafina and the Black Cloak, released this past July by Disney-Hyperion, marks the first in a series.

— Rachael Crowe

BILTMORE’S DARK SIDE Asheville author Robert Beatty sets his new historical-fiction children’s book, Serafina and the Black Cloak, against the backdrop of the 250 rooms and 125,000 acres of forestland of the Biltmore Estate in the 1890s. Serafina secretly lives in the basement of the Biltmore house with her father, the estate’s On set at the Biltmore Estate for the Serafina and the Black Cloak book trailer. DONATED PHOTO

example, was often stubborn and wrongheaded in his decisions, and to this day some people despise him for his defiance of the Supreme Court decision banning the removal of Native American tribes from Georgia and North Carolina to Oklahoma. Yet Webb contends that his Scots-Irish culture also made Jackson a tough-minded opponent who believed in the common man.

In addition, Webb gives us the cultural contributions of the Scots-Irish to America: writers, actors, politicians, musicians. Sometimes people forget, for instance, that country music came out of the mountains around Bristol, joining with the technology of the time—radio

and records—to sweep the nation.

Webb, who is of Scots-Irish heritage himself and writes movingly of his own ancestors, has also given us insights into this culture in his fiction. Works such as Fields Of Fire (one of the finest novels about Vietnam), A Sense of Honor, Something To Die For, and A Country Such As This contain at least one central character from Appalachia, often from Southwestern Virginia, the place where Webb has his own roots.

Too often in the history of our nation the culture of the Northeast has taken swipes at Appalachia and those who have lived, endured, and died here. The Scots-Irish, particularly

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those in the South, have been mocked for their religion, their music, their cultural interests, and their values. In Born Fighting, Webb reminds all of us of the contributions of these people and their descendants.

Perhaps the greatest contribution of the Scots-Irish is a fierce love of liberty. Regarding this, Webb writes: “The power—and ultimately the attractiveness—of the Scots-Irish culture stemmed from its insistence on the dignity of the individual in the face of power, regardless of one’s place or rank in society.”

The dignity of the individual in the face of power: words to remember.

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Sweet Appalachia

Giving Me the Woollies

BY ANNETTE SAUNOOKE CLAPSADDLE

F

or years, I refused to draft a bucket list. A few months ago, however, my perception was forever changed while attending a conference where speakers discussed local festival development in Western North Carolina. Even as a lifelong resident, I was struck by the sheer number of festivals held in our region.

Just as I started to think that maybe, just maybe, this could be the making of my bucket list, hallelujah—it happened. The fine folks from Banner Elk showcased their signature event, the 38th Annual Woolly Worm Festival. Who could resist? My decision was made. I would be there. No doubt this was a once-in-a-lifetime— OK, once every year—experience. And it was certainly the beginning of one fine bucket list.

I assessed my knowledge of the creepy crawlies. Woolly worms lay claim to being the quintessential predictors of Appalachian winter weather. Sorry, Punxsutawney Phil—woollies are prevalent, accessible, and arguably just as cute. However, as one of my elementary school teachers, Ms. Roos, recently reminded me, dozens of woolly worms used to pursue her exterior classroom door like heat-seeking missiles, which in turn, would be weaponized by the boys in our grade to torture the girls. Ironic, seeing as most of

us young ladies would shake off the shrieks, go home, and collect woollies ourselves, designing only the finest habitats out of shoeboxes for their palatial domiciles.

I also grew up hearing, like most, that an all-black caterpillar (indeed, they aren’t really worms) foretold ominously of a particularly harsh winter. The wider the width of the tan band wrapping the woolly, the bigger the glimmer of hope for milder weather. That, or the poor thing just has unfortunate tan lines.

Yet, those are merely the basics of woolly wisdom. If I was to vie for Woolly Worm Festival Queen (which doesn’t yet exist, but should), I needed to up my game. Anyone can drive a few miles, purchase a ticket, eat enormous quantities of fried food, and call it a day. I needed to research, to prepare myself for the inaugural event on my bucket list. I needed to do my woolly worm homework.

If we are to truly appreciate all the woolly has to offer, it is important to understand that the woolly worm that many of us have come to know and love is, in actuality, the larval form of Pyrrharctia isabella, the Isabella tiger moth. The Isabella takes flight as a pale, yellowish-orange moth that many of us have likely seen a million times without recognizing its cuddly past.

Like the countless other folklore methods for predicting weather, the use of woolly worms has likely been around for centuries. However, the method’s popularity dates to the 1948 Bear Mountain State Park experiment conducted by Dr. C. H. Curran, curator of insects at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. After his study of collected woollies, Curran

Just as it is impossible to predict when I should begin my bucket list and how long it should be, it is also impossible to know what Old Man Winter has in store for us and which woolly worms will show up in our yards.

Will they be back in black, or will orange be the new black?

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SMOKY MOUNTAIN LIVING VOLUME 15 • ISSUE 5

MANDY NEWHAM-COBB ILLUSTRATION

LOCAL LORE

reported that the caterpillars were able to predict winter weather conditions with nearly 80 percent accuracy. He brought along his wife and friends to help collect the species each fall, declaring themselves as The Original Society of the Friends of the Woolly Bear. Which brings us to another key acknowledgement: Woolly worms are also known throughout the country as woolly bears and, my personal favorite, woolly boogers.

While Curran’s experiment may have provided circumstantial evidence at best (his sample sizes were notably small), our fine fuzzy friends do offer their own proof of climate awareness and negotiation.

Their woolliness is a result of tiny bristles that trigger the freezing of water as cooler temperatures arrive. This allows their outer cells to thaw and freeze first, thereby protecting their internal cells during a cryogenic winter slumber. In a 2013 article

by Bruce Haden, entomologist Mike Peters adds that the brown band is an indication of how late in the spring the caterpillar was able to begin producing its hair, an acknowledgment of the harshness of the previous winter.

But in 1973, Woolly Worm Festival founder Jim Morton was more concerned with how one might select the best weather-predicting worm. Because, the fact remains, we are just as likely to spot an all-black worm two feet from a brown and black worm on the same day as we are to see consistency across woollies. Morton solved this dilemma with a worm race. The winning worm’s coat offers the official prediction. Perhaps we should try this with our local network forecaster. It could make the six o’clock news more interesting.

Ultimately, just as it is impossible to predict when I should begin my bucket list and how long it should be, it is also impossible to know what Old Man Winter has in store for us and which woolly worms will show up in our yards. Will they be back in black, or will orange be the new black?

All we can do is amuse ourselves with festivals, family excursions, and warm fuzzies while we await Mother Nature’s next surprise.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Annette Saunooke Clapsaddle is an award-winning author and member of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians.

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MOUNTAIN EXPLORER ROVING THESE HILLS AND VALLEYS LAYING BEAR For some folks, spotting a bear is a Smokies rite of passage. But have you heard about the Shadow of the Bear? Just as peak fall foliage curls up the rock cliffs of 4,390-foot Whiteside Mountain each October, the side of Highway 64 in Jackson County brings out spectators looking to catch a glimpse of his shadow. At around 5:30 p.m. on sunny days for about six weeks from mid-October to early November, the natural phenomenon begins when a small dark shadow appears at the foot of the valley. Over the course of the next half-hour, the unmistakable shape of a bear spreads across the colorful vista. For the best vantage, park at Rhodes Big View Overlook, about four miles outside of Cashiers. Like his real-life brethren, the elusive critter sleeps through most of winter, showing his face again for a few weeks from mid-February to early March.

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27

OUTLOOKS Mountain Explorer

Third Time’s the Charm B Y H O L LY K AY S

Bicyclists cruise along the Virginia Creeper Trail in fall.

COURTESY ABINGDON CVB

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T

he sky was blue and cloudless as the van filled with people and their rental bikes en route to Whitetop Mountain, but I was suspicious.

Though the morning held all the promise of a perfect October day, I’d grown wise to the ways of Appalachian weather and its tendency to produce a deluge at the most inopportune moments—especially where the Virginia Creeper Trail was concerned.

There was the time I was 13, and the five of us—mom, dad, two younger sisters, and me—attempted the trail for the first time. Mid-July could be swelteringly hot back home in Maryland, but the air was pleasantly cool atop 5,520-foot Whitetop Mountain. My bike whisked effortlessly along the downhill grade, wafts of sweet air drifted up from nearby creeks and streams, and an unsuspecting bliss overtook me.

Then—bam—the skies opened. Rain poured so thickly that soon I couldn’t see the trees, my family, or even the path ahead of me. I squeezed the brakes and wiped off the round glasses that would later lead me to deem all photos of myself from that era as “classified.” Vision restored, I discovered that I’d stopped just before pedaling off a steep bank into the high-running creek below.

We tried the trail again a few years later, when I was 16 or so. I guess I’m not much for learning from past experiences, because I foolishly chose to wear a white tank top that day. When yet another summer storm brought a deluge to the mountain, a skunk stripe of dirt kicked up from the bicycle wheel and sank into the drenched fabric.

When we finally made it to the trailside café six miles outside of Damascus, we were so wet and filthy that we weren’t allowed inside. Instead, we sat on the porch and watched the skies rain themselves out. I never could get the stain out of my shirt.

So maybe it’s understandable that I had a hard time getting too excited about this

SMOKY MOUNTAIN LIVING VOLUME 15 • ISSUE 5

third attempt on the Creeper Trail. Sure, I thought, the sky was blue now, but the fall had been a rainy one. I didn’t trust the sunshine to last.

Almost instantly, the trail began working to win me over. At the height of fall color, the yellow leaves of hickory, red of oaks, and medley of everything in between created a natural stained-glass ceiling over the gravel trail. Breaks in the canopy revealed glimpses of fields full of ripe pumpkins and carefully trimmed evergreens waiting for Christmas. The previous night’s rain still lingered in the woods, moisture mingled with the scent of fallen leaves lifting gradually into the air.

And the sky stayed blue.

It held even as we came to that little café near Damascus, this time arriving completely dry but for a light sweat. The place was somehow bigger than I’d remembered it, probably because there were so many more people there this time—waiting in line, eating at booths in the cramped interior, or soaking in sunshine and sustenance at one of the many outdoor picnic tables.

As I sat outside—this time by choice—sipping a milkshake and enjoying a few minutes off the bicycle seat, I reflected that maybe it’s true what they say, that the third time is the charm.

Either way, I’ve learned my lesson. No more white shirts while biking in the mountains.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Waynesville reporter Holly Kays is a forester’s daughter who is happy to live in the land of many trees.

I’d grown wise

to the ways of Appalachian weather and its tendency to produce a deluge at the most inopportune moments.

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Pedal Power The 34-mile Virginia Creeper Trail stretches from Abingdon, Virginia, to Whitetop Mountain along a route formerly occupied by train tracks. Arguably the crown jewel of the region’s bike paths, the Virginia Creeper is far from the only place to settle in for a rewarding ride on two wheels. y Knoxville’s greenway system includes an extensive inventory of trails. The current mile count is 85, with bikes allowed everywhere but a few short loop trails. knoxvilletn.gov. y The Erwin Linear Trail is a four-mile paved path that follows North Indian Creek and the Nolichucky River through the Tennessee mountain town of Erwin. It’s a great place to bike, cast a line, or just take a walk. erwintn.org. y The Thermal Belt Rail Trail in Rutherford County, North Carolina, stretches for eight miles from Spindale to Gilkey. The first 1.8 miles are paved, and then the path turns to crushed gravel. This nearly flat trail passes through residential neighborhoods and rolling farmland, providing distant views of South Mountains State Park. rutherfordoutdoor.org.

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1796-45

FIELD GUIDE Mountain Explorer

Time For a Witch Hunt

BY DON HENDERSHOT

P

icture that perfect fall afternoon hike: The sun warms the air from high overhead in an endless Carolina-blue November sky; the creek next to the trail murmurs softly.

Stopping to take in the tranquillity and the beauty, you hear a distinctive pop and look down to see if you stepped on a twig. No, but there’s another pop and a noise like tiny pebbles falling on the dry leaves, then another pop—like the first couple of popcorn kernels placed in the skillet to test if the oil is hot enough.

A slight breeze fills the air with a mild citrus fragrance, and, in the dappled understory, you see the creamy yellow ribbon-like petals of witch hazel. Upon closer scrutiny, you find small woody seedpods blown apart at the tip (hence the popping sound). But what exactly is this bewitching wildflower?

Witch hazel at a glance y Of the three species of witch hazel that grow in North America, Hamamelis virginiana is common to the Southern Appalachians. Greek in origin, Hamamelis means “together with fruit,” which refers to the fact that last year’s seedpods are present with this year’s flowers. y H. virginiana flowers from October to December, making it one of the final wildflowers to bloom each season.

y KNOWN FOR ITS MEDICINAL QUALITIES, witch hazel is widely accepted as an astringent, proven to provide relief for a number of skin ailments Witch hazel leaves start out shiny green in such as poison ivy, stings, spring (above). Late fall cues seedpods and insect bites. (below) and spindly yellow flowers (top) y Commonly a woody that close out the annual wildflower shrub, witch hazel often bloom season.

BETTY SHELTON/SMOKYMOUNTAINPHOTOS.COM (TOP) attains small-tree CREATIVE COMMONS PHOTOS (OTHERS) stature in the Southern Appalachians. A record specimen in Bedford, Virginia, stands nearly 35 feet tall with a trunk diameter of 1.4 feet. y The scalloped leaves turn yellow in autumn, and the yellow flowers persist after the leaves fall. The force exerted when the drying seedpod finally rips apart can catapult the two small seeds—each about the size of a grain of rice— contained in each capsule up to 30 feet. y And about that witch: The name has nothing to do with broomsticks or pointy hats. It’s a corruption of the old English “wych,” which means pliant or bendable—a characteristic that still makes witch hazel branches the divining rod of choice among mountain dowsers.

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SMOKY MOUNTAIN LIVING VOLUME 15 • ISSUE 5

GO WILD Mountain Explorer

PHOTO BY J.R. VANLIENDEN, COURTESY OF THE BRYSON CITY/SWAIN COUNTY NC CHAMBER OF COMMERCE

The Smokies by Rail

A

train ride through a landscape ablaze in fall foliage? We’ll drink to that. The Great Smoky Mountains Railroad in Bryson City, North Carolina, is making it easier to do just that with recreational rail excursions awash in the flavors and scenery of the region.

SHINE ON: Passengers of the all-adult Carolina Shine Moonshine Experience board a renovated first-class train fleet car from the depot in Bryson City. Inside, copper walls tell the history of moonshining in North Carolina, from bootlegging woes to Swain County’s infamous outlaw Major Redmond. Helping all that history go down smoothly are tastings of NASCAR legend Junior Johnson’s Midnight Moon family of spirits, including apple pie, blackberry, blueberry, cherry, cranberry, and strawberry moonshine. A stocked bar keeps the party going with moonshine-infused cocktails available for purchase throughout the 44-mile, 4.5-hour trip to the Nantahala Gorge (including a one-hour break at the Nantahala Outdoor Center).

During the month of October, the railroad offers two daily trips: The 9 a.m. train offers a hearty breakfast of sausage and bacon quiche or cheesy ham and hash brown casserole, and the 2 p.m. departure serves a popular pulled-pork barbecue plate sided with sweet corn bread and honey butter, coleslaw, and cinnamon apples and finished with a slice of moonshine mud chocolate pie. Tickets $104.

WINE DOWN: The MacNeill Uncorked trip offers a firstclass ride for vino lovers. On this new all-adult specialty excursion, a sampling of six regional wines selected by the French Broad Vignerons complements a three-course meal that includes a spread of local cheeses, choice of entree, and a chef-selected dessert. y Visit gsmr.com.

Passengers savor their food and drink as they learn the history of the Western North Carolina wine region and enjoy the scenery of the Tuckasegee River on this 32-mile, 4-hour trip (with a 1.5-hour stop to explore the historic town of Dillsboro).

Upon arrival back in Bryson City, passengers can walk to the nearby Cottage Craftsman, where all of the sampled wines will be available for purchase. Trip departs at 11 a.m. on November 28.

Tickets $109.

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More info:

33

FACES & PLACES Mountain Explorer

Burning Art, Building Dreams

BY JO HARRIS

A

3,000-pound, 22-foot dragon named Eli greets visitors to the Nashville Children’s Theater. There thousands of people flock annually to enjoy productions such as “The Reluctant Dragon” and to catch a glimpse of Eli and his companion, a child holding a large crystal.

A 10-by-16-foot dinosaur made from hot dipped galvanized steel stands guard over a galvanizing plant in Bristol, Virginia—boldly hinting at the company’s motto, “Don’t let your steel become extinct.”

A small, rusty horse—its dangling mane and tail formed from bicycle chain links, its legs suspended in motion—dithers on a front lawn beside 10-foot flowers and a menagerie of companions.

The woman behind each of these sculptures, Zophia Kneiss, draws upon her mastery of blacksmithing, welding, and farrier skills to create whimsical figures from the seemingly cold, unforgiving medium that is metal.

A look at her unusual works should make it come as no surprise that Kneiss’s own journey followed a similarly unconventional path into these trades and to her Burning Art Studio, near Norris Lake in New Tazewell, Tennessee.

Her father taught her welding at age 13.

Her graduating class in Elma, New York, voted her most artistic—says Kneiss, “I always knew I’d be an artist.”

With a degree in forestry from a college in the Adirondacks, Kneiss headed to the Pacific Northwest to study ecology. There she took her first metal art class. Soon she was fulfilling a dream in the Peace Corps living in remote villages near the Philippines’ Mount Pulag National Park, teaching environmental education, youth development, and sustainable livelihoods to the locals. She learned their language and was welcomed into their tribes.

Stateside three years later, Kneiss moved to Atlanta, but when her target nonprofit job didn’t pan out, she worked construction, earned her welding certifications, and started Burning Art Studio.

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Eli the dragon, with a child happily perched on a branch, greets visitors at Nashville Children’s Theater. Below left: Metal artist Zophia Kneiss says, “If you can imagine it, I can build it.”

PHOTO COURTESY AMERICAN CONSTRUCTORS • DONATED PHOTO

After three years in Georgia, Kneiss relocated to New Tazewell where she lives on a houseboat—a relic from the temporary housing created for attendees of Knoxville’s 1982 World’s Fair. As one of a select few in the region able to weld aluminum on the water, she can load her welder into her johnboat and cruise to her next job.

Intent upon reviving her Burning Art Studio, Kneiss discovered an ideal location about two miles from her houseboat: a former auto repair shop. Unlike her semi-sheltered studio in Atlanta, the threebay garage provides space for forges, anvils, welders, plasma cutters, chain hoists; every ilk of hammer, tong, and rasp; and metals in every conceivable size, shape, and composition.

There’s also room for Jericho, her rescued donkey. It takes grit, compassion, and love to rescue a half-dead donkey, but Kneiss possesses a soft spot for all things equine. She drew horses by age two, rode by age eight, and earned national recognition as a participant in equestrian jumping. This passion led to studies at Casey and Sons Horseshoeing School. She earned the Journeyman 1 Certification from the Brotherhood of Working Farriers and honed her blacksmithing credentials at the renowned John C. Campbell Folk School in Brasstown, North Carolina.

Fabricating horseshoes and the shoeing process, like welding, supplements her artist’s income. She considers horseshoeing another dimension of her art, explaining that it’s where her equine training and metal work converge. “The blending of these skills deepens my well of creativity, and I find great peace with the animals.”

Kneiss’s ultimate goal is to build large public sculptures that inspire curiosity: sculptures children can play on. But until that dream comes true, she will continue to create her decorative and functional metal art. Everything is one-of-a-kind; there are no stencils, molds, or punched repeats at Burning Art. Kneiss tells her customers, “If you can imagine it, I can build it.”

For quotes, commission information, or to see Kneiss in action, stop by or call Burning Art Studio at 5315 Highway 33 South, New Tazewell, Tennessee; 423-626-6996; zophiaburningart.com.

SMOKY MOUNTAIN LIVING VOLUME 15 • ISSUE 5

DISCOVER BURLINGAME

Burlingame is a private, member owned country club in the mountains of Western North Carolina. Located just an hour outside of Asheville, Burlingame offers a full array of club amenities, including a championship golf course, tennis, croquet and a lively, engaging social atmosphere.

You’re invited to see why … It’s Where You Belong!

Tim Pirkey, Membership Director: mm@burlingameccwnc.com

19387 Rosman Hwy. (Hwy. 64) • Sapphire, NC

It’s Where You Belong...

Burlingame Country Club is a private, member-owned club. Membership is by invitation only and subject to Board of Directors approval.

burlingameccwnc.com | 828-966-9200

Octopus Garden

The

SMOKE SHOP Western North Carolina’s premier smoke shop. Offering only the best in locally made glass, tobacco accessories, hookahs, water pipes, and much more.

The Octopus Garden is here for all of your smoking and tobacco needs.

Seven locations serving Western North Carolina.

828.232.6030 WWW.SMLIV.COM

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IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD Mountain Explorer

Slice of Sylva HUSBAND-AND-WIFE TEAM TIM OSMENT AND DAWN GILCHRIST EXPLORED SYLVA, NORTH CAROLINA, IN SEARCH OF THEIR FAVORITE HALLMARKS OF SMALL-TOWN LIVING IN SOUTHERN APPALACHIA—GOOD PIE, FRESH COFFEE, SMART BOOKS, AND FINE BEER.

W

e began our search on Sylva’s busy Main Street, and our first stop, The Coffee Shop, proved to not only have good pie, but also good people. After our waitress’s initial, “Hello, how are you?” she continued, “Well, I just spilled chicken gravy all over me, but can I get y’all something?”

Fast forward past two substantial plates of chicken and dumplings to the arrival of our much-anticipated reason for coming: a generous slice of coconut pie. We asked a close-by regular, our friend Bill Crawford, if the beautiful crust was homemade. Bill called to a woman at the counter, “Shandra, does your daddy still make all his own pies?” “Every mornin’,” she answered. “And he always uses ice water for the crust.” (Implying, “Doesn’t everyone?”)

The “he” who makes the pies is Gary Gibson. Gary and his wife, Phyllis (who prepared our chicken and dumplings), bought The Coffee Shop 30 years ago. They operate it with the same no-nonsense courtesy as when it originally opened in 1926—plain square brick on the outside, bright and warm inside.

Like the diner itself, the pie is a reminder of what makes Western North Carolina an attractive mix of sweet and seditious. The restaurant brings together Sylva regulars, tourists, folks from Qualla Boundary, and local students. With pictures of John Wayne and the Stars and Bars displayed alongside a subversive Native American poster, the restaurant, perhaps unwittingly, offers a multicultural take on Americana.

If The Coffee Shop represents the old Sylva, just down the street are two representatives of the new: Heinzelmännchen and Innovation breweries. At Heinzelmännchen, owners Dieter Kuhn and Sheryl Rudd brew a variety of craft beers. Selections range from a summery hefeweizen-style wheat to a rich Black Forest stout. In addition to offering advice on food and beer pairings, Dieter talks beer lovers through the entire process of traditional German brewing, including using fresh hops and grains, ending with tastings in their fragrant taproom.

Dropping in a few blocks away at Innovation Brewing, we talked to the bartender about his preferences. A flight of his favorite five small-batch brews came arranged to sample on a hand-cut tree slice.

Among the lagers, stouts, and IPAs, the crisp, citrusy blonde Afternoon Delight was a standout.

Since our high-calorie intake of pie and drink induced the expected lethargy, a walk through downtown Sylva and up the 104 steps to the Jackson County Public Library was just what we needed. Constructed in 1914 as the county courthouse, the building’s stateliness and dignity complement the pride and professionalism of the librarians, staff, and volunteers—a congregation of folks who sincerely love what they do.

The library’s stunning entryway drops visitors immediately into a soaring atrium that is flanked by two-story windows, balconies, meeting rooms, floors of books, and a century-old granite rotunda. Even more memorable was when we caught our first view of the breathtaking, blue-tinged Plott Balsams that frame Sylva’s Main Street. Also housing the Arts Council, a museum, and the Genealogical Society, this majestic gathering place is truly

The Jackson County Public Library overlooks downtown Sylva, North Carolina. TIM OSMENT & DAWN GILCHRIST PHOTO

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SMOKY MOUNTAIN LIVING VOLUME 15 • ISSUE 5

Jackson County’s heart and soul.

A few blocks away is City Lights Bookstore, yet another draw for the literary-minded.

Founded in 1985 and now located in what was once a doctor’s office, City Lights is owned by Chris Wilcox. His staff offers a diverse collection of classics, rare out-of-prints, best sellers, and contemporary works by local writers—all guarded by Cedric and Rowena, the resident cats. Their Appalachian collection alone makes this local, independent bookstore worth a visit.

And if you do not see the title you are looking for, inquire.

From just below the bookstore drifts the aroma of spices, sweets, and freshly ground coffee, inviting browsers downstairs to City Lights Café. Answering that call, we located a covered table outside on a cozy, plant-filled porch. While waiting for our order, we chatted about mountain biking and animal rescue with the café’s proprietors, Bernadette Peters and her wife, Pat Thomas. To make sure there is no question on their enthusiasm for Sylva, articulated on their coffee mugs is a mantra that also greets diners on a large dining room banner: “Love your community.”

City Lights puts a premium on regional fiction and quality coffee. Right: Innovation Brewing serves tasting flights of its craft beers.

TIM OSMENT & DAWN GILCHRIST PHOTOS

WWW.SMLIV.COM

37

LIVING HISTORY Mountain Explorer

Gracie, a volunteer (left), churns butter at the Hagood Mill. Reed, a certified miller (above), helps produce natural stone-ground cornmeal and grits that are sold on site at the Hagood Mill. ADVENTURE PHOTOGRAPHY PHOTOS

Vital Signs

BY ANNA OAKES

V

isitors from around the world will soon be able to peer into the indigenous past at the Hagood Creek Petroglyph Site in Pickens County, South Carolina, which opened in September.

Those searching for physical clues about the lives of previous generations find plenty of evidence at the Hagood Mill, a campus that houses a cabin built in 1791 and a still-functioning gristmill erected in 1845—an early addition to the selective National Register of Historic Places. Yet, the most ancient features at Hagood are estimated to be hundreds of years older, even, than these early American structures.

In 2003, several faint figures presented themselves to two researchers in the midst of a ten-year survey of South Carolina for ancient rock carvings. Two hundred feet upstream from the old mill, the survey’s most significant find emerged on a 30-foot-long boulder as it glistened in a January rain. In total, then state archaeologist Tommy Charles and his team discovered 40 Native American petroglyphs, including 17 human stick figures. Obscured by

38

hundreds or possibly even thousands of years of natural erosive forces, some of the figures are visible from a short distance, while others require lighting from an angle to be coaxed into view. The relics are thought to be between 1,000 and 2,000 years old.

According to Charles, the human figures represent all but two that have been recorded in South Carolina. Hagood Mill is the only petroglyph site in South Carolina located on publicly owned property and accessible to all citizens.

The Hagood Creek Petroglyph Site is a tworoom, barn-like structure constructed directly over the mill site’s petroglyphs for their permanent protection and display. One room houses the rock and viewing platform, with artifacts, photographs, and displays from the South Carolina Rock Art Survey in the other. Now retired, Charles serves as the narrator of a recorded program that all visitors will hear, offering descriptions and stories to accompany the figures. Around the petroglyph center, the county has planted a garden of plants that the Cherokee and other early settlers used for medicines, dyes, cooking, and to make baskets.

The Hagood Mill Historic Site & Folklife Center is much more than a history museum. The campus and its varied activities offer something for everyone, earning the site a reputation as a true

More info:

The Hagood Mill is open 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Wednesday through Saturday and is located at 138 Hagood Mill Road in Pickens, S.C. The Petroglyph Site is open three days a week, on Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Parking costs $5 per vehicle. Guided tours are available by appointment. For more information, call 864.898.2936 or 864.898.5963 or visit www.co.pickens.sc.us/culturalcommission/ hagoodmill/default.aspx.

SMOKY MOUNTAIN LIVING VOLUME 15 • ISSUE 5

recreation destination and community gathering place. The centerpiece, naturally, is the 1845 gristmill, which continues to operate once a month during the mill’s third Saturday festivals, producing cornmeal, grits, rice flour, and other staples available for purchase. Once the mill’s aging water wheel is repaired, Hagood Mill hopes to operate more often.

“There was a time when there were over 60 gristmills here in Pickens County, which just shows how important that was,” says Helen Hockwalt, tourism and marketing director for Pickens County. “Today, there are only three of those mills left in Pickens County, and only one still makes cornmeal and grits.” The Hagood Mill operated commercially until 1966. Visitors can go inside the mill and observe the entire process.

The campus also features two restored log cabins, a blacksmith shop, cotton gin, moonshine still, a gift shop, and nature trails. Classes and other special events take place, including the third Saturday festivals featuring musical performances and demonstrations of hearth cooking, metalworking, quilting, pottery, and other heritage traditions and arts.

Anyone is encouraged to bring an instrument and jam with musicians. Others come to exercise on the trails or enjoy a picnic under the trees. “We want people to feel welcome when they come to Hagood Mill—to step back in time and relax,” says Hockwalt. “It’s been a special place throughout history, and it continues to be so.”

The Hagood Creek Petroglyph Site of South Carolina is now open in Pickens County, S.C., with Native American petroglyphs on display. ADVENTURE PHOTOGRAPHY PHOTO

Celebrate Heritage Each autumn, Hagood Mill honors indigenous groups, including Catawba and Cherokee, with Selugadu: A Native American Celebration. Displays of Native American traditions, history, and culture bring drumming, singing, dancing, flute playing, storytelling, crafts, and more to the mill from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Saturday, November 21. The celebration is held in observance of Native American Heritage Month.

ƐĞůĨͲŐƵŝĚĞĚ ĚƌŝǀŝŶŐ ƚŽƵƌ ŽĨ ϯϴ ĂƌƟ ƐƚƐ Ăƚ ϮϮ ƐƚƵĚŝŽƐ ĂŶĚ ĐƌĞĂƟ ǀĞ ĐĞŶƚĞƌƐ ŝŶ ,ĂLJǁŽŽĚ ŽƵŶƚLJ͕ E Walter

Burr

Thomas

Studio tour show:

October 1 -29 at Haywood County Arts Council Gallery Θ 'ŝŌ Ɛ͕ ϴϲ E DĂŝŶ ^ƚƌĞĞƚ͕ Waynesville. Gallery hours: DŽŶͲ^Ăƚ͕ ϭϬĂ Ͳ ϱƉ͘

KƉĞŶŝŶŐ ƌĞĐĞƉƟ ŽŶ͗ KĐƚŽďĞƌ Ϯ͕ ϱƉͲ ϵƉ͘

For more info:

ƌƚƐ ŽƵŶĐŝů ϴϮϴͲϰϱϮͲϬϱϵϯ͘

Haywood art Studio tour 2015

Brochures and maps:

Haywood County Arts Council 'ĂůůĞƌLJ Θ 'ŝŌ Ɛ͕ ϴϲ E DĂŝŶ ^ƚƌĞĞƚ͕ tĂLJŶĞƐǀŝůůĞ͖ Žƌ ĚŽǁŶͲ ůŽĂĚ ĨƌŽŵ ŽƵƌ &ĂĐĞŬ ƉĂŐĞ͘

Friday October 23 & Saturday October 24, 10a - 5p.

KƉĞŶ^ƚƵĚŝŽƐ,ĂLJǁŽŽĚ WWW.SMLIV.COM

www.visitncsmokies.com 39

Discover Warm Hearts.

December 11-13, 2015

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www.lakejunaluska.com/christmas I 800-222-4930 Sponsored by Haywood Tourism Authority www.VisitNCSmokies.com

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SMOKY MOUNTAIN LIVING VOLUME 15 • ISSUE 5

DETOURS Mountain Explorer

Georgia’s Magic Kingdom

“H

ere you will find fantastical worlds all around you,” reads the oversize decorative book at the entrance to Sleepy Hollow, a labyrinth of “fairy houses,” impish garden gnomes, and spinning whirligigs nestled into a hillside just off Highway 515 in North Georgia.

Here, just over five miles east of Blairsville, Arthur Millican Jr.’s creative artistry comes to life for anyone to explore. Mulched paths wind around colorful structures of all sizes—some tiny and tucked off in the woods, others big enough for adults to enter. “If you believe,” the book continues, “you will see a world of pure imagination.”

Millican has always believed in dreams. As a kid, all he wanted was to grow up and work at Disney. After high school graduation, he got hired to work concessions at Main Street U.S.A., the park’s first themed world just inside the gate. Selling popcorn wasn’t quite his fantasy, but the opportunity gave him an in.

Hanging around the art departments paid off, and the aspiring craftsman was offered a gig in the park’s model shop. “They trained me in every aspect of art, from welding to fiberglass to painting to molding and sculpting,” says Millican, who worked his way up to the display department. There he built a career fabricating 3-D animated sculptures and helped create the now closed Mickey’s Toontown.

In 1990, Millican left Disney to work for Michael Jackson, helping to conceive and develop the late pop star’s famed Neverland Ranch. Eventually the soughtafter artist began designing themed restaurants the likes of Planet Hollywood and Hard Rock Café.

Around 13 years ago, he decamped to the mountains of North Georgia. From his 2,500-square-foot woodworking shop, he has created his own personal magic kingdom. While he continues to create character sculptures for theme parks such as Tokyo Disneyland, Millican has also transformed his family’s property into the whimsical Sleepy Hollow Enterprises.

“I wanted to create a destination for people coming to Blairsville,” Millican says. “The village helps create imagination in children, and it’s something all ages can get involved in.”

Though the garden is free to wander (donations welcome), inspired visitors DONATED PHOTOS who want to take home a piece of the magic can buy Millican’s handmade, brightly painted whirligigs, bird and pet houses, fairy doors and houses, and his signature hand-cranked “leprechaun in a jar”—a throwback mechanical toy that y Sleepy Hollow Enterprises bangs its fists against the insides of a y 5279 Highway 515 East Blairsville, Georgia Mason jar when its crank is turned. An y 9:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. on-site gift shop stocks supplies for budMonday through Saturday ding artists, from craft projects to drawy 706.379.9622; ing pads, canvases, and paint. whimsicalfairygarden.com

Go visit:

WWW.SMLIV.COM

ADVERTISING SECTION

SOUTHERN APPALACHIAN MOUNTAINS

GUIDE

42

EXPLORE

T

he 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 reect generations of heritage and innovation.

Promoting and perpetuating this beauty are the galleries that are as unique and varied as the artists themselves.

Southern Appalachian Galleries

Join Us for Art After Dark Friday, October 2 Friday, November 6 6-9 p.m.

Enjoy refreshments and a meet-and-greet with one of our featured artists.

80 N. Main Street Waynesville North Carolina

828.456.2260 | TheJewelersWorkbench.net

ORIGINAL PAINTINGS AND PRINTS

BY ROBERT TINO • • • •

Art tiles Pottery Home Furnishings Specializing In Custom Framing

www.robertatinogallery.com Open Mon. – Sat. 10:00 – 5:00 Closed Sundays

Highlands lands Gallery y - 381 Main St St • Highlands NC 28741 287 741 4 • 828-526-9333 Sevierville Sevierville Gallery y - 812 Old Old Douglas D Dam am R Rd d • Se Sevierville vierville TN 3 37876 7876 • 865 865-453-6315 -453-6315 EXPLORE

Southern Appalachian Galleries

43

86-40

CELEBRATING 17 YEARS

THANKS TO OUR WONDERFUL ARTISTS & CUSTOMERS.

“P RESENT

AND

ACCOUNTED FOR”

BY J ENNY

B UCKNER

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

WHERE ART DANCES WITH NATURE 98 N. MAIN ST. • WAYNESVILLE NC • MON.-SAT.10-5:30 • SUN. 1-4 828.456.1940 • WWW.TWIGSANDLEAVES.COM 1796-94

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

First Friday of Each Month 6-9 p.m.

May through December

WAYNESVILLEGALLERYASSOCIATION.COM Funded in part by Haywood County Tourism Development Authority • 1.800.334.9036 • visitNCsmokies.com

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EXPLORE

Southern Appalachian Galleries

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

ARTIST OF THE

BURTON GALLERY Welcome to Burton Gallery, a northeast Georgia tradition of fine art and craft. Paintings, pottery, wood, jewelry, folk pottery, and other handmade work by local artists.

150 Burton Dam Rd. • Clarkesville, Ga. 704-947-1351 • burtongallery.net

These are the first two in the Series of Four Seasons of the Smokies, a continuous grouping from winter through fall.

HICKORY FLAT POTTERY Functional pottery, jewelry, glass, fiber and wood art made by hand in the hills of North Georgia. Come see the potters at work daily.

13664 Hwy 197 N • Clarkesville, Ga. 30523 706.947.0030 • hickoryflatpottery.com MARK OF THE POTTER The oldest crafts shop in Georgia in the old Grandpa Watts’ Gristmill, celebrating over 45 years in the same location. Mark of the Potter features handcrafted pottery, a potter working weekends, and other crafts. Don’t miss the best view on the Soque River with generations of huge brown and rainbow trout (protected, of course).

706.947.3440 • markofthepotter.com ROBERT A. TINO GALLERY Robert Tino is one of the most celebrated artists living in the southeast. He has painted the beauty of Tennessee and North Carolina for over 40 Years. Working in oils, acrylics, or watercolors, each painting is a flourish of color, depth, and texture. Leisurely shop thru the gallery for notecards, art tiles, limited edition prints and custom framing.

381 Main St. • Highlands N.C. 828.526.9333 812 Old Douglas Dam Rd. • Sevierville Tenn.

865.453.6315 www.robertatinogallery.com

BLUE RIDGE

“Into the Smokies” above

“Sunrise in the Smokies” right

C OLORED PENCIL

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 U.S.; much of it is local.

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

15 N. MAIN ST. · WAYNESVILLE, NC

828.452.9284 · tpennington.com

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1796-37

THE

Ultimate Folk Art Gallery in the South!

Hickory Flat Pottery )XQFWLRQDO SRWWHU\ MHZHOU\ JODVV Ò• EHU DQG ZRRG DUW PDGH E\ KDQG LQ WKH KLOOV RI 1RUWK *HRUJLD &RPH VHH WKH SRWWHUV DW ZRUN GDLO\

Best Selection by "Cornbread" in the Universe!

ARTIST: WENDY BRADLEY

13664 Hwy 197 N Clarkesville, GA 30523 706.947.0030

HickoryFlatPottery.com

A northeast Georgia tradition of fine art and exemplary craft.

3631 HWY. 53 E.

AT RIVER 3631 HWY. 53 E.ETOWAH AT ETOWAH RIVERRD. RD. DAWSONVILLE, GA DAWSONVILLE, GA 706-265-6030 706-265-6030 aroundbackatrockysplace.com HOURS: SATURDAY 11 TO 5 & SUNDAY 1 TO 5

burtongallery.net 706.947.1351 150 Burton Dam Rd. • Clarkesville, GA

H ANDCRAFTED IN THE USA FOR OVER 45 Y EARS !

Functional Stoneware

SEE THE POTTER

thewillowspottery.com 7273 S. Main Street Helen 706-878-1344

AT THE WHEEL EACH SAT. & SUN.

OPEN 7 DAYS PER WEEK markofthepotter.com | 706-947-3440 9982 Hwy. 197 N. | Clarkesville, GA 46

EXPLORE

Southern Appalachian Galleries

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 TPENNINGTON ART GALLERY Teresa Pennington is a self-taught colored pencil artist who renders, in amazing detail, the scenery and landmarks of western North Carolina and beyond. See her distinctive work at TPennington Art Gallery in downtown Waynesville, N.C. 15 North Main St. • Waynesville, N.C. 828.452.9284 • tpennington.com 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

Original art and crafts by North Carolina artists. A wide variety of traditional and contemporary works: paintings, pottery, weaving, wood-turned items, glass works, photography, note cards, jewelry, soaps, quilts, books and more.

shop in-store and online

StecoahGallery.com Stecoah Valley Cultural Arts Center 121 Schoolhouse Road, Stecoah (Robbinsville), NC 28771 828-479-3098 March – October: 10 am – 5 pm, Monday – Saturday November & December: 10 am – 5 pm, Monday – Friday

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

100 Cherry St. • Black Mountain, N.C. 828.669.0065 • visionsofcreation.com WAYNESVILLE GALLERY ASSOCIATION The Waynesville Gallery Association is represented by 11 unique galleries: Art on Depot, Burr Studio, Cedar Hill Studio, Earthworks Gallery, Gallery 86, Grace Cathey Sculpture, The Jeweler’s Workbench, the mahogany house art gallery and studios, TPennington Art Gallery, Twigs and Leaves Gallery, and Village Framer. The group promotes and participates in Art After Dark which happens the first Friday evening May through December. waynesvillegalleryassociation.com THE WILLOWS POTTERY Creating functional handmade stoneware since 2003. Specializing in custom dinnerware and vessel sinks, we are proud to provide an excellent selection of locally made gifts.

7273 S. Main St. • Helen, GA 706.878.1344 • thewillowspottery.com

EXPLORE

Moving Parts — Ancient Techniques ROBERTO VENGOECHEA Designer/Goldsmith ~ 828.669.0065

100 Cherry St., Black Mountain, NC ~ www.VisionsofCreation.com

Southern Appalachian Galleries

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PHOTOS BY K AT H R Y N R AY

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SMOKY MOUNTAIN LIVING VOLUME 15 • ISSUE 5

A spirit of craftsmanship has always imbued these mountains.

These days, Southern Appalachia’s most innovative artisans and entrepreneurs honor the past and this region while pushing their crafts to new limits.

Meet the makers (clockwise from left): Basketmaker Billie Ruth Sudduth, outdoor gear builder Adam Masters, textile designer Marcus Hall, and food artisans Joel and Tara Mowrey (pictured with their daughters).

M

N

ADE I

INSTRUMENT

S

M

S

MAKER

O KIE

Elizabeth Jayne Henderson ////// EJ Henderson Guitars & Ukuleles

L

aw school isn’t standard training for a guitar maker. Then again, growing up with Virginia luthier Wayne Henderson as Dad—he who legendarily made Eric Clapton wait ten years for a guitar—isn’t a typical upbringing, either.

Now in her fourth year as a luthier in her own right, Elizabeth Jayne Henderson followed a circuitous path to the workshop: Little girl in the back corner of her dad’s shop. Budding environmental activist at top-rated Vermont Law School.

Grant writer at an Asheville nonprofit.

Looking to raise some funds to help pay off her steep student loan debt, she asked her dad to make a guitar that she could sell. He agreed, with a caveat: She had to make it herself. In the process, she made $25,000 on the finished product— and discovered her artistic calling.

Not too long after, she quit her day job. In 2012, she officially launched her luthier business under the name EJ Henderson, specializing in smaller-bodied guitars and ukuleles. These days, Henderson receives some 70 orders a year. Her waiting list averages four years. Grammy Award winner Zac Brown held one of her guitars while being interviewed on “CBS Sunday Morning.” One of her earliest guitars was intended as a gift for Doc Watson, who she describes “like a grandfather” to her. Though he passed away before she could finish, the flatpicking legend talked about his excitement for the guitar during his final performance at MerleFest, in 2012.

Though Henderson is a grateful apprentice, a clone of her father she’s not. For starters, she brandishes a knife with pink polka dots, a purple apron, and a respirator mask with pink filters. More importantly, that environmental law and policy degree of hers influences the most fundamental part of making an instrument—the type of wood she chooses.

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Elizabeth Jayne Henderson (top) hand-carves the inlays on her guitars and ukuleles, including her signature headstock (above).

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y With a name like PISGAH BANJO CO., it should come as no surprise that these instruments come grounded in their surroundings. In fact, Asheville-area residents Patrick Heavner and Topher Stephens make these open-back, handmade banjos from native Appalachian maple, cherry, and walnut hardwoods. “From the oldtime banjo tunes born in these hills to the persimmon tree we harvest to create our fingerboards, these mountains are truly apart of each and every banjo that leaves this shop,” says Heavner, who hopes to create a new industry

Pillows by

Michele P. Connors 330 Lincoln Ave. Ormond Beach, FL 32174

www.etsy.com/shop/MimisOriginalArt.com

(386) 265-6380

Patrick Heavner of Pisgah Banjo Co. ROB HOWARD PHOTO

standard for environmentally sustainable practices that will reduce the dependence on exotic hardwoods. pisgahbanjos.com. y Self-taught luthier BOB GERNANDT of Bryson City, North Carolina, has built a reputation on fine, handcrafted instruments—no matter how obscure. His stringed instruments range from traditional mountain dulcimers, mandolins, and acoustic and electric guitars to Irish bouzoukis and citterns. gernandt.com. y Waynesville’s Molly McCurdy began building mountain dulcimers late in the night while her children were growing up, a fact she tributes with the name LIGHT O’ THE MOON DULCIMERS. Her instruments feature unique, hand-carved sound holes (from crosses to bears) and decorative woodburned patterns. These days, her granddaughter helps out in the workshop as an apprentice. dulcimersbymolly.com.

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“It’s about the way

the instrument is made, and the love you put into it.� — Elizabeth Jayne Henderson

Henderson eschews exotic varieties such as Brazilian rosewood because of their carbon footprint and opts instead for responsibly harvested woods such as oak, ash, walnut, and maple. “You can make an amazing guitar with what you have outside,� she says. “It’s about the way the instrument is made, and the love you put into it.�

She makes all her mother-of-pearl inlays by hand—a rarity in the industry—and creates the inlays for her dad’s instruments, too, such as the guitar that country star Vince Gill played at the Grand Ole Opry. In fact, learning the intricate inlay process is what ďŹ rst hooked Henderson. “I’ve always liked things that are sparkly,â€? she admits, with a laugh. Her inlays reect the personality and interests of her customers, which has meant everything from a catďŹ sh or a goat to a Robert Frost– inspired acorn. On a ukulele for 11-year-old Tennessee prodigy Emi Sunshine, Henderson inlayed the rising star’s name on the ďŹ ngerboard, Elvis style.

Another difference between Henderson and her ďŹ nger-picking dad: She can pluck out a few chords—enough to check the tuning—but brings an artist’s passion to the craft rather than a musician’s ear. In fact, the 30-year-old is as versed in Taylor Swift and John Mayer as Doc Watson, the Harris Brothers, and Conway Twitty.

Even as she blazes her own path, Henderson undeniably roots herself in her father’s tradition. In practice, that means splitting her time between the home she shares with her husband in Asheville and her father’s shop in Mouth of Wilson, Virginia. “If I can use a tool that my dad made, or sleep under the quilt that my granny made, then I’m going to,� she says.

She’s particularly proud of the support she’s received from guitar expert George Gruhn, an old family friend who has run an acclaimed guitar shop in Nashville since 1970. “George told me that the difference with my guitars is that they have a soul.�

For more information, see ejhendersonguitars.com and theluthiersapprentice.blogspot.com.

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Adam Masters ////// Bellyak

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lot of folks tinker, their garages lined with works in progress and failed experiments. Back in 2004, when Adam Masters started playing around with an old kayak, several cans of expandable foam, and some duct tape, the lifelong kayaker was simply looking for a fresh way to ride rapids. In the process, he invented a new sport—and built a pioneering business.

A Bellyak, as it sounds, is a kayak you ride on your belly, providing as tranquil of a float on flat water as it makes an exciting run on whitewater. The kayak hull acts as an interface between body and water, with an ergonomic, contoured design that lifts the chest. “Lying down to paddle is intuitive, like swimming, so it makes water sports feel really natural,” says Masters, who designs, prototypes, and distributes his unique boats from a warehouse in Weaverville, North Carolina.

The close connection to the water that’s inherent on a Bellyak “makes small stuff exciting again,” says Masters. “You’re using your hands so you can feel the currents. When I get into my [traditional] kayak now, it feels as if I’m driving a school bus. On a Bellyak, it feels as if you’re flying.”

Tinkering comes naturally to Masters. When his father, Bill Masters, founded Perception Kayaks in the 1970s, he revolutionized the water sports industry as one of the first to use rotational molding to manufacture plastic kayaks. Also in the family arsenal is Uncle Allen Stancil, a longtime kayak designer for Perception and Liquid Logic. With advice from both family patriarchs, the 36-year-old Masters launched Bellyak in the summer of 2012 with two models: the Frequency made for flat-water paddling and the Play built for speed (available in three sizes).

According to Masters, the Bellyak’s lack of a spray skirt and ease of getting on and off has particularly endeared the boat to novice kayakers, women, and kids.

The boat’s shape and stability lends itself well to swiftwater rescue situations. And

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Adam Masters demonstrates how to ride a Bellyak—face first and belly down—on the French Broad River.

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“Lying down to paddle is intuitive, like swimming, so it makes water sports feel really natural.”

— Adam Masters

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only a couple of months after introducing Bellyak, he received a call from a volunteer with Team River Runner, a program that provides water therapy activities for disabled veterans and injured service members. The Bellyak, it turns out, provides an ideal option for everyone from double amputees and paraplegics to those suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.

“Adaptive sports typically imply a lot of adaptations, but the Bellyak levels the playing field off the shelf,” Masters says. “It’s really easy to slide underneath you and provides a good counterpoint to sitting in a wheelchair all the time. And a traditional kayak, with legs out of sight in a spray skirt and the possibility of flipping over, can be a [trauma] trigger. The Bellyak solves a real need for that segment of the population.”

Last summer, Masters witnessed the transformative power of his creation firsthand while running rapids with a friend, Ian Engle, who he had met at a Colorado conference for adaptive sports. Paralyzed from the waist down since college, Engle remains a thrill seeker at heart. Together a group of Bellyak friends and Engle tackled the Class III rapids of the Pigeon River Gorge in the Smokies.

“The boat was the great equalizer. That entire day, nobody else knew that Ian was disabled,” says Masters, who still marvels at the way Engle’s face lit up once he hit the water, his mobility restored while the rest of them scrambled to keep up.

In addition to the Pigeon River Gorge, Masters tests his boats on the French Broad, Ocoee, and Chattooga Rivers. “We’re in the mecca for paddle sports here in the Southern Appalachians,” Masters says. “There are so many beautiful places around here that a boat can take you. I couldn’t imagine being somewhere else.”

For more information, see bellyak.com.

SMOKY MOUNTAIN LIVING VOLUME 15 • ISSUE 5

ENO PHOTO

y Brothers Peter and Paul Pinholster began selling packable camping hammocks out of their van at music festivals. Today the Asheville transplants’ company, EAGLES NEST OUTFITTERS (ENO), has grown into a global industry leader with a full line of lightweight, durable hammocks.

The popular two-person DoubleNest Hammock packs down to the size of a softball. eaglesnestoutfittersinc.com.

Christmas MOUNTAIN COUNTRY

y The paddlers behind Ashevillebased ASTRAL know the ins and outs of outdoor adventure in Western North Carolina as well as they do river safety. Since 2002, the company has developed a trusted line of water shoes and life vests driven by a few key goals: comfort, style, versatility, innovation, and necessity. astraldesigns.com.

TOUR OF HOMES December 5, 2015 10 a.m.–5 p.m.

Tickets $10 & $15

Self-guided tour of six beautiful homes in Hiawassee and Young Harris, GA supporting Crop Walk – an organization devoted to feeding the hungry.

y As the owner of WYNN CANE FLYFISHING, outdoorsman Dan Wynn torches, splits, twists, bakes, varnishes, and polishes each of his bamboo and graphite fly-fishing rods by hand. From the shop in Wise, Virginia, Wynn Cane also offers guided fly-fishing trips on the Clinch, Powell, Pound, and the Russell Fork Rivers. wynncane.com.

(706) 896-4966 or (800) 984-1543

www.mountaintopga.com

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arcus Hall doesn’t mind living and working in someone else’s shadow. In fact, that’s all part of his plan. As the designer and founder of Marc Nelson Denim, Hall returned to his native Knoxville after a stint in Los Angeles in order to start his label. He headed straight to East Knoxville, lucking out on a warehouse around the corner from where his great-grandparents once lived.

The Levi Strauss & Co. plant long anchored this neighborhood and employed Hall’s brothers, cousins, and countless family friends and neighbors. That all changed on a November Monday in 1997, when a voice over the factory’s intercom instructed workers to turn off their sewing machines. Some 1,800 Knoxville employees had lost their jobs; declining demand for American-made denim forced the iconic brand to shutter this factory and 10 others across the country.

Today at the warehouse flagship of Marc Nelson Denim, sewing machines hum and oversize rolls of denim and spools of red, white, and blue thread line the walls.

In the retail showroom, pairs of high-end jeans hang on a rack underneath an American flag, a nod to the brand’s made-in-the-U.S.A. mission. A photo of L.C. Nelson, Hall’s natty grandfather and partial namesake to the brand, hangs over the vintage cash register.

As a kid, the burgeoning fashion lover hid his creative side rather than showcase it. “Instead of playing football with my older brother, I was inside the house with my mother, and she was teaching me how to sew,” recalls Hall. Now he speaks as passionately about the joy of taking a piece of fabric through every step of the design and production process as he does about the satisfaction of knowing exactly

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From his Knoxville shop, Marc Nelson Denim, designer Marcus Hall (top) sells custom jeans and ready-to-wear apparel (above).

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Wool Appalatch poncho.

“Part of what we’re missing—not just in Knoxville but in America—is people making things with their hands that they can be proud of.”

— Marcus Hall

who sewed on the buttons or attached the rivets to his jeans.

Customers can know that feeling, too. Folks with a couple of hundred dollars to spend can walk in off the street, have their measurements taken, and hang out for a few hours while a pair of custom jeans are made in front of them.

“Part of what we’re missing—not just in Knoxville but in America—is people making things with their hands that they can be proud of,” Hall says. He says the influences for his products can be found all throughout the Smokies, from the changing colors in the fall foliage to the designs of Cherokee weavings and the craftsmanship of his grandmother’s quilts.

Even his denim washes are saturated with regional character—sometimes literally. His whiskey-stained jeans get their amber hue by soaking for 30 days in a barrel of Smooth Rambler artisan whiskey from West Virginia. Hall says the idea came to him in a dream and reminds him of watching his grandfather concoct batches of homemade wine.

More significantly, Hall puts his money where his ideas are. Custom work takes place in-house at the Knoxville shop, while larger scale production happens at a manufacturing plant in Blue Ridge, Georgia, followed by washing at a finishing plant in Winder, Georgia.

In short: Denim once again thrives in East Knoxville, thanks to Hall. “I moved back here with the goal of hiring some old Levi’s employees and some new people, too, so we could bring production back to this city,” he says. “The satisfaction of establishing a staple building in this neighborhood and creating jobs for this community is amazing.”

This past May, the Knoxville Chamber of Commerce honored Hall with the Minority-Owned Business Excellence Award during its annual black-tie-optional Pinnacle Business Awards Gala.

For more information, see marcnelsondenim.com.

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y APPALATCH founders Mariano deGuzman and Grace Gouin offer “heritage-inspired” outdoor apparel with a twist. Like the best heirloom wares, the company’s wool sweaters are built to last.

But Appalatch has pioneered a bespoke process that, with the help of a computerized knitting machine, can create a custom fit for every product in the matter of about an hour. Based in Weaverville, North Carolina, the Appalatch studio shares a building with Echoview Fiber Mill, which turns regional animal wool into yarn and allows the company to “think even more local,” according to deGuzman. appalatch.com. y Though its first yard of fabric wasn’t woven until 2007, the ORIOLE MILL in Hendersonville, North Carolina, harkens back to the region’s textile heyday. Started

by Stephan Michelson and Bethanne Knudson, the modern mill is fast building an international reputation for luxury Jacquard and Dobby woven goods, with a European aesthetic that belies its American-made ethos. theoriolemill.com. y If outdoor lovers are only as happy as their feet, the hikers and adventurers of Western North Carolina are in luck. Based in Mount Airy, North Carolina, FARM TO FEET produces what could be the world’s most technologically advanced performance socks. The brand sources its Merino wool within a 300-mile radius of its 200-employee facility. farmtofeet.com.

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Joel & Tara Mowrey ////// Smoking J’s Fiery Foods

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lanted in neat rows on Joel and Tara Mowrey’s mountain-framed farm in the Hominy Valley of Western North Carolina, some 50,000 pepper plants ripen in the sun. Just be careful which vegetable you bite into—and don’t go looking for a green bell pepper. You won’t find any here. What you will find: bhut jolokia ghost peppers, fatalii peppers, and the Trinidad Moruga scorpion— the world’s hottest chili pepper.

“As a small business, being different is where you have to be,” explains Joel, a horticulturalist for North Carolina State University who grew his family garden into a popular hot sauce company, Smoking J’s Fiery Foods. “It’s hard to compete with mega farms that grow thousands of acres of bell peppers.” At the Mowreys’ farm, jalapeños are left on the stem until they’ve turned red, then smoked. Red bell peppers are harvested and fire-roasted. “We’re always trying to value-add, to do something that requires a little extra effort that not everybody is willing to do.”

When they were fresh out of college, the Mowreys moved to Western North Carolina from Ohio; soon after they bought their 10-acre farm. The first-generation farmers began a business selling rare and unusual trees and shrubs, such as Japanese maples and weeping redbuds. After a few years, as the housing crisis swept the nation and landscaping fell by the wayside, the Mowreys looked to their family garden for a new direction.

In 2009, around 500 pepper plants fueled Joel’s hobby mission: to replicate and tweak his favorite spicy sauce from the downtown Asheville restaurant Salsa. Ultimately, he added carrots and mangoes—and Smoking J’s signature product, Smoky Mango Habenero Hot Sauce, was born. By 2011, the Mowreys’ little garden plot had expanded to 20,000 plants, a number that has more than doubled today.

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Joel and Tara Mowrey grow a variety of chili peppers (top) for their line of salsas, hot sauces, and BBQ sauces (above).

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“We’re always trying to value-add, to do something that requires a little extra effort that not everybody is willing to do.”

— Joel Mowrey, Smoking J’s Fiery Foods

y A native of Tuxedo, North Carolina, Beau Martin grew up pickling. Now he cans and sells his family’s century-old recipes for pickled green tomatoes, spicy okra, tuxedo beans, jalapeños, beets, and three types of pickles under his label GREEN RIVER PICKLERS. grpicklers.com. y Stone-ground, cold-milled, unbleached, unbromated, and certified kosher— Asheville miller Jennifer Lapidus is happy to flaunt CAROLINA GROUND FLOUR’S qualifiers. But all bakers really need to know is that the tiny mill produces highquality artisan bread flour, pastry flour, and rye flour made from organic grains that have been grown and ground locally. carolinaground.com. y At the foot of a 100-foot waterfall, a 27foot water wheel powers the SYLVAN FALLS MILL in Rabun Gap, Georgia, which began life as a gristmill in 1840. Current owners Mike and Linda Johnson run a bedand-breakfast on the site as well as grind and sell organic grits, cornmeal, and a variety of flours from regionally grown organic grains. sylvanfallsmill.com.

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With the help of Blue Ridge Food Ventures, a shared-use food processing center housed at Asheville-Buncombe Technical Community College, the Mowreys have learned how to translate recipes perfected on their own stovetop into 80-gallon batches of sauce to be sold commercially.

Mowrey calls Smoking J’s a “slow-growth company” by design. “We try to do the best we can for the land by taking the best care of it we can,” he says. And though the mountains of Southern Appalachia aren’t typically associated with hot peppers, Mowrey calls warm days followed by cool nights an asset. “The variation sweetens up peppers and adds a complexity of flavors,” he says.

Smoking J’s product line consists primarily of mild and medium sauces that emphasize flavor over burn. The company now offers ten hot sauces, four salsas, and four BBQ sauces, including popular flavor collaborations with Highland Brewing Company (Black Mocha Stout) and Asheville Brewing Company (Ninja Porter). In addition, Smoking J’s sells dry seasonings and pepper mash. The addition of their Trinidad Scorpion hot sauce—“an absolute scorcher,” as Mowrey puts it—helps satisfy those “gluttons for punishment” who want their heat to hurt.

Somewhat ironically, the more painful the pepper’s heat level, the higher the potential for healing. “Capsaicin—the compound found in chili peppers—is very beneficial for your heart and cardiovascular system, and there are cancer-fighting agents, too,” says Joel, who is in talks with Western North Carolina’s nonprofit Bent Creek Institute to possibly create medicinal tinctures from their hot peppers.

A few customers already buy Smoking J’s peppers and dry spices in order to concoct their own medicinal powders and pills. “Right now there’s a lot of effort and research going into how to harness capsaicin without the burn. It’s a promising part of the industry.”

For more information, see smokingjsfieryfoods.com.

SMOKY MOUNTAIN LIVING VOLUME 15 • ISSUE 5

Laurel Ridge country club & event center

Emotional. Sensational. Unforgettable.

Not just for our championship golf course.

Not just for our rustic-chic clubhouse.

Buy Haywood at farmers markets, tailgates, christmas tree farms & so much more!

Buy Haywood's Uniquely Local Project received support from the NC ADFP Trust Fund

BuyHaywood.com WWW.SMLIV.COM

Not just for the picturesque mountain setting.

But because the experience is...

LaurelRidgeGolf.com 61

Fall in

A SMOKY MOUNTAIN GOLF RESORT WITH

Historical Charm Long before golf came to Maggie Valley, Sentelle and Mary Francis Moody opened their home to local residents and provided education in exchange for working the land.

with

The Moody Farm became famous for its hospitality and home-style cooking. In the early 1960s, their success attracted a group of investors who purchased the farm’s front bottomland and converted the fields into the Valley Nine. Maggie Valley Country Club welcomed its first golfers August 23, 1963.

Whether you are here to golf or just to relax we look forward to welcoming you as our next guest.

Come explore our lakes, waterfalls & trails

W W W . M A G G I E VA L L E Y C L U B . C O M

Who says the BEST SEat has to be in a house?

There’s mountain rain forest and rocky gorges. Trails, Train whistles and swimming holes.Apple orchards, whitewater rapids and secret FISHING spots.here in the “land beside the water” we have the greatest show on earth and plenty of seats to choose from.

www.

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• 800.438.3861

1819 Country Club Drive • Maggie Valley, NC

VisitMtnLakes.com SMOKY MOUNTAIN LIVING VOLUME 15 • ISSUE 5

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Billie Ruth Sudduth ////// JABOBS

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n the foyer inside Billie Ruth Sudduth’s home basket studio in Bakersville, North Carolina, a traditional Appalachian egg basket sits on the bottom shelf of a wooden bookcase. A simple garlic basket hangs to its side. A couple of shelves up, a zigzag basket integrates the Archimedean spiral, a curve named for the ancient Greek mathematician. Rounding out the display is a twined and braided vessel, called the Penland Pottery basket in tribute to Sudduth’s neighbors at the historic craft school up the road.

It’s a microcosm of Sudduth’s body of work—from traditional and practical to high concept. These baskets find themselves as at home in the mountains as in the homes of NASA and MIT scientists.

Even the garlic basket appears worthy of a museum pedestal. And for good reason: The 70-year-old artist’s baskets have appeared in esteemed collections such as the Smithsonian Institution’s Renwick Gallery in Washington, D.C.; the Museum of Art and Design in New York City; and the Mint Museum of Art in Charlotte. “I make baskets to hold your interest, not your objects,” says Sudduth, who was named a North Carolina Living Treasure for craft excellence in 1997. Her copyrighted holiday ornament, an eight-point woven design she calls the Carolina Snowflake, has hung on three White House trees and appeared on HGTV, PBS, and QVC. But here at Sudduth’s studio on a quiet mountain lane, there are no signs of pretension. In her workshop, reed splints hang over a door to dry. Outside, a red garbage can holds homemade dye made of crushed walnut hulls. Even her business name, JABOBS—Just a Bunch of Baskets—seems to imply a shoulder shrug over all the fuss.

In the foyer, Sudduth pulls an overstuffed black binder off another bookshelf and starts flipping through the yellowed pages. “I think basket-making has been a way for me to make a living with my compulsiveness,” she says, running her index finger over this handwritten log of every basket she’s made and sold over the past

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“From the beginning, I approached basket-making mathematically, with all the parallels and perpendiculars.”

— Billie Ruth Sudduth

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Heartwood in Abingdon, Virginia. BILL CRABTREE, JR. PHOTO

Where to Buy Handcrafted Goods Made Here APPALACHIAN ARTS CRAFT CENTER: From its 1970 inception in the back room of a grocery store, this nonprofit crafts hub in Clinton, Tennessee, offers craft classes as well as a shop filled with handcrafted goods. Member artisans frequent the weaving studio with floor and table looms, quilting studio, and pottery studio with wheels and kilns. appalachianarts.net.

CRAFT SCHOOL SHOPS: It’s only natural that the region’s historic craft schools are among the best places to pick up locally made crafts. In addition to instructional books on traditional crafts, the Craft Shop of Brasstown, North Carolina’s John C. Campbell Folk School (folkschool.org) sells the jewelry, pottery, ironwork, and more of 300-plus juried craftspeople, as well as the fine woodcarvings of the renowned Brasstown Carvers. Over at the Penland School of Craft in Penland, North Carolina, the on-site gallery (penland.org/shop) exhibits the art, pottery, furniture, and jewelry of affiliated artists. And down in Highlands, North Carolina, the B Gallery (thebascom.org/shop) at the Bascom carefully selects its inventory of one-of-a-kind gifts and objets d’art.

FOXFIRE MUSEUM & HERITAGE CENTER: In Mountain City, Georgia, the gift shop of this paean to pioneer culture stocks the full lineup of back-to-the-land Foxfire books as well as regional handmade pottery, soaps, woodcrafts, and textiles. foxfire.org.

GROVEWOOD GALLERY: Next to the Omni Grove Park Inn in Asheville, this gallery and shop features traditional and contemporary crafts by more than 500 American artists. The 64

space carries on the spirit of the Homespun Shops, which once housed the weaving and woodworking complex of Biltmore Industries. grovewood.com.

HEARTWOOD: Dubbed “Southwest Virginia’s artisan gateway,” this welcome center and cultural display in Abingdon, Virginia, presents regionally made crafts and Crooked Road music. Showcasing juried work by members of the ‘Round the Mountain: Southwest Virginia’s Artisan Network, the shop carries a rotating selection that includes anything from fine alpaca-wool scarves to stained-glass windows, hand-crafted rocking chairs to stoneware jugs. Heartwood also features a stage that hosts frequent performances, alongside a coffee, wine bar, and restaurant that encourages lingering. heartwoodvirginia.org.

QUALLA ARTS & CRAFTS MUTUAL, INC.: From traditional basketry to contemporary takes on Cherokee pottery and beadwork, this gallery and shop in Cherokee, North Carolina, spotlights the craftsmanship of the Eastern Band of Cherokee.

More than 250 artists are members of this organization founded in 1946, making it the nation’s oldest Native American cooperative. quallaartsandcrafts.com.

SHOPS OF THE SOUTHERN HIGHLAND CRAFT GUILD: Representing over 900 craftspeople in nine southeastern states, this nationally recognized craft organization operates six shops in North Carolina, Tennessee, and Kentucky (as well as an online shop). Pieces for sale span mediums such as clay, glass, leather, fiber, jewelry, wood, paper, metal, and other natural materials. Located at the Folk Art Center on the Blue Ridge Parkway since 1980, the Allanstand Craft Shop dates to 1897 and is the country’s oldest continuously operating craft shop. In Gatlinburg, Arrowcraft first opened as a showcase for mountain crafts in 1926. southernhighlandguild.org.

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y From the timber-framed backyard workshop he built 24 years ago in the historic district of Jonesborough, Tennessee, CURTIS BUCHANAN crafts chairs fit for nobility. In fact, his classic Windsor-style seats appear in the permanent collection of the Tennessee State Museum, the Tennessee State Governor’s Mansion, and Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello. curtisbuchananchairmaker.com.

33 years—all 10,300 and counting. “I raised two boys, so there was no order. But I know everything there is to know about my baskets.”

Though her work spans a wide spectrum, Sudduth has distinguished herself most in the numerical concepts explored by her weaving style. “From the beginning, I approached basket-making mathematically, with all the parallels and perpendiculars,” she explains. “I started playing with sequences—over one, under one, over two, under three.”

While she was showing some twill work at a craft show in Atlanta in the 1980s, a man pointed out the similarity of her progression with the Fibonacci sequence, a numerical series that occurs throughout nature such as in the arrangement of leaves on a stem or the scales of a pine cone. “I said to him, what’s that? I was doing it intuitively because of its rhythm, and because it looked good. Subliminally I think I was imitating all the ratios that were occurring in my environment.”

That man soon became a collector and also sent Sudduth books on the 13thcentury Italian mathematician who discovered the sequence. “Once I really learned what I was doing, I could take it to the next level,” says Sudduth, who sells her Fibonacci-inspired baskets for upwards of $3,000. A few years ago, a fellowship from the North Carolina Arts Council allowed her to explore ways to integrate chaos theory into her work.

Not bad for a former school psychologist. In 1983, after her boss urged her to do something fun over the summer, Sudduth signed up for a basket-making class at the local community college. The class cost $20 and lasted four Mondays. “I was there 15 minutes, and it was an epiphany,” she recalls. “The rhythm of making baskets is like playing music—you can’t hear my music, but you can see it.”

In the decades since her humble beginning, she has earned a following that has grown to include the likes of stock brokers, university presidents, and the publisher of the New York Times. Part of her delight is changing perceptions of what—and who—a craft artist can be. “Most people think of a little old lady living in the mountains making baskets as toothless,” she says, laughing. “But then they meet me, and I can carry on a conversation about [mathematician Benoit] Mandelbrot and chaos theory.”

For more information, see brsbasket.com.

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y As the great-grandson of Henri Matisse and the step-grandson of Marcel Duchamp, Alexander Matisse has artistic talent pumping through his veins. As the founder of EAST FORK POTTERY, which operates out of a dirt-floored workshop in an old Madison County tobacco field, he has North Carolina clay soiling his fingernails and wood smoke and pine filling his lungs.

“We value old-world craftsmanship and an aesthetic quality that is unconstrained by time and place, fundamental and simple,” says Matisse about East Fork Pottery, which also features the work of potter John Vigeland and a team of apprentices. Next spring, a flagship retail shop is set to open in Asheville’s River Arts District. eastforkpottery.com. y When Gatlinburg residents and visitors need a hand-bound and knotted broom with the twisted handle of a mountain laurel branch—or a hiking stick topped with a carved bear’s head—they head to OGLE’S BROOM SHOP, same as they have for decades. Third-generation broom maker David Ogle and his wife, Tammie, create everything by hand on Route 321’s Arts and Crafts Loop. oglesbroomshop.com.

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OCTOBER 18-25, 2015

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VISIT

Eastern Tennessee

VISIT

Eastern Tennessee

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Apples to Apples Regional farmers dig into American history to bring back heritage apples

BY BRUCE INGRAM

Solar panels and windmills, chickens and berry patches—there’s plenty to look at on Big Horse Creek Farm in the highlands of Ashe County, North Carolina. But perhaps nothing is more striking than the rows of apple trees. These aren’t ordinary fruit trees, a fact that becomes obvious when examining the nuanced spectrum of yellow, green, pink, and red apples. Rather, these heirloom varieties bear the fruits of heritage.

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How Do You Like Them Apples?

Throughout much of this country’s history until after World War II, Americans grew apples for numerous reasons, choosing varieties that might excel at just one or two things such as drying, keeping, stovetop cooking, eating out of hand, and making cider, brandy, apple butter, pies, cobblers, jams, and moonshine, also known as applejack. Our forefathers might have grown eight or nine or even more varieties, selecting, for instance, a variety that might ripen in July and be good for applesauce (for example, the Yellow Transparent); in August and be good for stovetop cooking (Summer Rambo); in September and be good for cider (Grimes Golden), in October for pies (Stayman Winesap), and in November for long keeping (Black Twig).

Tom “Professor Apple” Burford suggests a few varieties particularly well suited for the mountains: y The Old Fashioned Winesap grows well in the mountains, but thrives in many other regions as well. This classic American fruit is known as a dessert apple as well as for making apple butter, cider, and pies. y The Albemarle or Newtown Pippin thrives throughout the Blue Ridge and Smoky Mountains and is wonderful for desserts, baking, pies, vinegar, and cider. y The Chehalis—a favorite among organic growers because of its disease resistance—is known as a dessert, baking, and pie apple. y The Fall Russet originated in Michigan, which means it can withstand those cold spring mornings in the mountains. Another favorite of organic growers because of disease resistance, it’s good for desserts, drying, cider, and more. y The Roxbury Russet is ideal for drying, pies, and cider. y The Baldwin is particularly popular in New England as an all-purpose apple, but fares well in any mountain climate. y The Stayman originated in Kansas but also thrives throughout the Appalachian Mountains. It’s known as a superior dessert apple and for pies, apple butter, frying, applesauce, and cider. y The Twenty Ounce excels as a backyard variety. Try it for baking, frying, and desserts. y The Wealthy is noted for its hardiness in New England, Minnesota, and even in parts of Canada, so it holds up well in our region, too, and is a superb variety for desserts, applesauce, and pies.

Tim Hensley, whose nursery and home is located in downtown Bristol, says even urban and suburban dwellers can raise and enjoy heritage varieties. “The benefit of heritage home orchards is variety and of course freshness,” he says. “We gather June apples in the evening and cook them the next morning for breakfast. There’s Rusty Coat for apple salad, Wolf River, Black Ben Davis, and Grimes Golden for apple butter. Whitney Crab for high-flavored jelly, Virginia Beauty for eating out of hand, Horse Apple and Maiden’s Blush for drying. Early Harvest for apple sauce and Cox’s Orange Pippin for a classic apple pie.” Here are a few more varieties he and Ron Joyner of Big Horse Creek Farm consider ideally suited for the Smoky Mountains: y Any discussion of Southern apples should begin with Limbertwig apples. Referred to as the “quintessential Southern Appalachian apple,” the Limbertwig has dozens of strains, most of which originated in East Tennessee, Southwest Virginia, and southeastern Kentucky. Some of the better Limbertwig varieties include Old Fashioned, Red, Black, Royal, Myers’ Royal, Brushy Mountain, Smoky Mountain, and Kentucky Limbertwig. y A parent of Golden Delicious and one of the highest-quality dessert apples available, the sweet, flavorful Grimes Golden originated in West Virginia and is excellent for cooking, baking, making cider, and eating out of hand. y The Ozark Pippin originated in Washington County, Tennessee, and keeps well for a summer apple. Its flesh features a juicy, rich taste. y The early-ripening Summer Rambo originated in France in the early 1500s. Popular since colonial times, the fruit makes superb applesauce and butter. y Of Russian origin, the Yellow Transparent ripens early and offers a tart, tangy flavor that is particularly popular for making applesauce. y Once recognized as one of the most important apples in the South, the Virginia Beauty fell into relative obscurity after the introduction of Red Delicious. This versatile apple provides truly outstanding flavor with hints of cherry and almond. y The Wolf River originated in Wisconsin but has been a longtime favorite in the South for making high-quality apple butter. Large to enormous in size, the apple ripens in September and remains an important heritage variety for making apple butter as part of day-long family and communal gatherings.

Ron Joyner picks apples at his Big Horse Creek Farm in Ashe County, North Carolina. BRUCE INGRAM PHOTO

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“We have always been fascinated by the history of apples and the deep cultural, almost mystical, connections Americans have had with this wonderful fruit,” explains Ron Joyner, who started Big Horse Creek Farm with his wife, Suzanne, in 1985. “The first European explorers who arrived in the New World brought all the tools and resources necessary to survive on this continent, including their prized apple trees and precious apple seeds. The value and importance of apples had long been established in European agrarian communities, and so it was quite natural that these early adventurers would bring apples to establish in the new colonies.”

Over subsequent generations, the Europeans’ ingrained cultural connection with apples became the norm for the new Americans as well. “This identification with apples— Mom and apple pie—continues to be a profoundly significant part of American culture to this day,” he says. “We feel it is critical to keep the stories and histories of heritage apples alive for future generations to enjoy and explore.”

The Joyners attribute their interest in heritage apples in part to Tom “Professor Apple” Burford, whose orchard in the foothills of Virginia’s Blue Ridge offers a case study in heritage apple varieties. For decades, Burford has advocated for America’s need to preserve its apple-growing heritage. According to the RAFT Alliance (Renewing America’s Food Traditions), of the 15,000-some varieties that once were grown and eaten in North America, only about 3,000 remain accessible.

Two years ago, Burford authored Apples of North America: 192 Exceptional Varieties for Gardeners, Growers, and Cooks (Timber Press, $30), which is on its way to becoming a classic tome on heirloom apples akin to Old Southern Apples, by Lee Calhoun of Pittsboro, North Carolina.

Both books contend that apples should stimulate our taste buds more than supermarket varieties that often taste like moist cardboard (think Red Delicious) or are bland and inconsequential (Golden Delicious). All too often the only things “delicious” about these and other modern-day varieties are their names, which suggest an appeal that is far better than how they taste. In his book, Burford laments “the emergence of the so-called beautiful apples, a source of malnourishment that even posed a consumption risk from chemical contamination. Eating with our eyes brought this tasteless object to the fruit bowls of America.”

Like Burford, Tim Hensley emphasizes that there’s more to this fruit than tasteless “lunchbox apples.” He operates the Urban Homestead, a heritage apple nursery in Bristol, Virginia, and says that heirloom apple varieties 70

Ron and Suzanne Joyner (below) run Big Horse Creek Farm, which runs on wind and solar power and specializes in rare apples. BRUCE INGRAM PHOTOS

take in a “wider spectrum.”

“Yates are quite small but an excellent grower—high flavored and a superior keeper,” Hensley explains. “Wolf River is downright bland off the tree, but it makes choice apple butter. Red Royal Limbertwig doesn’t look like much with its dull red, medium size, but it’s hard to eat just one. Black Limbertwig is also dull, dark, and hard when you first pick it. But it’s immune, or nearly so, to all major apple diseases, and with a little mellowing it’s one of the best-tasting apples.”

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Flavor superiority aside, it all comes back to the fruit’s role in history for Ron Joyner. “Apples have a unique and revered place in human history,” he says. “That is why it is so important we recognize and acknowledge this deep and personal connection our species has always enjoyed with the common apple. This is also why we feel our work in preserving the astonishing diversity of apples is of critical importance.”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Outdoor writer and photographer Bruce Ingram lives in Southwest Virginia.

H

ard cider is riding a new wave of popularity, but don’t call it a fad. A better term for the tipple might be America’s oldest alcoholic beverage.

English colonists brought apple seeds to America, along with their skills for making hard cider from the fermented juice of the fruit. A staple in colonial days, hard cider graced many a dinner table as it was deemed safer than water to drink.

Thomas Jefferson made cider from some of the 18 varieties of apples he grew at Monticello, his Virginia home, and John Adams drank hard cider every morning to soothe his stomach.

Cider’s popularity spread as colonists moved into the mountains of North Carolina, where they found the slopes, soil, and climate ideal for growing apples.

Hard cider held its own in the years until Prohibition, when the quaff nearly disappeared and many of the apple trees were cut down.

Today, North Carolina ranks as the leading apple-growing area of the Southeast and claims the seventhlargest apple crop nationwide. More than 75 percent of the commercial apple crop in North Carolina comes from Henderson County, where apples were first planted in the 1700s.

Within the last decade, hard cider production has spiked in the U.S., with cider sales jumping 65 percent in 2012, and then doubling in 2013. These numbers spurred many hobbyists to jump on the hard-cider bandwagon, with new starts reaching an all-time high in 2014. David Bowman, who founded Black Mountain Ciderworks in 2013, reports that his company’s production more than doubles every year.

Why the surge? Hard cider is a naturally gluten-free alternative to craft beer, and its popularity comes at a time when people are becoming more interested in local products. “We grow great apples and produce great craft beer in Western North Carolina,” says Amber Smithson of Three Sisters Cidery. “Cider is just the next step.”

Black Mountain Ciderworks Home brewers David and Jessica Bowman fell in love with hard cider at a village fair in England. When they got home to North Carolina, they started making cider on their driveway. Now they have their own facility in Black Mountain.

A small tasting room keeps six ciders on tap—including their full-bodied, semi-dry flagship, Pomona. They use a blend of

The chalkboard menu at Urban Orchard in Asheville.

JEFF ANDERSON/URBAN ORCHARD PHOTO

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Cider House Jewels apples from Henderson County, including Winesap, Stamen, Arkansas Black, and Baldwin to add tannins and balance. “The hot summers in Henderson County affect the sugar and acids in the apples grown here,” David explains. “The idea of terroir is as important in cider as it is in wine.”

Tasting room open 3–8 p.m. Monday, Wednesday, and Friday and 2–8 p.m.

Saturday. 104 Eastside Dr., #107, Black Mountain, N.C. blackmountainciderworks.com.

founding partners. “We fresh-press all our apples.” They are working on a tasting room, but in the meantime, check the website for a list of area retailers that carry the label. nakedapplecider.com.

Noble Hard Cider Founded by Trevor and Joanna Baker and Leif Stevens in 2012, Noble was the first commercial hard cidery in the Asheville area. From an initial production of 2,000 gallons, the company’s output

made their first batch of cider for their wedding. Today they have 1,300 gallons of single varietals, such as Arkansas Black, Winesap, Pink Lake, Gold Rush, and heirloom Albemarle Pippin, which ferments at a Henderson County winery.

They will release their first batch of commercial hard cider to area bars and restaurants this fall. Plans are also on tap to add a tasting room.

3016 Chimney Rock Rd., Hendersonville, N.C. threesisterscidery.com.

Bold Rock Founded in Nellysville, Virginia,

by John Washburn and renowned New Zealand cider maker Brian Shanks, Bold Rock recently set up shop in Mills River, North Carolina. The new ciderworks in Henderson County will help Washburn and Shanks meet the exploding demand for their crisp, refreshing Carolina Apple and full, rounded Carolina Draft ciders. The blend of apples (including Granny Smith, Arkansas Black, McIntosh, and Winesap) they use come from nearby Apple Wedge Packers, fifth-generation North Carolina apple growers.

The new facility has a taproom and a mezzanine where visitors can watch the award-winning cider being made. Check online for taproom hours. 72 Schoolhouse Rd., Mills River, N.C. boldrock.com.

Naked Apple Cider In spring 2013, Naked Apple joined Western North Carolina’s hard cider movement, establishing an operation in Flat Rock where they source apples from Henderson County as well as their own orchard. Naked Apple’s flagship is Wicked Peel, a crisp libation with an off-dry finish.

Quickly gaining in popularity is Blackberry Gold, a tangy and slightly sweeter cider made from a blend of local apples and blackberries. “Ours is truly an artisan cider,” says John Coker, one of the company’s four

Black Mountain Ciderworks.

November’s Ciderfest NC. CARRIE TURNER PHOTO

skyrocketed to 30,000 gallons last year. To meet the demand for their best sellers— the dry, wine-style Standard Bearer and crisp, cherry Village Tart ciders—the trio recently relocated to a new facility in West Asheville. They obtain the majority of their apples (Gold Rush, Winesap, Stamen, Pink Lady) from Henderson County and purchase heirloom Newtown Pippins from Virginia. Find Noble ciders on tap at 250 restaurants and bars around Asheville, as well as in their new taproom.

Taproom open 4 to 10 p.m. Thursday to Saturday and noon to 6 p.m. Sunday. 356 New Leicester Hwy., Asheville, N.C. noblecider.com.

Three Sisters Cidery Amber Smithson’s family has apples in their bones. Her grandparents established Freeman Orchards in Hendersonville 80 years ago, and her parents now run the 100-acre farm where Amber and her husband, Kerby, source all the apples for their craft cider. Five years ago, the couple

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Urban Orchard Cider Co. This family-owned West Asheville tasting room pours flights of its house craft cider, from standbys such as the Dry Ridge, Ginger Champagne, and Sweet English to seasonal offerings infused with chili peppers or melded with hops. Owner and head cider maker Josie Mielke and her husband first forayed into cider as hobbyists, then traveled to England to take classes and tour cideries. In 2013, they opened their tasting room, which offers guest bottles of domestic and international ciders, a couple of taps reserved for local beers, and a food menu, in addition to their own taps. The family team sources local apples and has planted 55 trees north of Asheville, in the hopes to one day ferment their own harvest.

Bar open 2 to 10 p.m. Monday, 2 to 11 p.m.

Tuesday, noon to midnight Friday and Saturday, and noon to 10 p.m. Sunday. 210 Haywood Rd., Asheville, N.C. urbanorchardcider.com — By M. Linda Lee

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Let the Spirits Move You Commune with past and future in Historic Rugby, Tennessee 74

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By Amy Greene

first visited Historic Rugby, a remote community hidden like a secret among the forested hills of Middle Tennessee’s Cumberland Plateau, in September of 2014. It was late summer but I could smell autumn. The first leaves had begun to fall in flurries. Walking dirt and gravel paths, I came upon mist hanging over fields and graveyards, obscuring the cupolas of Victorian houses that had stood on the same wood foundations since the 1800s. I considered what it means to call somewhere haunted. The word doesn’t always pertain to spirits. It can speak of memories. Residue of past lives and events can linger like fog in the hollows of mountains, in the lees of fieldstone chimneys centuries old. Whether or not you believe in ghosts, from the moment you pass the signpost marking Rugby’s boundaries you can feel all the ways in which this quiet Gothic village is haunted.

The Hughes Library in Rugby, Tennessee (opposite). Historic characters lead tours of Laurel Dale Cemetery (top). The Newbury House dates to 1880 (right).

PHOTOS COURTESY HISTORIC RUGBY INC.

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Clockwise: Hughes Library, volunteer Peter Merrill in Rugby’s Print Shop, Christ Church. Opposite: Laurel Dale Cemetery.

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In fact, Historic Rugby has been called the most haunted town in America. During my stay at Newbury House, a bed-and-breakfast that has offered travelers rest since the village was founded in 1880, I was unsettled by more than one unexplained incident. But that’s another tale. This one is more about the sense of a place than its ghosts. I was invited to Rugby to read from my second novel, Long Man, as part of the town’s annual writer series. Rugby has a thriving arts scene

for a small community, which is no surprise given its origins. When I learned the village was founded by the writer Thomas Hughes, whose mother was a friend of Charles Dickens, I couldn’t believe I hadn’t heard of it before.

As a boy growing up in Oxfordshire, England, in the 1830s, while attending Rugby School, Hughes was influenced by the progressive teachings of his headmaster Thomas Arnold. The Christian socialist ideals he’d learned at Rugby School, under the tutelage of Arnold, inspired his 1857 novel, Tom Brown’s School Days, as well as the name of the colony he would eventually cross the ocean to establish in the idyllic mountains of Tennessee. Hughes envisioned a utopian colony where the “second sons” of the English gentry could escape the primogeniture, in which the eldest sons inherited all of the family’s land, and the

economic depression of their mother country.

In this new Rugby, they would have a chance not only to own land, but to make their own rules based on Christian socialism rather than the Victorian materialism that ruled the day in 19th-century England.

As it turned out, the pampered sons of the English gentry didn’t fare too well in our hardscrabble mountains. They weren’t accustomed to the backbreaking labor it took to wrest crops from the rocky soil of the

I wanted to sit in the gazebo down by the lake or on the low stone graveyard wall and see what spirit would move my pen.

Cumberland Plateau. On top of their exhaustion, in 1881 a typhoid epidemic struck the struggling colony. By 1887, most of the colonists had either died or given up and gone back home. While the village was later resurrected and preserved as a historic district by the National Register of Historic Places, it’s those first colonists whose legacies, if not their ghosts, seem to haunt Rugby.

Exploring the town, you see what they built: Christ Church with its Gothic spire

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nestled in a copse of woods, its reed organ one of the oldest in the country. Kingstone Lisle, Hughes’s Queen Anne summer cottage, where I sat at his massive oak desk and tried to soak up whatever remained of his literary presence. Rugby Printing Works, where I was able to read one of the village’s original newspapers. The Thomas Hughes Library, Rugby’s most unchanged Victorian structure, where I donned white gloves and turned the yellowed leaves of some of its 7,000 pristine volumes, the earliest dating back to the 1600s. And Laurel Dale Cemetery, where Hughes’s mother, Margaret, is buried alongside those 1881 typhoid victims, their bones lying to this day thousands of miles from where they were born.

What courage the colonists had, to undertake such an endeavor, to dream of a utopia. It’s hard to call those “second sons” failures when you experience Rugby.

Having grown up on an ancestral farm in East Tennessee, surrounded by hills pocked with arrowheads, descended from Scots-Irish dissenters who fled oppression to make their own rules in this forbidding but beautiful landscape, I know what it means to take off your shoes and feel the soil courageous men and women died to settle seeping up between your toes.

I felt that same sense of place when I set foot for the first time inside Rugby’s Thomas Hughes Library. I stood among its historyladen shelves and said out loud, “I want to write here.” I didn’t just mean the library. I meant the whole village. I wanted to re-create on paper the scents of mist and woods and water, to get the color of the cloud-streaked sky over the schoolhouse bell just right. I wanted to lie under the churchyard trees with my notebook. I wanted to sit in the gazebo down by the lake or on the low stone graveyard wall and see what spirit would move my pen. In Historic Rugby, it feels possible to commune with all manner of spirits, including the creative one within.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Amy Greene is profiled on page 11.

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STORIES Community

Kitty Talk

BY LINDA GOODMAN

I

n 1970 I was given a seal point Siamese cat. I named him Beau Garçon, and I did not expect to like him. I had seen Lady and the Tramp, and the Siamese cats in that movie were evil.

Beau, however, turned out to be my dream cat. He followed me from room to room, and whenever I sat down, he jumped onto my lap immediately and stared up at me with his sky blue eyes. He loved to have his ears scratched, and his purr was a lullaby. Beau was also vocal. His meows and his “whyyyys” filled our little house, especially when he was annoyed or excited.

After Beau passed on, I had three other Siamese cats, and they all possessed that same sweet temperament, that same degree of affection, and that same vocal hardiness. It was impossible for me to not love them.

When my daughter was born, however, my cats had to play second fiddle. I could hardly believe that this delightful little redheaded infant who never stopped smiling was my child. I was so fascinated with her that nothing else seemed to matter.

Years later, though, my daughter went to bed one evening a normal kid and woke up the next morning a teenager. Being seen in the presence of her parents was a rare form of torture to her. Trying too hard to win back her affection just made things worse.

Instead of mourning the time I had once spent with my daughter, I adopted a petite seal point Siamese cat that I named Marisa.

She was the runt of her litter and had been neglected by her mother.

She needed me, and I needed to be needed.

In 1988, my father died, and my mother came to live with me.

Mama did not like cats. As we left her Virginia mountain home and began the ten-hour drive to my home, she asked, “Do you still have that cat?”

“Yes, Mama,” I told her.

A few hours down the road, Mama said, “You know I don’t like cats. They can take your breath away and smother you in your sleep.”

“Mama, that’s an old mountain superstition,” I insisted. “Marisa sleeps with me every night and hasn’t smothered me yet.”

A few more hours down the road, Mama warned me, “Cats will tear your furniture up with their sharp claws.”

“Marisa has been with me for years and has never clawed any of my furniture,” I assured her.

When we finally arrived at my house, I helped my mother to the kitchen door. Marisa was waiting for us. She and Mama glared at one another before Marisa retreated to the far side of the room.

The next day, while I was making dinner, Marisa rubbed her lean body against my leg. Mama watched us with extreme distaste.

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“I don’t see how you can stand a cat in the kitchen!” she snapped.

“Mama,” I said sweetly, “you just don’t understand that Marisa is special.”

“What’s so special about her?” she retorted.

“Marisa can talk,” I informed her.

“Huh!” she barked in disbelief. “Cats can’t talk!”

As if on cue, Marisa walked slowly and elegantly to the kitchen door and cried, “Meooow!”

“See,” I told Mama, “she said, ‘me out.’”

Mama, her face as pale as a ghost, gasped. “Why, it did sound as if she said, “me out!’”

I looked at Marisa and said, “No, Marisa, you can’t go out.”

“Whyyyy?” she responded.

I looked at Mama and said, “See, she wants to know why.”

MANDY NEWHAM-COBB ILLUSTRATION

“Why....it did sound as if she asked you, ‘why?’” Mama was beside herself. “What else can she say?”

“Marisa is a cat of few words, Mama,” I said. “She mostly likes to listen. And she is real good at keeping secrets.”

After I finished the dishes that evening, I went downstairs to the family room. As I approached the doorway, I could see Mama sitting on the sofa with Marisa curled up beside her. Marisa’s sky blue eyes stared up into Mama’s as she gently rubbed the top of Marisa’s head. Mama was whispering to the cat, telling her about my father and how hard it had been to lose him.

They did not know that I was listening, and I did not want to interrupt this special moment. I walked back upstairs, knowing that I would have to get used to sharing Marisa’s affection while Mama was with us. I hoped that would be a long, long time.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Linda Goodman is profiled on page 11.

SMOKY MOUNTAIN LIVING VOLUME 15 • ISSUE 5

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