Smoky Mountain Living, April 2017

SMOKY MOUNTAIN LIVING

SPRING’S HARBINGER | APPALACHIAN TRAIL WEEKENDS | PICKLED EGGS APRIL/MAY 2017

Celebrating Southern Appalachians THE

AFTER THE FIRE | BREWERIES SAVE HISTORY | FRIED PIES | BARBEQUE SECRETS

After the Fire

APRIL/MAY 2017 • VOL. 17 • NO. 2

smliv.com

GATLINBURG OPEN FOR BUSINESS, LESSONS IN FIRE ECOLOGY, THE MIND OF AN ARSONIST & REBIRTH IN A SMOKIES TOWN

$5.95US $6.95CAN

0

74820 08682

05

7

Breweries

Saving History

12 Bones Reveals Barbecue Secrets A Mysterious Schoolhouse in the Shadow of Cold Mountain

CULLOWHEE RIVER CLUB

ww ww.

Cull u owheeRiverClub.com

is a unique, handcrafted Blue Riddge Mou o ntain community nestled between Western Carol o ina University and the scenic Tuckasegee River in Cullow whee, NC C. Life here thrives on the excitement of outdoor recreational adventures and the inspiring arts and entertainment of a vibrant university community t .

Homesite prices range from $70k to the upper $100s. Home Plans range from thee mid $100s to the upper $500s.

Salees Exclusively by

1.877.2 . 58.2522

COTTAGES • CABINS • TOWNHOMES • CONDOMINIUMS

2-Bedroom Mo M delCabin

WC CU Bardo d Arts Center

Obtain the Property Report required by federal law and read it before signing anyything. No federal agency has judged the merits or value, if anyy, of this property.

This does not constitute an offer to sell, or a solicitation to buy real estate, to residents of any state or jurisdiction where prohibited by law, or where prior registration 0/. -,+*0-,). (*'. &%/. $#'. ",'. (,,$. !* ,) . *--,$'. ), , # ,$'. %$/. %-,. /*( , '. '#. &%$ ,. 0'&#*'. $#'0 , . %$). /# ,. &#'# -% &/. %". ), 0 '. %-,%/. $#'. 0'&0$. '&,. project. There is no guarantee that facilities, features, or amenities depicted or otherwise described will be built or, if built, will be of the same type, size, or nature as depicted or described. We will use your contact information to provide you information about us, except where prohibited by law. We are in compliance with Title VIII #!.'&,. 0 0 . 0 &'/. '.#!. . ,.&% ,.$#'.%$). 0 .$#'.)0/ -0 0$%',.% %0$/'."#*.(, %*/,.#!."#*-.-% , . # #- .-, 0 0#$ ./, .$%'0#$% .#-0 0$ .!% 0 0% ./'%'*/.#-.&%$)0 % EQUAL HOUSING

OPPORTUNITY

AN EXPERIENCE TO REMEMBER MAST GENERAL STORE OLD-FASHIONED FRIENDLY SERVICE

63 North Main Street • Downtown Waynesville (828) 452 -2101 • M A S T S T O R E . C O M • OT HER D OW N TOW NS : Asheville • Hendersonville • Boone

Winston-Salem • Valle Crucis, NC • Columbia • Greenville, SC Knoxville, TN

Contents

FEATU RE STO RIES

AFTER THE FIRE Forest ďŹ res burned tens of thousands of acres in the Smokies last fall fueled by extreme drought and high winds. Was it the perfect storm or the new norm? Also, Gatlinburg is open for business. Leaders there say the best way to support the town is to visit this spring.

BY DON HENDERSHOT

PAGE

46

AT WEEKEND-BY-WEEKEND The Appalachian Trail is America’s most famous long-distance hike. But the time and stamina to hike all 2,190 miles is a little daunting for most of us. Our occasional series AT Weekends divvies up southern sections into short trips with suggested itineraries for trail towns.

BY KATIE KNOROVSKY

PAGE

60

BREWERIES TOAST TO HISTORY Craft beer is big business in the mountains, and some breweries are stepping up to restore shuttered historic sites and repurpose them for brewing operations.

Take a trip with us to a few breweries that are doing more than making beer.

BY BECKY JOHNSON

PAGE

70

Contents

DEPA RTME N TS

SWEET APPALACHIA

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

17

Comforts for the mountain soul — Asheville’s famous 12 Bones has revealed its barbeque secrets in a new book. Meet the kind-hearted Beulah who devoted her life to helping her mountain neighbors. Get a jump-start on this spring’s garden with transplanting tips. And find out how to make pickled eggs that are miles from the ubiquitous gas station counter jars.

MOUNTAIN EXPLORER

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

29

Even the most intrepid hikers can get lost in the wilderness quagmire nicknamed the “Blue Ridge Triangle.” Learn how to spot the Smokies winged harbinger of spring. Take a bite out of “heaven on a plate” with the wonderful tradition of fried pies. And, one photographer’s take on a mysterious schoolhouse in the shadow of Cold Mountain.

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

ON THE COVER Gatlinburg is open for business after the fires. Read more in our story on page 56.

PHOTO BY KEVIN STEWART

AT THE PARK. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

MEET OUR CONTRIBUTORS. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

CONNECT WITH US. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

PHOTO ESSAY. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

STORY: NEVER DRIVE A NAIL IN A TREE. . . . . . . .

Good Living 4

7 8 9 10 12 88

Southern Appalachian Mountains Gallery Guide. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42 Select Lodging. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86

SMOKY MOUNTAIN LIVING VOLUME 17 • ISSUE 2

DISCOVER PROPERTIES & COMMUNITIES AT HOME AND ON THE GO ON beverly-hanks.com

When you’re ready to search for a home that’s as breathtaking as our mountain views.

MOBILE On the top right corner of your screen, click:

NEARBY PROPERTIE S

HOME

for prices and photos.

Advanced searches and detailed community information.

<RXȇOO ȴQG WKHUH DUH PDQ\ ZD\V WR OLYH LQ Western North Carolina. We eliminate the guesswork by providing the photos, the analysis, and the community search tools you need.

COMMUNITY OFFICES LOCATED THROUGHOUT THE REGION Downtown Asheville North Asheville Biltmore Park Hendersonville Waynesville Lake Lure

866.858.2257 customerservice@beverly-hanks.com

beverly-hanks.com 6

SMOKY MOUNTAIN LIVING VOLUME 17 • ISSUE 2

EQUAL HOUSING

OPPORTUNITY

FROM THE MANAGING EDITOR Community

VOL. 17 • NUMBER 2 Publisher/Editor. . . . . . . . . . . Scott McLeod scott@smliv.com General Manager. . . . . . . . . Greg Boothroyd ads@smliv.com Sales Manager. . . . . . . . . . . Hylah Birenbaum hylah@smliv.com Managing Editor. . . . . . . . . . Jon Ostendorff editor@smliv.com Art Director. . . . . . . . . . . Travis Bumgardner travis@smliv.com Graphics. . . . . . . Micah McClure, Emily Moss Finance & Admin.. . . . . . Amanda Singletary Sales. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Greg Boothroyd, Amanda Belue, Amanda Bradley Distribution. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Scott Collier Contributing Writers. . . . . . . . . Jim Casada, Annette Saunooke Clapsaddle, Ashley English, Michael Reno Harrell, Don Hendershot, Bruce Ingram, Becky Johnson, Holly Kays, Katie Knorovsky, Jeff Minick, Fred Sauceman, Chris Smith, Scarlett Swann Contributing Photographers. . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Erin Adams, Terry Barnes, Mike Belleme, William Clanton, Becky Johnson, Holly Kays, Vonda Magill, Lee Mandrell, Beth Patton, Laurie Potteiger, Scott Ramsey, Mark J. Roberts, Kevin Stewart, Bonnie Waigand Contributing Illustrators. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Mandy Newham-Cobb Smoky Mountain Living has made every effort to ensure 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 Jon Ostendorff at jon@smliv.com.

Smoky Mountain Living assumes no responsibility for unsolicited manuscripts or photographs. Queries should be sent to Katie Knorovsky at katie@smliv.com. ©2017. All rights reserved. No portion of this magazine may be reprinted without the express, written consent of the publisher.

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

I

rode around Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge this winter to get a first-hand look at the damage from last fall’s massive forest fires.

It was the worst fire season I can remember in nearly 20 years living in the Smokies.

Folks with a lot more time in these mountains than I have also marked it as one of the worst.

Gatlinburg was particularly hard hit. The Chimney Tops 2 fire escaped Great Smoky Mountains National Park and burned through Gatlinburg, causing about half a billion dollars in damage.

Fourteen people died. Two teenagers have been charged with arson in connection with the fire.

It’s a tragedy and it got national and international coverage last fall.

Images of burning homes and hotels dominated the news for weeks. Smoldering shells of cars looked more like a war zone than our beloved Smokies tourist town.

The slogan “Smokies Strong” rose up from the ashes. Donations flooded in from Gatlinburg’s countless fans across the world.

So when I pulled in to town, I expected to see more wreckage.

It’s there, for sure. It’s startling and heart breaking.

But the damage is not as widespread as I expected. A small percentage of Gatlinburg’s structures burned.

The fire, blown across ridges with high winds, seemed to pick and choose its targets in a cruel game of darts.

Downtown Gatlinburg looks great. It was open and busy on the unseasonably warm day I was there.

Pigeon Forge is the same.

All your favorite attractions are ready to serve you.

I had lunch in both towns with the hospitality industry. The message at both meet-

WWW.SMLIV.COM

ings, from officials with Great Smoky Mountains National Park to hoteliers and the local visitors bureaus, was we are open for business.

But the tourism industry in Sevier County, Tennessee, is worried that the perception that Gatlinburg was destroyed will keep visitors away this spring.

I can tell you, first-hand, that Gatlinburg was not destroyed. There are plenty of places to stay, restaurants to dine in and attractions and entertainment venues to enjoy.

The same is true with the Park. Some trails will likely remain closed this spring and, in some cases, large amounts of trees may die. But, in most cases, the fire did not cause lasting damage.

As hotelier Logan Coykendall put it, watching the rebirth of the places where it burned the hottest, like the Chimneys, will become an annual attraction for those who are interested in ecology.

Images of burning homes and hotels dominated the news for weeks. Smoldering shells of cars looked more like a war zone than our beloved Smokies tourist town.

“There’s a lot of perception out there that the whole town burned down,” he says.

“The best way to help us recover is to come visit us and see how beautiful the area still is.”

We decided to dedicate the cover of this issue of Smoky Mountain Living to a new slogan: “Open for Business.”

The best way to show your “Smokies Strong” spirit is to visit Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge this spring.

You won’t be disappointed.

And you’ll be helping a community rebuild at a time when it needs you more than ever.

— Jon Ostendorff, managing editor 828.226.6216 • jon@smliv.com

7

AT THE PARK Community

Smokies Gem Gets a Makeover B Y H O L LY K AY S

I

t would be easy to climb the rock steps of Alum Cave Trail’s iconic Arch Rock under the tacit assumption that these stones were born here, serendipitously raised into place on a naturally occurring 5-mile trail winding through rugged mountainside. .

But the truth is that picture-perfect Alum Cave Trail, marked by smooth tread and tightly constructed steps and bridges, is the result of 2 years of backbreaking work involving 50,000 hours of work from a continuously rotating crew of 50 people.

Reopened in November 2016, the Alum Cave Trail — one of the most popular routes in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park — had been closed Monday through Thursday, May through October, as work progressed. Before rehabilitation, the trail had been a veritable mess of roots and erosion and unsafe trail edges. Rescue calls were common on the trail when people lost their footing and fell, sustaining injuries that rendered them incapable of hiking out.

Now, those situations are much less likely arise.

“It’s not just a rehabilitation of a trail, but it is a transformation of the whole experience, the whole hiking experience,” the park’s Deputy Superintendent Clay Jordan said at the Nov. 17 ribboncutting ceremony.

Every inch of the trail has been smoothed over to eliminate hazards posed by rocks and roots. Water bars have been installed, steps built, bridges constructed and areas like Arch Rock completely refurbished. It took 10 workers 5 months to finish that short section, with the steps requiring 74 rocks weighing 300 to 1,500 pounds apiece. In the backcountry, there’s no such thing as a crane to lift

such heavy materials. Workers had to search the forest for suitable rocks, move them with ropes and pulleys, and then drill, split and install them by hand.

It should, therefore, go without saying that the trail restoration wasn’t cheap. And, with only a shoestring federal budget to carry it along, the park most certainly did not have a spare $500,000 to fund the project.

That’s where Friends of the Smokies’ Trails Forever program comes in. Funding emanates from an endowment fund that started when the Knoxville-based Aslan Foundation promised $2 million if Friends of the Smokies could raise a match. The nonprofit met that challenge in 2012, and Trails Forever was born. The program, whose endowment now holds about $5 million, uses the money to fund specialized trail crews to rebuild high-priority trails in the park. Many, like the Alum Cave Trail, hadn’t seen any significant restoration since they were first constructed by the Civilian Conservation Corps in the 1930s.

On the Alum Cave Trail, American Conservation Experience students provided 44,000 of the 50,000 hours of labor.

Muscles were certainly required to bring the project to completion, but Trails Forever is about the artistry as much as it is about the brawn. The goal After 2 years and 50,000 hours of work, the is to hide all evidence Alum Cave Trail is open. that tools were ever brought into the backcountry. Rocks are placed so that drill marks face the ground. Turned-up earth is re-covered with fallen leaves.

Moss and ferns are planted alongside the new infrastructure, making the freshly placed rocks look like they’ve been there for 50 years.

With any luck, generations will pass before anyone gives a thought to reconstructing the trail again.

Rainbow Falls Trail in Smokies closed for restoration work Next up on the priority list for Smokies Trails Forever is the Rainbow Falls Trail, a heavily-used route that, like Alum Cave, is one of several paths to Mount LeConte.

The lower portion of the 6.5-mile trail, which leads to the falls, is mostly level. As a result, it’s become so heavily braided with user-made trails that it’s hard to tell which is the original trail route.

Like the Alum Cave project, rehabilitation of the Rainbow Falls Trail is

8

expected to take two full seasons to complete. This year, the trail and its parking areas will be closed from 7 a.m.

Mondays to 5:30 p.m. Thursdays, May 8 to Nov. 16, excluding federal holidays.

Before Alum Cave, the last project Trails Forever completed was an overhaul of the Chimney Tops Trail, which sustained significant damage as a result of the Chimney Tops 2 Fire last year. The blaze escaped the park on Nov. 28, 2016, to roar

SMOKY MOUNTAIN LIVING VOLUME 17 • ISSUE 2

through Gatlinburg, killing 14 people and causing $500 million in damage.

As of press time, a full assessment of the Chimney Tops Trail had not been completed. However, while details have not yet been finalized the park does not expect repairs to Chimney Tops to affect the timeline of the Rainbow Falls project.

To donate to Smokies Trails Forever, visit friendsofthesmokies.org/product/ preserve-trails-forever.

MEET OUR CONTRIBUTORS

SECOND STREET PHOTOGRAPHY

Community

Katie Knorovsky

Jim Casada

Fred Sauceman

efore writing about a destination, writer Katie Knorovsky believes in immersing herself in that setting in order to soak up its unique sense of place. But she's rarely had the opportunity to do that quite so literally as she did in her reporting on Hot Springs, North Carolina, part of this issue's feature on Appalachian Trail towns. “As a winter storm was headed to the region, I hightailed it up to Hot Springs for a dip in the hot mineral baths,” she says. “I've hiked this part of the A.T. before, but I didn’t fully understand the town’s appeal until I got up to my neck in its famous waters— and doing so on a frigid day as flurries began to fly made the experience that much more memorable.”

Knorovsky lives in West Asheville, where she is a freelance writer and editor with a focus on people and places. She is the former managing editor of Smoky Mountain Living and before that worked as an editor at National Geographic Traveler, where she remains a contributing editor. Her writing has also been published in The Washington Post, Rodale’s Organic Life, and The Local Palate, among other national and regional publications.

im Casada is a son of the Smokies who grew up in Bryson City, North Carolina and says “a corner of my soul still belongs to the high country.”

His formal education includes a B. A. in history from King University, an M. A. in British history from Virginia Tech and a Ph. D. in British imperial history from Vanderbilt University.

He taught at Winthrop University from 1971-1996 before taking early retirement to devote all his energies to writing.

While at Winthrop he rose to the rank of full professor, served two terms as chair of the graduate faculty, was recognized as the institution’s Distinguished Professor in 1983, and won numerous excellence in teaching awards.

As an academician, he wrote several books, roughly a hundred articles, and reviewed numerous books for scholarly journals.

He introduces us to the beautiful life of Beulah Sudderth, who he describes as “a living history book when it came to the African-American community in Swain County and beyond.”

red Sauceman is a prolific chronicler of the foodways of Appalachia.

He has written and edited seven food-related books, including the threevolume series The Place Setting: Timeless Tastes of the Mountain South, from Bright Hope to Frog Level and his latest book, Buttermilk & Bible Burgers: More Stories from the Kitchens of Appalachia.

Fred has been writing regularly for Smoky Mountain Living since 2016. His column “Potluck” appears monthly in the Johnson City Press, and he appears monthly in the “Food with Fred” segment on WJHL-TV in Johnson City.

Fred has produced seven documentary films on various aspects of Appalachian foodways, from red hot dogs to ramps.

His next book, The Proffitts of Ridgewood: An Appalachian Family’s Life in Barbecue, will be published in September by Mercer University Press.

Mercer has also recently named him editor of a new series of books entitled Food and the American South.

In this issue, he brings us an authentic look at the tradition of fried pies across the Smokies, which he calls “heaven on a plate.”

B

J

WWW.SMLIV.COM

F

9

CONNECT WITH US Community

Spring Sojourn

S

pring is finally on its way to the Smokies and it’s one of our favorite times of the year.

First the wildflowers bloom, then the trees leaf out, and great music festivals call to us like MerleFest, where the Steep Canyon Rangers will be performing in April.

Come connect with us this spring. We’re on the road to some great festivals and would love to meet you in person to hear what you love about spring in the Smokies.

MÉLANGE OF THE MOUNTAINS: APRIL 6, WAYNESVILLE, NORTH CAROLINA The start of spring isn’t complete for us without the culinary food festival in Haywood County, North Carolina. We’ll be there enjoying the innovative recipes from inspired chefs, craft microbreweries and local farms.

It’s the 13th year for this signature event and we can’t wait. Come tell us about your favorite Smokies-inspired food and drink. visitncsmokies.com/event/melange-of-the-mountains.

BLUE RIDGE TROUT FESTIVAL: APRIL 29, BLUE RIDGE, GEORGIA Bob Borgwat brought us a great story about fishing in Fannin County, Georgia, for our Go Wild feature in the February/March edition of Smoky Mountain Living. The Blue Ridge Trout Festival is a chance to experience the world-class trout waters in his story and we will be there.

Look for us at the daylong festival at the Downtown City Park in Blue Ridge. Stop by and let us know how you plan to Go Wild in the outdoors this spring. blueridgetroutfest.com.

WILDERNESS WILDLIFE WEEK: MAY 9-13, PIGEON FORGE, TENNESSEE Outdoor enthusiasts and nature lovers will converge on Pigeon Forge and surrounding environs for a week of discovery and adventure during Wilderness Wildlife Week. The programs are free, and the huge array of outings, hands-on workshops and talks offer choices for all ages and interests. Look for us on select days at the LeConte Center. mypigeonforge.com/events/wilderness-wildlife-week.

Even More

Need a Smoky Mountain Living fix between issues? Sign up for our free monthly e-newsletter at smliv.com. Get daily updates and connect with our community at facebook.com/smokymtnliving, twitter.com/smokymtnliving, and instagram.com/smokymtnliving.

MerleFest APRIL 27-30 WILKESBORO, NORTH CAROLINA

America’s top roots music festival lineup this year includes Steep Canyon Rangers, Natalie MacMaster and Donnell Leahy, The Avett Brothers, Zac Brown Band and many, many more.

We’ll be there and we hope to catch up with you on what kind of music coverage you’d like to see in Smoky Mountain Living. merlefest.org.

10

SMOKY MOUNTAIN LIVING VOLUME 17 • ISSUE 2

U-Pic U -P Pic ick Get Away Together.

BlueRidgeMountains.com

Sub bject to avaiilab bili lity … and dM Motther h N Nature!!

Call or visit us online for de etails.

Bakery & Eatery

Farm Market M

Tasting Room 70 6 - 6 32- 3 411 M E RC I E RO RC H A R D S . C O M 8660 BLUE RIDGE DR • BLUE RIDGE, GA

2017 SCHEDULE REGULAR RIDES 3/11-9/25 11/13-11/22 12/1, 8 & 15 12/26-31

EASTER EGGSPRESS 4/15

FIRECRACKER SPECIAL TRAIN 6/30*

*Date subject to change

FALL FOLIAGE E 9/29-11/12

PUMPKIN EXPRESS S 10/29

SANTA EXPRESS See website for dates

N NEW YEAR’S E EVE TRAIN 12/31

A TS AT ETS C KE TIIC ASE TICKETS CHA RCHA PURCHASE 4 24 724 brscenic.com or call 1-877-413-87 b Corporate excursions & private charter trips available.

241 Depot Street, Blue Ridge, GA 30513 WWW.SMLIV.COM

11

PHOTO ESSAY Community

From starry nights to rushing water falls and swallowtail butterďŹ&#x201A;ies, Spring brings wonders to these woods. Laurel blooms leave the snow behind and bring us purple hues at sunset.

A night sky shot shows the beauty of the mountains at 6,000 feet along the Blue Ridge Parkway. Scott Ramsey Photography, www.scottramsey.photography

A tiger swallowtail butterfly on blossoms in Cadeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Cove.

Mark Roberts, Mark J. Roberts Photography Left: Spring will soon bloom in Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Lee Mandrell, lemansstudios.com

The rushing waterfall at Mouse Creek Falls in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

Lee Mandrell, lemansstudios.com

PHOTO ESSAY

Sunset off the Blue Ridge Parkway near Craggy Gardens. William Clanton, williamclantonphotography.com

Community

Early snow in the North Carolina mountains. Terry Barnes, tbarnesphotography.photoshelter.com Left: Blossoms with Fall Branch in the background. Mark Roberts, Mark J Roberts Photography

Deer in Cades Cove, Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Vonda B. Magill, Veeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Photography

S

An old stove sits in GreggCable House in Cades Cove, Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

Bonnie Waigand

end us your photographs. The readers of Smoky Mountain Living make our photo essay possible each edition with their beautiful donations.

Do you have a photo you would like to share? Send it to Managing Editor Jon Ostendorff, jon@smliv.com.

Purple sky in Cades Cove, Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Lee Mandrell, lemansstudios.com

TOOLS OF THE TRADE “After the Chimney Tops 2 Fire this fall, seeing this image of Great Smoky Mountains National Park rangers and their fire tools from the late 1930’s makes me realize how little the essentials of forest firefighting have changed. In many instances, it still comes down to the fire fighters, their tools, and their training. Satellite imagery, aerial water drops, and other contemporary advances would have been unknown to these men in the 1930’s, but forest fire fighters, both then and now, would know just what to do with shovels, saws and axes when confronted with a burning landscape.”

— Mike Aday, librarian-archivist for Great Smoky Mountains National Park

NPS, GREAT SMOKY MOUNTAINS NATIONAL PARK PHOTO

SWEET APPALACHIA COMFORTS FOR THE MOUNTAIN SOUL

THE VIEW FROM HERE Sweet Appalachia

A Road Trip and Pickled Eggs

BY ASHLEY ENGLISH

D

uring the summer of 2001, I took the road trip of a lifetime.

A close friend was relocating from Asheville to Oakland, California, bound for grad school, and asked if I’d accompany her on the cross-country drive, going so far as to offer to cover the costs of the flight home.

I was in my early 20s at the time, unmarried, with no children.

Why not, I thought? I’d yet to view, firsthand, most of the country between Mississippi and California and loved a good road trip.

We set out in early August, headed due west on Interstate 40.

Nearly immediately, our plans became derailed. A nationwide heat wave, coupled with a vehicle whose air conditioning was broken — a minor detail my friend neglected to include in her travel companion solicitation — meant we had to re-route our trip.

Instead of making a straight trek through the southern U.S., driving exclusively on one interstate until we reached the Golden State, we moved north. From North Carolina, we headed into Tennessee, then on to Kentucky, Missouri, Iowa, South Dakota, Wyoming, Idaho, and Oregon, before turning south and eventually making our way to the San Francisco Bay area.

It took us 8 epic days of travel.

Numerous snafus were encountered along the way, including nearly wearing out the vehicle’s brake pads entirely whilst descending a sudden 8 percent grade in the Badlands of South Dakota, my friend getting her long hair caught in a portable fan we’d inserted into the car’s cigarette lighter, and the transmission of the Honda Civic we were driving completely dying in Boise, Idaho, just before we set out into the very hot, very deadly desert sands of the southern portion of that state.

That said, it was one of the very best trips of my life and most assuredly an absolute highlight of my youth.

Though our travels were plagued with missteps and unforeseen hiccups, it wasn’t the challenging parts that I now remember most vividly. Instead, it was the hospitality we encountered along the entire travel route.

At every gas or travel way station we fueled up at, campground we over-nighted in, and historical or tourist destination we stopped for, folks were friendly.

They were courteous, and effusive, and curious about us, ready to assist two young women in pretty much every conceivable, neighborly way.

My takeaway, thinking about that trip with Bonnie all those years ago, was the kindness of strangers.

18

Well, that and all of the pickled eggs we saw at our stops.

I can think of fewer foods more potentially divisive than pickled eggs. There is either fierce devotion or profound abhorrence, with very little meeting in the middle, on these preserved foodstuffs.

I find these stances especially ironic given the fact that, though many folks know of pickled eggs, fewer have dared to sample them.

I’d wager to guess this owes to the fact that they are most commonly on public display either in rural, out-of-the-way gas stations, such as those we encountered in our journey west, or dive bars of unknown repute.

The fact that they tend to be suspended in a vat of suspicious red liquid only adds to their potentially off-putting nature.

Brought to the New World by the British, who have long offered pickled eggs in their public houses and taverns, these preserves were at one time widely consumed. When their production became the province of factories, and less so from-scratch kitchens, what was once a fresh, natural food product become riddled with preservatives and stabilizers to extend the life of the eggs and render them shelf stable.

The bright red hue that once characterized eggs naturally pickled with beets has since been replaced with food dyes All of those gas stations encountered on my journey west, so many of them with jars of pickled eggs on their counters, while not offering the iteration of this particular pickle that I prefer, were at least consistent in their kindness and congeniality.

If I had to go west, experiencing a host of travails en route, only to return home to the southern Appalachians a few weeks later, at least the road there was paved with good intentions and the kindness of strangers.

Pickled Eggs Makes 1 dozen

YOU WILL NEED 1 dozen hard-boiled eggs, shelled 3 cups water 1 cup apple cider vinegar 2 garlic cloves, sliced

1 tablespoon honey 1 tablespoon black peppercorns 2 teaspoons sea salt 3 to 4 fresh thyme sprigs

TO PREPARE 1) Combine all of the ingredients except for the hardboiled eggs in a medium-size pot. Bring to a boil and then reduce heat to low and simmer 20 minutes.

2) Remove the pot from heat, cover with a lid, and leave until completely cool.

3) Place the eggs in a lidded container (a glass hingetop canister is very handy for this purpose). Pour the cooled brine over the eggs.

4) Keep the eggs chilled in the refrigerator until serving time. The eggs are best within the first 7 days of making.

SMOKY MOUNTAIN LIVING VOLUME 17 • ISSUE 2

Homemade pickled eggs are miles away from their gas station counterparts.

ERIN ADAMS PHOTO

WWW.SMLIV.COM

19

ROOTS Sweet Appalachia

After nurturing transplants from seed, the tender should be acclimated gently to the late-spring air — known as “hardening off.” SOW TRUE SEED PHOTO

Eager for Spring, but Steady on the Throttle

C

hris Smith, the community coordinator of Sow True Seed— an Asheville-based company that specializes in open-pollinated, heirloom, and organic seeds—answers gardening questions in each issue of Smoky Mountain Living.

Last year I had the most beautiful tomato transplants, but when I planted them outside they almost died. What did I do wrong?

There are many seeds that we start indoors so that we can nurture the seedlings and small plants in controlled conditions. This also gives us a jump on the growing season by starting seeds inside 4 to 8 weeks before they are ready to move outside. Tomatoes, peppers and eggplants are great examples of frost-tender, heat-loving plants that benefit from starting indoors.

Around April and May garden centers will begin selling transplants — those 4 to 8 week old plants in pots that are ready to “transplant” to the outdoors. Although you get more choice and more plants when growing from seed, it is great to know that you can still grow your own tomatoes

20

even if you don’t have the time or space to grow your own transplants from seed.

So, why did your tomato transplants nearly die?

Assuming you planted them outside after the frost date, the most likely answer is they were not hardened off properly. Hardening off is the easy yet essential process of slowly acclimating your tender indoor plants to tough outdoor conditions. It is an important step that should not be skipped or rushed. It’s necessary for all transplants — both cold hardy and frost tender ones. If you are buying your transplants, make sure to ask if they have been hardened off.

Hardening off is a gradual process with the aim of exposing the seedlings to increased sunlight, nighttime lows, wind and reduced watering over a 7 to 10 day period.

1. Begin by moving the seedlings to an outside but sheltered spot for just 2-3 hours of sunlight. I like to do this in the morning, on the eastern side of my house.

2. Everyday, increase the amount of sun exposure and slowly reduce the amount of watering. Avoid fertilizing.

3. Monitor the weather. Tomatoes do not want to be exposed to below 65F temperatures. Be careful of strong winds and heavy rains.

Once the plants are happy to be outside all day, they are ready to be transplanted into the garden bed. Be gentle and water well when transplanting to reduce transplant shock.

Once settled, a low dose fertilizer can be applied to encourage growth.

I don’t have the time or space to start seeds indoors.

Can’t I just sow straight into my garden beds?

The simple answer is yes. In nature, there is no coddling of baby seedlings in perfect conditions — everything is direct seeded. However, there are many benefits for some crops to being started indoors, especially if you want an early start on the season or if your season is short. I like to break my spring-summer plantings into four categories: cold-hardy transplants, cold-hardy direct seeds, tender transplants and tender direct seeds.

Cold-hardy transplants are things like cabbages and broccoli. Cold-hardy direct seeds are things like peas, carrots and beets — note that root crops don’t like being transplanted so much. Tender transplants were covered in the previous question and include tomatoes, peppers and eggplants. Right now, we are fast approaching the last frost date and I am planning my tender direct seeded crops.

To size up your own frost date, try Dave’s Garden online calendar. By entering your zip code, it gives you a sliding scale of frost risk. Here’s mine for Asheville: frost is nearly certain through April 15 and remains likely through April 30, with the risk of frost passed completely by May 16.

This fits with the local wisdom in our area, which says that Mother’s Day is a safe planting date for frost sensitive plants. As you become more experienced you can start pushing the window and use techniques such as row covers and low tunnels to warm the soil and achieve earlier planting dates. Remember that germination is affected by soil temperature, not air temperature.

Gardening is a matrix of techniques, and direct seeding is easy and effective for many crops.

Email your gardening questions to ask@sowtrue.com. Sign up for a free catalog and planting guide at sowtrueseed.com.

SMOKY MOUNTAIN LIVING VOLUME 17 • ISSUE 2

Bellagio Everyday offers versatile clothing and accessories for women at work and on the go. The classic lines of Sympli and Planet are available in a broad range of prices and sizes.

Blue Spiral 1 presents contemporary Southeastern fine art and crafts through 30 annual exhibitions and features over 100 artists in a stunning three-level, 15,000 sq. ft. setting.

DOWNTOWN ASHEVILLE

DOWNTOWN ASHEVILLE

40 Biltmore Avenue Mon-Sat 11-6 • Sun 12-5 828.255.0221 BellagioEveryday.com

38 Biltmore Avenue Mon-Sat 10-6 • Sun 12-5 828.251.0202 BlueSpiral1.com

Downtown Asheville | 36 Biltmore Ave

$6 TUESDAYS ALL MOVIES

Schedule at 828.232.1536 or www.Fine ArtsTheatre.com

Daily Matinees + Evenings Two Screens | Beer + Wine

Bellagio showcases distinctive collections of clothing, accessories and jewelry in an opulent setting.

Acclaimed American artists with a passion for texture, color and innovation offer contemporary styling.

New Morning Gallery delightfully displays an abundant selection of decorative and functional craft handmade by American artisans in a 12,300 sq. ft. setting.

BILTMORE VILLAGE BILTMORE VILLAGE 7 Boston Way Mon-Sat 10-7 (Jan-Mar 10-6) Sun 12-5 • 828.274.2831 NewMorningGalleryNC.com

5 Biltmore Plaza Mon-Sat 10-7 (Jan-Mar 10-6) Sun 12-5 (Jan-Feb Closed) 828.277.8100 BellagioArtToWear.com

READING LIST Sweet Appalachia

Comfort Foods CAROLINA WRITERS ON FOOD AND COOKING

BY JEFF MINICK

more indication that Florida is not really a part of the South. Neal, whose late husband reinvented shrimp and grits and authored a book on cooking with grits, gave that tourist an education in grits and their history, and provides the reader with a Baked Cheese Grits recipe that sounds delicious.

In a chapter titled “The Mesopotamia of Pork,” Daniel H. Wallace takes hungry readers to Lexington, long claimant to the title “The Barbecue Capital of North Carolina.” With Wallace as our guide, we visit the nationally renowned Bar-B-Q Center, where you “experience barbecue straight from the pit cooked by a pro — it’s like tasting spring, though it’s still great when it goes to the table.”

Michael McFee’s piece, “Mountain Cooking,” offers a long re-

S

ometimes we forget that a region is defined as much by its food as by its accent, terrain and weather.

For many of us, of course, the food we eat nowadays is often generic. The McDonald’s hamburger in Des Moines will taste like the McDonald’s hamburger in Sylva. Scrambled eggs in New Hampshire are scrambled eggs in Dillsboro.

Moreover, we have branched out in our eating habits in the last 70 years. Until the 1960s, most Americans living outside of the major cities took their meals in Mom ‘n Pop diners, if they ate out at all. Now we think nothing of eating Chinese, Thai, Tex-Mex or Italian. Our tastes have gone international.

And yet there remain those foods we associate specifically with the Old North State, dishes and ingredients we love as our own.

Shrimp and grits. Pecan pie. Fried chicken and biscuits. Moravian pot pie. Green beans and buttermilk. Barbecue. Coconut cream pie.

That these Carolina favorites still exert their magical pull on our appetites was driven home to me during a recent browsing session at a local bookstore. It had set up a table of books touting mountain authors. The large display contained a good number of works, both fiction and nonfiction, and I decided to stand nearby for a few minutes to see what books attracted the attention of customers.

The cookbooks won hands-down.

Let’s look at some of these books here.

In The Carolina Table: North Carolina Writers on Food (Eno Publishers, 2016, 187 pages, $17.95), 32 authors take their literary talents into the kitchen and dining room, and lay out a feast of descriptions designed to remind readers that certain foods and beverages mark us as North Carolinians as plainly as the license plates on our cars.

Here, for example, Moreton Neal, a culinary critic for Chapel Hill Magazine, writes of her humorous encounter at Asheville’s Tupelo Honey with a Florida tourist who had never tasted grits. As Neal points out, the woman’s unfamiliarity with grits is just one

12 Bones Smokehouse: A Mountain BBQ Cookbook.

Quarto Publishing Group, 2016, 224 pages, $24.99.

view of Mountain Cooking by the fabled Smokies writer and wanderer John Parris who collected recipes first-hand from old-timers.

It’s now out of print but his article reminded me I had once owned this book with its simple, authentic recipes.

In gathering together this collection of fine writers and culinary experts, editor Randall Kenan has done himself proud.

“There are things that only pot likker can cure and times when what actually matters can be spooned on to a plate — the savories and the sweetest of things that simply taste like my North Carolina home.”

— Sheila Smith McKay, Home in Mind

22

SMOKY MOUNTAIN LIVING VOLUME 17 • ISSUE 2

If The Carolina Table leaves your stomach grumbling and your mouth watering, you might take a look at other cookbooks that snagged the attention of those bookstore shoppers.

There is the lavishly illustrated and wellwritten 12 Bones Smokehouse: A Mountain BBQ Cookbook. Written by Angela King, Shane Heavner, and Mackensy Lunsford, 12 Bones Smokehouse gives recipes and cooking advice from this landmark Asheville restaurant, which counts among its customers President Obama and his wife. Here the owners and chefs share the secrets of their barbecue sauces, slaws, sausages, smoked shrimp, and much more.

Tupelo Honey Café: New Southern Flavors From The Blue Ridge Mountains (Andrews McMeel Publishing, 2014, 226 pages, $29.99) offers dishes ranging from pimento cheese sandwiches to Native American fare.

Elizabeth Sim teams up with Tupelo Honey chef Brian Sonoskus to bring these tasty dishes from the café directly to Quench: Handcrafted Beverages To Satisfy Every your kitchen.

Taste & Occasion (Roost Biscuit Head Books, 2014, 202 pages, owners Carolyn $19.95) and Jason Roy roll out a Southern smorgasbord in Biscuit Head: New Southern Biscuits, Breakfasts, and Brunch (Quarto Publishing Group, 2016, 208 pages, $25). The restaurant is named, as the owners tell us, after Southern-style cat’s head biscuits, so called because these are “biscuits as big as a cat’s head!”

Here you’ll find chapters on infused honeys, homemade butter blends, and of course, biscuit sandwiches with all sorts of fillings.

Included, too, are recipes for fried catfish and fried chicken, chow-chow, oven-baked eggs, and many more of those dishes that draw hungry patrons to this West Asheville café.

And if all this food leaves you thirsty? Turn to Quench: Handcrafted Beverages To Satisfy Every Taste & Occasion. Here Asheville writer Ashley English and photographer Jen Altman — regular contributors in Smoky Mountain Living — have put together beverage recipes for home use. Though not all of these are native to North Carolina, readers will discover over 100 recipes for both soft and hard drinks, all using natural ingredients.

Bon appetit!

The sights… the seasons…

the lifestyle.

Have it all at Deerfield – extraordinary surroundings, activity-filled days and nights, an extensive list of amenities – all in one of America’s most desirable retirement destinations minutes from historic Biltmore Estate, the Blue Ridge Parkway,

and Asheville’s vibrant downtown. Call to schedule a visit and learn how you can live the retirement of your dreams.

AN EPISCOPAL RETIREMENT COMMUNITY

1617 Hendersonville Road Asheville, NC 28803 800-284-1531 828-210-4592 deerfieldwnc.org

WWW.SMLIV.COM

23

LOCAL LORE Sweet Appalachia

No Man Is An Island

BY ANNETTE SAUNOOKE CLAPSADDLE

A

s a teacher, a parent, or as a tribal member, my conversations with others sometimes boil down to key word searches.

“That thing. You know. Not a period. Not a comma.”

“Mom. Hungry. Cereal.”

“Some battle. On an island. Down the road. Cherokees.”

Now, I am not complaining.

In all honesty, my husband would accuse me of speaking like this quite often.

For many of us, fragments of images or threadbare associations are exactly how we create memory. Even brain research tells us that we learn by forming connections to what we already know.

So when well-meaning non-Cherokee friends ask me if I am aware of an historical site or story, I feel some compulsion to fill in the blanks for them. I do it for my students and children already.

However, I also recognize it as a burden many do not often bear.

No one is asking white Americans to recall, on the spot, every battle, every story ever told in the English language on American soil.

That would be impossible, right?

Try adding ten thousand years plus to the cache of possible answers. At 35, I am no sage story-keeper of Cherokee culture and history, but that does not stop many from asking me to act as such at times.

I imagine many from Appalachia can empathize.

Following PBS or ABC documentaries over the past several decades, this once isolated region has been thrust under the microscope, even becoming a sideshow oddity at times, to the nation as whole.

How did you live? How do you live? Why? Why? Why? It can get downright uncomfortable to be labeled a spokesperson for your culture. However, there is a beauty in this responsibility.

Whether representing a Cherokee perspective or an Appalachian perspective, I have often found an initial annoyance subsiding and replaced by an appreciation for a prolonged connection to place and people.

It happened again this winter.

Over the course of a few weeks, three friends separately inquired about, or at times simply shared, a story of a Cherokee battle in Bryson City, North Carolina, on a small island.

Dates were fuzzy. No one remembered between whom the battle took place or for what purpose or where the island was, exactly.

There were no recollections of historical markers.

I have lived here my entire life and have never heard such a story.

24

At 35, I am no sage story-keeper of Cherokee culture and history, but that does not stop many from asking me to act as such at times.

Then, within weeks of each other, three non-Cherokee seemed far more in the know than I. It didn’t bother me that they had asked me for more details. I was frustrated that I had none to give. I was even more irritated that one friend had garnered several pieces of information from a children’s book he had browsed at a book fair.

How could it be that a Minnesota author knew more about our region than even Google could provide?

There was, according to the picture book, a Cherokee battle against another tribe in the mid to late 1700s in which the Cherokee met this tribe on what is now a tiny river island and eventually forced them back over the mountain via Deep Creek. I refuse to name the other tribe because further research indicates inaccuracies.

This became known — by whom, I am unsure — as the Battle of Iron Foot, also a name I have never heard. A quick search linked it to either the Dwarf King of Erebor in Tolkien’s The Hobbit or a

SMOKY MOUNTAIN LIVING VOLUME 17 • ISSUE 2

friend of the outlaw Jesse James named Ralph Clark, for whom the island was supposedly named though many years later.

I have a sneaking suspicion that neither theory is accurate.

More likely, the latter holds some merit.

Another friend attested to a reference of this battle in the Swain County Heritage Museum. It’s a lovely place to visit, by the way.

This knowledge gave me hope that the story has some virtue, though it is tenuously intertwined with dubious stories of conjuring and first-hand accounts.

What we must all do as temporary spokespeople for our cultures is largely about filtering. The facts are easy.

Does description of time and place seem accurate? Do the names sound linguistically authentic? Have I heard this story before from another source?

A decent online search engine can usually do much of this work for us.

The real challenge, the real contribution we can make comes in the connection. Do these actions make sense? Are they in line with our values? What challenges may have caused this reaction? Why does no one, or everyone, speak of this today? What is the motive behind the story? Does it evoke stereotypical images?

To answer these questions, we must step away from the computer. We must hear and tell stories. We must physically go to the site and see its relation to other culturally significant sites.

I wanted desperately to find the full story of the island battle quickly. I wanted my friends to retell it without any unanswered questions. I wanted the children’s book to be an encyclopedia of

facts. I wanted the Internet to provide pages of matching sites based on a keyword search.

It did not happen.

It didn’t happen because it was no one else’s responsibility, but my own, to piece together the answers. It didn’t happen because I had not visited the museum and read the words for myself. It didn’t happen because I didn’t make the short drive to Cherokee to speak with a Cherokee historian or even pick up the phone.

Most importantly, I did not visit the island. I needed to step away from the island in my kitchen, where I was likely pouring cereal for my sons, and stand on the island of the story.

Learning occurs when our brain makes connections to previous knowledge. Connections require interactions. They require us to identify ourselves with the new — new places, new people, and new ideas.

We’re not cultural envoys of knowledge because we are members of certain tribes or receive mail at a certain zip code.

We become spokespeople, temporary or otherwise, because people want to learn, and to do this they want to connect through us.

It is not a one-way relationship, and that is why there is benefit to being the spokesperson, the envoy, the teacher.

This tiny island, named for a battle, or a fantastical dwarf, or an island hermit, reminded me that stories are not a re-telling of facts.

They are invitations to explore, to filter, to reimagine what we thought to be true. Most importantly, they are an opportunity to connect ourselves with everyone and everything else that shares with us our curious humanity.

WWW.SMLIV.COM

25

PROFILE Sweet Appalachia

With Beulah By Our Side

BY JIM CASADA

B

eulah Sudderth’s (1922-2011) epitaph reads: “Following in her Savior’s footsteps, she lived a life of service for others.” As anyone who knew this remarkable woman would attest, that poignant inscription is completely accurate and if anything understated.

For decades this soft-spoken African-American woman served her family, church and community, black and white, in a fashion that brought admiration and even adoration from all who knew her. She possessed a sparkling demeanor that shone brightly in her caring attitude, endless appetite for hard work, cheerful willingness to listen to others while lightening their burdens, and rare unselfishness.

As a Swain County, North Carolina, native who grew up not a quarter of a mile from where Beulah lived, I was to some degree always aware of her impact on those around her. She was the pillar of Morningstar Baptist Church virtually all of her adulthood, and fittingly that church was a short walk from her home. As Swain County’s black population dwindled, part of what author Ann Woodford describes as “a steady out-migration” of African-Americans in far Western North Carolina, Beulah struggled to keep her beloved church going even as its congregation declined to only five members.

The youngest member of a large family, over the later decades of her life Beulah provided several siblings unstinting care encompassing everything from hands-on nursing to furnishing them living quarters. All her siblings reached nonagenarian or centenarian status and demanded considerable attention.

In her approach to life and by training, Beulah was ideally suited to provide such care. For decades she was a nurse’s aide at Swain

26

SMOKY MOUNTAIN LIVING VOLUME 17 • ISSUE 2

County Hospital while cheerfully holding second jobs — often as not unpaid — offering friendship, housework and basic health care for the elderly and home bound.

Somehow she also found time to oversee the nursery at the Presbyterian Church, raise a fine garden, freeze, dry or can great quantities of produce, and share her extraordinary cooking skills with someone on an almost daily basis.

In her final 15 years or so, my friendship with Beulah ripened and deepened. During that period she cleaned house, ironed, and performed other chores for my aging parents. More than that though, after Mom died she invariably found time to sit down, chat and keep at bay the howling hounds of loneliness that haunted my father.

She meant so much to Daddy, a white man who spent most of his life in a segregated society, that he frequently reminded his children, “when I die be sure Beulah sits with the family at my service.”

That wasn’t to be — she died less than three weeks after him — but she was one of 100 guests who helped celebrated his 100th birthday. Her presence meant as much to Daddy as that of any of his family, longtime friends or fellow church members. There were numerous other families — black and white — to whom she meant just as much. In her unassuming, giving fashion as a sort of perpetual Good Samaritan, Beulah had an impact on the community at large which endeared her to all of Swain County.

My brother, Don, spoke briefly at her funeral service, and in his comments he noted that one of Beulah’s favorite phrases was “I know.” She offered it as a quiet, yet emphatic, statement of awareness and steadfast certainty about her earthly role, not in the irritating “you know” fashion which seems to constitute half the vocabulary of some professional athletes.

Beulah did know, thanks to being gifted with an abundance of common sense and spiritual serenity far transcending the norm.

The assembled mourners realized as much, as my brother’s remarks garnered heartfelt “amen, tell it” comments.

Beulah was a living history book when it came to the AfricanAmerican community in Swain County and beyond. She could readily recall names, occupations, events, family connections and the like stretching over her entire life span. While I probed that knowledge to a small degree, sadly much of her accumulated oral history now belongs to a world we have lost.

There’s a lesson there for anyone with reverence for the past.

During the times I was staying in Bryson City caring for my father, a glad duty shared with my siblings, I would visit Beulah every few days. More often than not it was to give her a mess of trout I had caught or perhaps share an overabundance of garden produce.

I always phoned in advance, not because I thought for a moment she would reject my offer. Rather, I just loved to hear her response when I asked: “Beulah, would you like a mess of trout?”

Her invariable answer, tendered with infectious enthusiasm, was: “Oh, Yes!”

Beulah was as fine an example of the old mountain adage, “waste not, want not,” as it has been my privilege to meet. She ate like a bird but cooked like a five-star chef. Nothing, absolutely nothing, went to waste.

“There will always be someone needing some food,” she would remark, “and I can’t stand to see it thrown away.”

A black walnut cake was my personal favorite among her many specialties, and therein lies a tale. Dad loved her walnut cakes, as did most anyone who tasted that wonderful delicacy. When there had been a death or some serious problem in the community, you could count on Beulah showing up bringing care, concern and a cake.

Dad went through scores of Beulah’s cakes over the years, and he wouldn’t have thought of heading to a family reunion without one. Just a couple of years before he died, I asked him what he was paying for cakes. He responded: “$10, but it’s worth every penny.”

One of Beulah’s favorite phrases was “I know.” She offered it as a quiet yet emphatic statement of awareness and steadfast certainty about her earthly role.

When I commented that the ingredients alone probably cost more than that and that a comparable bakery cake would fetch $40 to $50, his reaction came straight from memories of the Depression: “If I paid that much for a cake it would give me indigestion.”

My brother and I secretly made up the difference from that point onward, but when I first broached the subject with Beulah, her response was predictable. “Why, I’d gladly make him cakes for nothing.” She was a helper and a friend to all, and the color of one’s skin made absolutely no difference whatsoever. She saw you for what you were.

Her kindness and devotion reached beyond her own family, neighbors and community. For years she held board membership with Four Square Community Action, an outreach organization serving the needy in Cherokee, Clay, Graham and Swain counties of North Carolina’s far western corner.

She walked life’s road helping others. Few can say as much. At her funeral service I stated, “I’ve never known a finer woman” and meant every word of it. Every time I look at the Christmas cactus she rooted for me, this angelic mother figure to an entire community comes to mind. As surely as she was gifted with a green thumb letting her grow things of beauty, she was a flower on earth. Her given name was an apt one, for now she resides in Beulah Land (Isaiah 62:4).

WWW.SMLIV.COM

27

PLAYING IS FOR THE YOUNG AND YOUNG AT HEART. STAY THAT WAYY.

Never stop playing.

It’s always play time in Abingdon. visitabingdonvirginia.com • 888.489.4144

A view from the Green Mountain Trail, which intersects the Mountains-to-Sea Trail, reveals a glimpse of the mountains beyond. HOLLY KAYS PHOTO

MOUNTAIN EXPLORER ROVING THESE HILLS AND VALLEYS

Sometimes these mountains get the best of us.

What started out as an easy overnight in North Carolina’s Middle Prong Wilderness turned out to be more of an adventure than essayist Holly Kays, her sister, and their dogs expected.

She’s renamed the area the Blue Ridge Triangle. And like its cousin, the Bermuda Triangle, directions can be confounding.

But as she tells us in Outlooks, page 30, the trip ended well with a laugh over the day’s misadventures.

“June was just days away, but nighttime was chilly at 5,000 feet. We stayed warm with the help of my new backpacking wine carafe and laughed over the day’s misadventures.

The Blue Ridge Triangle may have swallowed our pride, but we’d still gotten what we came for — a night in the woods surrounded by happy dogs amid the fresh greenery of mountain springtime.”

OUTLOOKS Mountain Explorer

The author’s sister Laurel (above) works to set up the tent at an impromptu campsite. A full day of hiking made Laurel’s dog Milton (right) quite tired. HOLLY KAYS PHOTOS

Lost in the Blue Ridge Triangle B Y H O L LY K AY S

A

rmed with enough food to feed twice our number, two different methods of water purification, a brand new tent, a detailed map, and even bear spray in case we proved to be the 2 in 10 million hikers to encounter an aggressive black bear, it’s safe to say that my sister and I were more than prepared for an overnight backpacking route.

Or at least, we would have been, if not for the Blue Ridge Triangle.

Like its mysterious cousin the Bermuda Triangle, the Blue Ridge Triangle — apparently — causes inexplicable disorientation for hikers attempting to traverse its domain in North Carolina’s Middle Prong Wilderness.

The route seemed simple enough.

We would get on the Mountains-to-Sea Trail from its intersection with N.C. 215 and hike about 6 miles west before turning right to take the Haywood Gap Trail down to the Forest Service Road where we’d left a second car.

30

The weather was nothing but encouraging, a picture-perfect spring day with the first rhododendrons just beginning to bloom.

We let our pair of wiggling terrier mixes off-leash to run in joyful circles, and we were all feeling confident enough to take a brief detour on a side trail that soon brought us to a grassy summit, views of blue-ridged mountains spreading in the distance.

After we rejoined the main trail, however, we encountered our first signal that something strange was going on — a signal in the form of a hiker and his son.

We stopped to exchange the typical on-trail pleasantries, which the hiker followed up with a question about our distance from the trail intersection he was looking for. I pulled out the map with a flourish, eager to show off my preparedness in packing such a detailed portrayal of the area.

I pointed out our location and his destination and informed him that he was probably headed in the wrong direction.

He disagreed.

Laurel and I were the ones who were turned around, he said, fishing out his own map to prove the point. That’s when a third hiker with a third map stumbled upon our little powwow. He agreed with the other guy.

“Listen to where the traffic sounds are coming from,” he said.

“Look at the direction the sun is setting.”

SMOKY MOUNTAIN LIVING VOLUME 17 • ISSUE 2

We couldn’t deny the logic, but we were also at a loss to explain where we could have gone wrong.

We’d been walking in the same direction on the same trail the entire time — how could we possibly have reversed direction without realizing it? It was impossible. We decided to keep going, talking the decision through on repeat as we walked, again and again concluding that we’d been right.

Before long, however, we started to recognize the places we were passing. There was a marshy area with a boardwalk over it, a twist in the trail with an especially noticeable old tree, the side trail we’d taken a couple of hours ago.

The hikers had been right. We were backtracking.

It was hard to believe. We stopped the first hikers we came upon, a young couple with a fluffy white dog, to double-check. They, too, assured us that we were closing in on the trailhead. We tried our best to laugh off the embarrassment.

It was now mid-afternoon. We’d lost a chunk of time, but at least we were finally headed the right way.

It was still possible to reach our intended campsite. We proceeded as carefully as possible, taking pictures at intervals along the trail and constantly stopping to examine the map. There was no way we would let ourselves get lost again.

Except that, once again, we spotted that same marshy area with the boardwalk.

Then the old tree. The side trail.

And the same young couple with the white dog, returning from their venture on the side trail. If we were embarrassed the first

time we spoke to them, now we were doubly so. For some reason it felt important that these strangers understand that we really did know how to read maps, that we really had hiked before. Pride is a funny thing.

Finally, we were forced to admit that we wouldn’t be hiking the Haywood Gap Trail that weekend. Dinnertime was coming, so we kept our eyes open for a good camping spot and, when we found one, headed off to get water.

With trust in our navigational skills at an all-time low, we carried our packs with us instead of dropping them off at the campsite.

That turned out to be a good thing, because the site seemed to have disappeared when we returned with the water.

The Blue Ridge Triangle had struck again. We wound up camping somewhere else.

There’s nothing quite so frustrating as walking in circles, especially when there truly are “miles to go before I sleep.”

The amazing thing was that frustration dissipated in short order as we pitched the tent, hung our bags and got dinner ready for ourselves and the dogs.

June was just days away, but nighttime was chilly at 5,000 feet.

We stayed warm with the help of my new backpacking wine carafe and laughed over the day’s misadventures.

The Blue Ridge Triangle may have swallowed our pride, but we’d still gotten what we came for — a night in the woods surrounded by happy dogs amid the fresh greenery of mountain springtime.

Besides, when it comes to the wilderness, a dose of humility is rarely a bad thing.

ÁA ÁA & "A ÎA "A ÎA A A A Visit us for a ÀkyÀkÄ ÀkkyyÀÀkkÄÄ change of pace and a relaxing atmosphere e where you can enjoy the t simple pleasures of our ÎÀÀAA µµØØ mounttains. ÎÀA µØ Come to a place where OkAØÎ yØ OkkAAØØÎÎ yyØØ ÌÄY ÄYkk kkÀÀåå ÄYk kÀ history y and Southern hospitality are a way of life.

Franklin kli offer ff s be b autiful tif l water t falls, hiking,, gem mining, museums, shopping, reestaurants and a variety off accommodations..

Luxury accommodatio ons, camping, hiking, boaating and pristine Lake Nantahala are available in the Nantahaala Community.

800 0-619-3096

VisitF FrranklinNC.com ɞ VisitNantahalaNC.com

WWW.SMLIV.COM

Join us u for the perfect viewing of the 2017 7T To otal Solar Eclipse on August 21 for tw wo and a half minutes of total dark kness!

31

FIELD GUIDE Mountain Explorer

Listen for Spring on the Wings of this Waterthrush

BY DON HENDERSHOT

I

t’s early April and the warm spring sunshine is beckoning you to the woods.

The forest floor is still mostly gray and brown, here and there a bloodroot or spring beauty has pushed its sparkling white head above the leaf litter.

As you stop along the stream bank, bending down to get a better look at the unfurling flower, the quiet woods are rocked by three loud ringing whistles. The whistles may be all you hear, but if you’re close enough or if the early spring woods are quiet enough, you will hear a tinkling of musical notes like fairy laughter following the loud whistles.

This is the Louisiana waterthrush’s way of saying spring is, indeed, here. This dapper, diminutive chorister is sleek brown above with a bold white eyestripe and brown-streaked breast and flanks. It’s believed its big voice evolved so the male could be heard above the rapids and riffles of the stream as he tries to establish a territory and find a mate.

The Louisiana waterthrush is one of — if not the — first wood warblers to return to nesting grounds in the Southern Appalachians. If you hear this song streamside, it’s worth your effort to seek the little songster out and watch him as he teeter-totters along the stream bank, constantly bobbing his tail as he forages.

A close relative follows on the heels of the Louisiana waterthrush. The northern waterthrush does not nest in the Smokies but migrates through. It is almost a dead ringer for its cousin. It has a brown back with brown streaking on its breast and flanks like the Louisiana, but the eyestripe is creamy or buffy and the throat is finely streaked, whereas the Louisiana has a clear throat.

They prefer different habitats — with Louisianas sticking to fast moving streams and northerns preferring swampy areas with sluggish or standing water. But sometimes, in migration, northerns can be found along stream banks.

Besides the subtle differences in appearance, there are also differences in voice. You likely won’t hear northern waterthrushes singing during migration but their chip note is louder and has more bass to it than the Louisiana.

So when you can’t stand it anymore, and hit the woods, keep an ear, and then an eye, out for this winged harbinger of spring.

It’s believed the Louisiana waterthrush’s big voice evolved so the male could be heard above the rapids as he tries to establish a territory and find a mate.

The song of the Louisiana waterthrush is an early sign of spring, as it returns to its summer residence along streams of the Smokies.

32

SMOKY MOUNTAIN LIVING VOLUME 17 • ISSUE 2

GO WILD Mountain Explorer

Jim Parham and MaryEllen Hammond, the owners of Milestone Press in Bryson City, North Carolina, have published more than two dozen guidebooks to help connect people with the outdoors.

Have Guide, Will Travel

For Parham, that’s what guidebooks are about: The missing link that connects people to the outdoors, giving them the keys to unlock the world of nature.

Parham has more than a dozen outdoor guide books under his belt, running the gamut from road bike routes to waterfall hikes in the greater Smokies region. While Parham’s name is the one on the cover, the secret to his success is his wife MaryEllen Hammond, the brains behind the couple’s publishing business Milestone Press.

Milestone Press specializes in outdoor guidebooks of all kinds — from motorcycle touring to day hikes — with a geographic footprint spanning four states surrounding the Smoky Mountains.

The couple founded Milestone Press in the early ‘90s after making the Smokies outdoor adventure town of Bryson City, North Carolina, their home. The outdoors lifestyle is what lured them here, and they dedicated their careers to sharing that passion with the masses, whether its their guidebook for families on Natural Adventures in North Georgia or a compilation of favorite road rides by the Blue Ridge Bicycle Club.

For adventure-seekers who journey to the outdoors Mecca of the Smokies, guidebooks are essential to navigate the terrain, but Parham and Hammond also hope their guidebooks can serve as a stepping stone to rekindle locals’ relationship with their own backyard.

That was the premise behind one of Parham’s more unique titles, These and other Backpacking Overnights, serving up guidebooks by Milestone 50 short overnight backpacking trips Press are available at local, in the Smokies region. independent bookstores in the region, as well as Mast Parham’s philosophy is that backGeneral Store locations packing should be easy, accessible and other outfitters. and fit into the schedule of the 9 to 5 milestonepress.com. working stiff. No expensive hiking boots? Go in your sneakers. No sleeping bag? Buy a light summer one for $30 on sale. No stove?

Pack leftovers for the night.

“It doesn’t require huge amounts of time, gear and money to go backpacking,” Parham says. “With just little bit of knowledge, you can have lot of fun in the woods.”

The book has how-to’s for beginners, knot-tying 101, choosing a campsite or hanging a hammock.

One of his latest strokes of genius was a three-in-one guidebook for Pisgah National Forest in North Carolina — combining the trifecta of biking, hiking and camping into one all purpose guide, saving outdoor lovers both shelf space and backpack space.

“I refuse to put anything in print if I haven’t been there in person a number of times,” Parham says. “So that I know the area, I know the trail, I know the terrain, I know the plants that are growing there, the animals you’re going to see, what the creeks are like at high water and low water.”

While Parham is best known for his mountain bike books, he’s an equal opportunity outdoorsman.

“My love of the outdoors is just being out there — the mode that gets me out there is not so much important,” Parham says. “It’s just being out there and seeing and experiencing what there is.”

Go buy

BY BECKY JOHNSON

Jim Parham is at it again.

The patriarch of mountain biking in the Smoky Mountain region, Parham has been cranking out trail guides for a quarter of a century, continually updating, refining and refreshing his line-up of mountain bike manuals.

His latest installments have once again proved Parham’s prowess — not only in his knowledge of the trail, but his knack for delivering what mountain bikers need know in an easy-to-follow format.

The mountain biking landscape was in its infancy when Parham wrote his first book in the early ‘90s, an era of makeshift maps scrawled on scraps of paper and passed around at trail heads.

“People were all of a sudden showing up with bicycles wondering where on earth they were supposed to ride these things they had bought,” Parham said.

That first guidebook, Off the Beaten Track, achieved Biblical status among mountain bikers. Updated editions were released three times over the next two decades, but the popular title has now been replaced by his latest companion guidebooks simply called Mountain Bike Trails — one for the North Georgia Mountains and Southeast Tennessee and one for the North Carolina Mountains and South Carolina Upstate.

While Off the Beaten Track is being retired — so save those torn and tattered copies as collector’s items — it won’t be forgotten as the book that sealed Parham’s status as a pioneer of mountain biking in the Southern Appalachians, a legacy that will live on for generations.

WWW.SMLIV.COM

33

FAVORITE PLACES Mountain Explorer

Cold Mountain Schoolhouse

BY SCARLETT SWANN

T

he little red schoolhouse is hidden below Cold Mountain but exposed to view from the heights. We have been captivated by it for years, wondering whether it was the original school for the youngsters of the valley.

We hiked to it this winter knowing only a direction.

There it stood, with it’s bold steeple facing what was once the logging village of Sun Burst. The windows all face down toward the river with white shutters that could be closed up during bad

34

weather. The foundation is fieldstone and river rock. The paint is worn but still undeniably red.

Was this school the one sponsored by the Universalist Church for African American children? There were as many as 100 African Americans working at the Sunburst logging village at its prime.

Segregation required two schools, one for whites and one for blacks. Was the school perhaps operated by the Rev. Hannah Jewett Powell, who herself grew up in a logging community in Maine?

I have many questions about this quaint and humbling little one room school but I do know that it led me down a greater path. The path from this school goes to Friendly House. It opened more doors about the good works by honest, sacrificing people. The poems titled Friendly Poems spoke out to me just as this little school educated many minds. Perhaps long ago a friendly poem was recited down at the Friendly House or the Inman Chapel or even the mystery tiny red school house. All are welcome here.

Hearths and hearts have flooded this valley greater than the dam of Lake Logan. There is a lot of good in this world when you seek it. The mighty bell still sits dormant in its tower and I longed to hear it ring so ring it I shall.

SMOKY MOUNTAIN LIVING VOLUME 17 • ISSUE 2

Zac Brown Band B d

The he Avett Brothers h

Leftover Saalmon

Smokey Smoke ey Mtn Liv_8.375x10.87 Liv_8.375 5x10.87 75_APR 1.indd 1

Sam Bush Bannd

Marty t Stuart t t & His Fabulouss Superlatives H

Jerry Douglas g

Del McCoury Band

Steep p Canyon Rangers g s

Natalie l MacMasteer & Donnell Leahy hy

2/3/17 2/ /3 /3/17 2 2:30 PM

2017

UPCOMING EVENTS 4.6

Mélange of the Mountains – Culinary Gala and Competition

5.6

Gateway to the Smokies - Half Marathon & 4-Miler

5.13

Whole Bloomin’ Thing - Spring Festival

An epicurean partnership of innovative chefs, sustainable producers and local farms. Participating chefs and eateries compete in categories ranging from salad to seafood to dessert. After the competition, attendees will enjoy expertly plated samples of specialty items inspired by competing chefs, representing their culinary point of view. HaywoodChamber.com

Gateway to the Smokies will take your breath away…even if the runs don’t! The races start on historic Main Street in downtown Waynesville where the sights, sounds, and shops will delight your visual senses. Choose from the standard half marathon, or new in 2017, a 4-Miler! The exhilaration builds as both routes wind through tree lined streets in historic neighborhoods and ascend to spectacular views of the magnificent Blue Ridge Mountains. SmokiesHalfMarathon.com

Haywood County kicks off the Spring growing season with The “Whole Bloomin’ Thing” Spring Festival. Beautiful flowering baskets, vegetable and herbs, berry bushes, potted plants, trees, perennials, are all a beautiful assortment of color, size and variations. Fresh local produce & organic beef.

Local Food Vendors from turkey legs, hot dogs, hamburgers, BBQ, fresh ice cream, kettle corn, fresh squeezed lemonade, children’s activities and much more. HistoricFrogLevel.com

5.5 & 6.2 Art After Dark - Waynesville Gallery Association

Ten downtown galleries and other businesses remain open. Artists’ receptions, demonstrations, and musicians fill the galleries and sidewalks.

Join us for a special evening. WaynesvilleGalleryAssociation.com

5.27

Rockin’ Block Party & Kids on Main – Downtown Waynesville

6.10

Appalachian Lifestyle Celebration – Downtown Waynesville

Dancing on Main Street with 3 live bands, Kids’ activity hour, eats & treats, restaurants open. DowntownWaynesville.com

Protecting & preserving our historical & cultural resources through a heritage themed event. Booths line Main Street. Exhibits include educational, demonstrations, and selling handmade Appalachian art and crafts. Music lovers will enjoy tapping their toes to the music of banjos and fiddles while professional cloggers and dancers perform. DowntownWaynesville.com

www.ExperienceWaynesville.com

ECO TOURISM Mountain Explorer

• Foraging is empowering • Foraging is reconnecting • Foraging is fun Muskat says he doesn’t like to list favorite foods, as the foraging lifestyle is much more diverse than that. Many of his “favorites” just happen to be what is currently available.

“I have learned that foragers can’t be choosers, that you can’t play favorites because you can’t control what you’re going to find,” he says. “That said, lately I enjoy amaranth greens because they are convenient, plentiful, and truly tasty. I enjoy kousa dogwood, which isn’t actually wild but is conveniently planted as an ornamental and usually Asheville’s Alan Muskat teaches classes on foraging for wild food. “I have learned that foragers can’t be the delicious fruits go uneaten. choosers,” he says. MIKE BELLEME PHOTO “I appreciate reishi mushroom, taken as a tea, for its medicinal value, and finally, hibiscus leaf, also not actually wild, but right now I’m in Costa Rica and it’s one of the few familiar foods I could readily harvest, and being related to okra, it is somewhat mucilaginous and this adds nice body to salads.”

Muskat says his mission is challenging because so many people lack a basic knowledge of what lies outside their front doors to eat.

BY BRUCE INGRAM “Most Americans wouldn’t consider more than two or three wild foods edible,” he says. “The same goes for many cultivars. Kousa fruit and hibiscus leaf are two examples. Of the wild foods, I find hat do an overgrown field, a the flavor of certain acorns wonderful. How pleasant pine needle weed-infested city lot, a tea is I find surprising, at least to me.”

Not surprisingly, this passion to gather evolved into a passion to wilderness hollow, a suburban teach, and annually Muskat and his staff conduct numerous workbackyard, and a shady woodlot all have in shops, some of which have been quite memorable. common?

He says that one in particular concerns a young man who was a Well, if you’re Alan Muskat, the answer is simple — food for the special education student at a middle school. The day after the prestaking. entation, the boy’s teacher sent this note.

Muskat operates No Taste Like Home in Asheville, a business “He came into my class today and told me he was having a good that has as its mission “to help people feel at home in this life.” day because he had a good breakfast. He was referring to the apples And this home is outside where people can connect to the he picked with the foraging club yesterday. He shared with me inhunter-gatherer society that is natural and universal. formation about pesticides and washing apples and how I shouldn’t What inspired Muskat to become an advocate of the foraging be afraid of anything ‘dirty’ if it’s organic. It was really sweet and lifestyle? moving. You’re all doing great work to provide this experience that “I think the advocating grew out of the teaching, or guiding, as most take for granted, but is really life changing for a kid like him.” we call it, which grew out of doing this myself, as a lifestyle,” he Muskat adds that these were just apples, which “as far as an says. “I started teaching how to forage before I really much knew inner city kid goes, might as well be wild, or for that matter, growwhy. I started foraging myself for a number of reasons: The ‘treaing on Mars.” sure hunt’/shopping spree fun of it, avoiding the system, getting The passion that this North Carolinian exudes is obvious. back to the land, the health food, and the ‘seven’ reasons.”

“Foraging can be a spiritual path,” he concludes. “You are going Those seven reasons, he says, are the following: ‘by the graze of God,’ you might say. Foraging can also ‘save the • Wild food is free world.’ One could argue that we, as a species, lost our way precisely • Wild food is a foodie delight when we stopped foraging, and the mess we are in now is a direct • Foraging is healthy result of that.”

• Foraging is sustainable For more information: notastelikehome.org.

Practicing the Foraging Lifestyle

W

WWW.SMLIV.COM

37

FESTIVALS Mountain Explorer

From Music to Plows and Beer to Biscuits APRIL APPLE COUNTRY CIDER JAM y April 22, 1 p.m. – 6 p.m. • South Main Street in Hendersonville, North Carolina y Sample delicious hard cider from one of the many cideries that use Henderson County grown apples. The Cider Jam is a ticketed tasting event featuring North Carolina cideries, local food trucks, and music headlined by International Bluegrass Music Association award-winning band Balsam Range. y visithendersonvillenc.com/ciderjam DILLSBORO EASTER HAT PARADE y April 15, 10 a.m. - 2:30 p.m. • Downtown Dillsboro y Grab a hat and join the fun during Dillsboro’s annual Easter Hat Parade. Egg hunts begin at 10 a.m. and run every half hour by age group. Make your own hat starting at 10:30 a.m. at Dogwood Crafters on Webster Street or bring your own. Parade registration begins at 11 am. Parade starts at 2 p.m. Prizes are announced after the parade. y visitnc.com/event/dillsboro-easter-hat-parade OLD TIME PLOW DAYS AT CRADLE OF FORESTRY y April 8 • 9 a.m. – 5 p.m. y Cradle of Forestry, Brevard, North Carolina y Celebrate Appalachian heritage during the days of the Biltmore Forest School as well as early springtime in Pisgah National Forest. Get hands-on with old time horse plowing, mingle with living history volunteers who bring mountain culture to life and listen to old-timey music. y cradleofforestry.com/event/opening-day-celebration/ RHYTHM AND BLOOMS FESTIVAL y April 7-9 • Knoxville, Tennessee y Knoxville’s largest music festival returns to Downtown Knoxville’s Historic Old City along Jackson Avenue and other Old City venues. The Silent Disco and the popular Secret Shows concept will return this year. y rhythmnbloomsfest.com

MAY INTERNATIONAL BISCUIT FESTIVAL y May 19-20 • Knoxville, Tennessee y Biscuit Boulevard, Biscuit Bazaar, Miss or Mister Biscuit Pageant, biscuit baking contest, biscuit songwriting and biscuit art are some of the fun events at the International Biscuit Festival in Knoxville’s Market Square District. y biscuitfest.com

38

ASHEVILLE BREAD FESTIVAL y May 6-7 • Asheville, North Carolina y More than 15 local artisan bakeries will be sampling and selling their breads at the Magnolia Building on Asheville’s A-B Tech campus. The festival also includes workshops, dinner and a master class. y ashevillebreadfestival.com WILDERNESS WILDLIFE WEEK y May 9-13 • Pigeon Forge, Tennessee y Outdoor enthusiasts and nature lovers will converge on Pigeon Forge and surrounding environs for a week of discovery during Wilderness Wildlife Week. The programs are free, and the huge array of outings, workshops and talks offer choices for all ages and interests. y mypigeonforge.com/events/wilderness-wildlife-week YADKIN VALLEY WINE FESTIVAL y May 20, 11 a.m. - 5 p.m. y Elkin Municipal Park in Elkin, North Carolina y The Yadkin Valley Wine Festival offers wines made in the Yadkin Valley area. It is free and open to the public, including families with children. Please leave pets at home for the safety of others. Food, craft vendor displays and music will take place adjacent to the tasting area.

There will be a roving Bacchus and activities for children. y yvwf.com SMOKY MOUNTAIN SCOTTISH FESTIVAL & GAMES y May 20-21 • Maryville College, Tennessee y Join a weekend of authentic Scottish Highland festivities in east Tennessee. Children under 16 admitted free. No charge for parking. y smokymountaingames.org AIRING OF THE QUILTS y May 13, 9 a.m. – 4 p.m. • Franklin, North Carolina. y Mother’s Day “Airing of the Quilts” returns to Historic Downtown Franklin. The event showcases the artistry of quilts with an outdoor, and indoor, quilt show. View many quilts displayed on the squares in Downtown Franklin and inside and outside participating businesses. y townoffranklinnc.com/airing-of-the-quilts.html

SMOKY MOUNTAIN LIVING VOLUME 17 • ISSUE 2

FOOD TRADITIONS Mountain Explorer

‘Heaven on a Plate’

BY FRED SAUCEMAN

I

t’s four o’clock in the morning.

Even the early-rising cattlemen haven’t arrived at the Kingsport Livestock Auction. But across the parking lot, Betty Jones has just turned on the lights at Betty’s Stockyard Café.

Kingsport cook Betty Jones fries pies using an iron skillet just like her mother did back in Dryden, Virginia.

40

She immediately heads for the refrigerator, where she takes out a bowl of dough. Along the counter, she lines up cans of fruity pie filling. Then she heats a pot of oil. Betty’s mission, this morning, is to make fried pies.

Long before she opened her homey café just off Highway 93 in Kingsport, Tennessee, she fried pies. Betty grew up in Dryden, Virginia. Her parents had 15 children naturally and adopted another. At age 10, she was given the responsibility of cooking for that large farm family.

Her mother, Margaret Freeman, taught her to make fried pies. Like many Appalachian cooks, Margaret fried hers in a black-iron skillet.

The term “hand pies” is often used synonymously with “fried,” but that would be inaccurate in Betty’s case. Few human hands approach the size of a Betty Jones fried pie.

There are no tables at Betty’s Stockyard Café. Privacy and isolation are pleasantly impossible. Camaraderie and conversation begin when the first customers take seats around the U-shaped counter at six o’clock in the morning.

SMOKY MOUNTAIN LIVING VOLUME 17 • ISSUE 2

Despite slabs of fried pork tenderloin, gravy-laden patties of country sausage, or bowls of Betty’s pork-seasoned soup beans with plate-sized sides of fried cornbread, most customers put all resistance and dietary rules aside when they learn that Betty has been frying pies.

“There’s nothing better than making food for people. It’s a primal thing,” says Dale Mackey, whose full-time job is frying pies in Knoxville, Tennessee. Unlike Betty, Dale didn’t develop her love of fried pies on a rural Appalachian farm. She learned to appreciate them in Chicago. But her godmother, Pat McGraw, had grown up near Pikeville, Kentucky.

“I grew up eating a lot of Southern food,” recalls Dale. “It felt like my childhood food, although I was eating it in Chicago.”

After graduating from Iowa’s Grinnell College, Dale went to work for the media, arts, and education center Appalshop in Whitesburg, Kentucky, and then did a stint in community television in Knoxville, Tennessee.

In 2012, at the beginning of the food truck movement, she turned those sweet memories of childhood into a business: Dale’s Fried Pies.

With $400, she opened what she calls “an adult-sized lemonade stand” and stocked it with fried pies. A friend allowed her to use a commercial kitchen free of charge. Within a year, Dale’s business became a full-time endeavor, even though there’s never been a storefront. Dale sets up her pie trailer regularly at the Market Square Farmers Market in downtown Knoxville. And she sells pies via the Internet.

While offering traditional Appalachian fried pie fillings like apple, peach, and cherry, Dale also crafts over 60 different pies, both sweet and savory.

“I’m a savory person,” she says. “I love our curried sweet potato pie, which reminds you of an Indian samosa.”

— Dale Mackey, Dale’s Fried Pies She’s equally ecstatic over pies filled with her own homemade pimento cheese and a little bacon.

“Most of the savory pies have a cornmeal crust,” she says. “And I do a vegan crust, with olive oil instead of butter.”

Among the flavors on the sweet side of the menu are carrot cake and cream cheese, gingerbread chocolate chip, and peanut butter and jelly.

“There are so many opportunities for creativity, because you can basically fill them with anything,” she says. In the words of her theme song, written and sung by Tim Marema, they’re “heaven on a plate.”

Like fried pie makers have done for generations, Dale crimps every pie with a dinner fork.

In Johnson City, Tennessee, fried pies, in rows of eight on a conveyor belt, weave an hour-long, serpentine trek around the second floor of Seaver’s Bakery. By the time they crawl up to the third story, the half-moon-shaped confections are cool and ready to be slipped into glassine packages.

The family recipe and the fillings haven’t changed since Bud Seaver opened the bakery in 1949. He devised a way to mass-produce fried pies, first making them for Honey Krust Bakery and then going out on his own. He eventually outgrew the basement of his parents’ house and constructed the putty-colored building where Seaver’s pies are still made today.

Apple has always been the most popular filling, made from dried, steam-cooked Granny Smiths. The late Richard McKinney, who ran the bakery, once told me that old-timers preferred raisin pies.

All of Seaver’s packages are labeled “fruit pie,” even the chocolate.

“Ninety-nine percent of all country women made fried pies,” says Calvin Ward, who once sold Seaver’s pies on store routes across Southern Appalachia.

For the farm or the factory, fried pies are the perfect lunchbox snack or dessert. They have a two-week shelf life, they’re portable, and they don’t require a knife and fork.

Route sales went by the wayside long ago, and the Seaver’s business may have, too, were it not for the regional grocery chain Food City, based in Abingdon, Virginia. Each store is now stocked with a full line of Seaver’s pies.

“There are so many opportunities for creativity, because you can basically fill them with anything.”

All the wrappers, even for the chocolate pies, say “fruit pies” at Seaver’s Bakery in Johnson City, Tennessee.

“They’re a very popular item with their unique crust,” says Steve Smith, President and CEO of Food City.

No matter the method or the filling, fried pies bring forth memories. At The Market Place in Asheville, North Carolina, Chef William Dissen revives the spirit of his West Virginia grandmother by frying pies filled with Virginia Beauty apples or local cherries.

“My grandmother, Jane Sturgill, from Sandyville, West Virginia, made a crust with lard or bacon grease and fried her pies in a castiron skillet,” remembers Dissen. “Once they cooled, she’d dust them with powdered sugar, and they tended to disappear really quickly.”

At a café in Kingsport, on the streets of downtown Knoxville, in a Johnson City factory, and on the tables of a trendy Asheville restaurant, the age-old tradition of frying pies lives on.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Fred Sauceman’s latest book is Buttermilk & Bible Burgers: More Stories from the Kitchens of Appalachia.

WWW.SMLIV.COM

41

ADVERTISING SECTION

SOUTHERN APPALACHIAN MOUNTAINS

GUIDE

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 reflect generations of heritage and innovation. Promoting and perpetuating this beauty are the galleries that are as unique and varied as the artists themselves.

42

EXPLORE

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 BLUE RIDGE MOUNTAINS ARTS ASSOCIATION AT THE ART CENTER Come visit one of the largest fine art and fine craft gallery experiences in North Georgia at The Art Center. The Art Center is home to the Blue Ridge Mountains Arts Association and features multiple gallery spaces showcasing a variety of regional artists and one-of-a-kind artwork.

420 W. Main St. • Blue Ridge, Ga. 706-632-2144 • blueridgearts.net Tues.-Sun. 10-6 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 THE FOLK POTTERY MUSEUM The Folk Pottery Museum of Northeast Georgia showcases the handcraft skills of one of the South's premier grassroots art forms, and will explore the historical importance and changing role of folk pottery in Southern life.

283 Hwy. 255 • Sautee Nacoochee, Ga. 706.878.3300 • folkpotterymuseum.com

Southern Appalachian Galleries

THE

Ultimate Folk Art Gallery in the South!

THE FOLK SCHOOL CHANGES YOU.

THE BEST SELECTION

by artist “Cornbread” -in the Universe!

tpennington 1803-59 Engaging hands and hearts since 1925. Come enjoy making crafts and good friends on 300 natural, scenic acres in western North Carolina.

JOHN C. CAMPBELL FOLK SCHOOL folkschool.org BRASSTOWN

1-800-FOLK-SCH

3631 HWY. 53 EAST

AT ETOWAH RIVER RD. DAWSONVILLE, GA 706-265-6030

aroundbackatrockysplace.com

NORTH CAROLINA

H ANDCRAFTED

IN THE

HOURS: SATURDAY 11 TO 5 & SUNDAY 1 TO 5

USA

The Art and n Heart of Lake Burton!

CELEBRATING OVER 48 YEARS!

See a Potter Working Saturday & Sunday

elebrate Beauttif iful Lake Burton with Fine Art, Jewelry, y, Potttery, y, Crafts and Much More re

• North Georg rgia’’s F Fiinest Seleection of Plein Air and Impressionist Paintings • Custom Jewlery • Local Crafts and W Wo ood Turning • Handmade Potteryy

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

Southern Appalachian Galleries

BurtonGalleryandEmpor ium.com

Call Any nytime! 706-947--1351

150 Burton Dam Rd. Clarkesville, Georgiaa 30523 43

HART THEATRE HART Theatre sits in the shadow of Cold Mountain and showcases the finest talent in the region in a year-round schedule of plays and musicals.

250 Pigeon St. • Waynesville, N.C. 828.456.6322 • harttheatre.org THE JEWELER’S WORKBENCH The Jeweler’s Workbench specializes in unique handcrafted jewelry, limited edition watches, kinetic art and other artistic gifts and treasures.

Featuring over 50 artists from the Great Smoky Mountain region and from across the country.

On-site repairs and custom design and work.

80 N. Main St. • Waynesville, N.C. 828-456-2260 • thejwbench.com

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

KAAREN STONER

A Gallery

WAYNESVILLE GALLERY ASSOCIATION The Waynesville Gallery Association is represented by 10 unique galleries: Burr Studio, Cedar Hill Studio, Earthstar Studio, Earthworks Gallery, Haywood County Arts Council’s Gallery & Gifts, The Jeweler’s Workbench, Jo Ridge Kelley Fine Art, Moose Crossing Burl Wood Gallery, 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

Art

Dances WITH

Nature

F EATU R I NG OVER 140 ARTI STS P R I MAR I LY FOR TH I S R EGION

WILLIAM KING MUSEUM OF ART William King Museum of Art offers outstanding fine world art, contemporary regional art, and cultural heritage art in Abingdon, Virginia. williamkingmuseum.org

WHERE ART DANCES WITH NATURE 98 N. MAI N ST. • WAYN ESVI LLE NC • OP EN MON-SAT: 10-5:30 828.456.1940 • W W W.T WIGSAN DLEAVES.COM 44

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 150 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

OVAL VASE BY CLAY ARTIST

WHERE

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

EXPLORE

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

Southern Appalachian Galleries

Newest Exhibitions At William King Museum of Art

ARTIST OF THE

BLUE RIDGE

Iron Design

Home:One Family, 200 Years of History

Connoisseur Private Collecting in Southwest Virginia and Northeast Tennessee

Iron Design : February 3 - May 14, 2017 Home : March 3 - July 10, 2017 Connoisseur: April 6 - August 13, 2017

William King Museum of Art

“Thunder Struck Ridge” ~ Colored Pencil Drawing by Teresa Pennington

415 Academy Drive • Abingdon, VA 24210 276.628.5005 • williamkingmuseum.org

15 N. Main St., Waynesville, NC | 828.452.9284 | tpennington.com

3 rd Annual Cheese Fest Join us at the

April 23, 2017 EXPLORE

Southern Appalachian Galleries

45

A Perfect Storm or the New Norm

BY DON HENDERSHOT

Botanist Gary Kauffman looks over the burned ground surrounding the Appalachian Trail going north from Wayah Bald. HOLLY KAYS PHOTO

46

SMOKY MOUNTAIN LIVING VOLUME 17 â&#x20AC;¢ ISSUE 2

WWW.SMLIV.COM

47

building containment lines around the fire.

The fire was slowly backing down the mountain and park firefighters figured it would reach containment lines around Nov. 28.

Mother Nature had a different plan.

A weather front was headed in and, while fire managers were hoping for rain, the leading edge of the front was predicted to bring low humidity plus variable gusty winds.

As the front got closer, predictions became direr.

A weather service alert warned of winds strong enough to down trees and power lines and called for gusts of near 60 mph. The fire started spotting as winds blew embers across the landscape.

Soon the fire had spotted over two ridges and engaged Twin Creeks visitor center facilities.

The winds kept increasing.

Some gusts measured more than 80 mph.

Not only did the Chimney Tops 2 Fire rage into Gatlinburg, the high winds downed power lines sparking more fires, soon homes and hotels were burning.

Fourteen people died.

Forest fires last fall left charred remains of structures throughout Great Smoky Mountains National Park and the national forests.

Half a billion dollars in property burned though downtown Gatlinburg, and the main tourism areas, were spared.

Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam said it was the largest wildfire in Tennessee in the last 100 years.

Fire managers, today, wonder if this was the perfect storm or the new norm.

They are studying last fall’s fire season to try to prevent this kind of tragedy from occurring again.

WHY 2016?

Jess Riddle, forest ecologist with Georgia ForestWatch, said the answer has a lot to do with a combination of natural events.

“These recent fires had decades of fuel build-up, extreme drought, low humidity, and windy days—pretty much everything a fire could want,” he says.

Records from Asheville’s National Center for Environmental Information (NCEI), formerly the National Climatic Data Center, note this fall was one of the driest and warmest on record for Western North Carolina, East Ten-

Scientists are still studying the impact the fires had on wildlife.

HOLLY KAYS PHOTO

DEANNA YOUNGER/ USFS PHOTO

A

lightning strike in the Cohutta Wilderness of north Georgia’s Chattahoochee National Forest started the fire on Rough Ridge.

It was Oct. 16.

No one knew what kind of harbinger that was.

A week later, the Dick’s Creek Fire was burning. Two days after that, the Boteler Fire started.

By early November, the Tellico Fire, the massive Party Rock Fire and the Ferebee Memorial fires were all burning in North Carolina.

Arsonists started a fire along the Chimney Tops Trail in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park on Nov. 13. Park firefighters responded and extinguished the fire within three days.

But on the evening of Nov. 23 another arson-started fire was discovered near the Chimney Tops Trail.

This became the Chimney Tops 2 Fire and park officials decided, because of the steep terrain, it would be too dangerous for firefighters to directly attack the fire. They went to work

nessee, North Georgia and other areas across the Southeast.

Most of Western North Carolina was under extreme or exceptional drought from the middle of October to the end of November. Exceptional drought is the highest level. Extreme is the second highest level.

The Coweeta Hydrological Laboratory in Otto, North Carolina, reflects the same trends.

September and October were the driest two months on record since 1934 when record keeping began.

Temperatures for all months, except January, were above average. July and September set heat records.

Josh Kelly, forest biologist at MountainTrue, said the confluence of the warm and very dry weather was unusual.

“It was the first time in my life that anything like this has happened,” he says. “Some indices of fire danger reached new records for Western North Carolina during this period.”

One of those, the Energy Release Component, measures the amount of fuels in the forest. It reached a record high.

The forest was basically a tinderbox.

Any, and every, flame had record high fuels waiting to be consumed.

These fuels accumulated in the forests of the Southern Appalachians due to the past seven or eight decades of fire suppression, some experts say.

Fire has always been a part of the ecosystem that helps shape the forests.

Some forest communities – fireadapted communities – actually rely on fire.

Pines like table mountain pine, pitch pine and others are highly adapted to fire and the exclusion of fire in those habitats allows shrubs and other hardwoods to move in.

Fire is also very beneficial in oak forests, especially drier oak forests.

The exclusion of normal fire regimes has allowed less fire-tolerant species like maple, poplar and others to encroach.

So it’s easy to see how, as Jess Riddle says, 2016 had “pretty much everything a fire could want.”

It had fuel load build up from decades of fire suppression and those fuels were extremely dry. It had extreme-to-exceptional drought conditions. It had wind, high temperatures and low humidity.

All it needed was ignition.

RELA AX. UNWIND. ENJO OY.

COURTYAARD BY B MARRIOTT® - PIGEEON FORGE

Featuring modern, contemporary rooms with privvate balconies, river and mountain vieews, outdoor pool and lazy river, and much more!

120 COMMUNITY CENTER C DRIVE, PIGEON FORGE, TN 37863 865-366-3201 • WWW.COURTYYAARD-PIGEON NFORGE.COM

WWW.SMLIV.COM

49

Fire impacts on U.S. Forest Service land Did the fires hurt wildlife?

Prescribed burning is often used as a tool to benefit wildlife by regenerating their habitat, and in the case of the slowly creeping ground fires that accounted for most of the burned area, wildlife are usually able to get out of the way as flames approach.

However, not all species are that mobile. The noonday globe snail, listed as threatened, is the focus of significant concern. The species is only known to inhabit a 99-acre area of the Nantahala Gorge, and 85 percent of those acres burned. Wildlife biologists are still assessing how the fire might have impacted its population, or if the species has some kind of mechanism — such as burrowing — available to avoid the flames.

In the short-term, other wildlife species could face hardship from the fires

UNNATURAL SPARKS Only two of the hundreds of wildfires across the region were naturally ignited. The Rough Ridge Fire in the Cohutta Wilderness on Oct. 16 and the Boteler Fire in the Nantahala National Forest near Hayesville, North Carolina, on Oct. 25 were thought to have started from lightning strikes.

The rest were all human-caused.

Some were escaped debris burns, escaped campfires and cigarettes tossed from car windows or other accidental ignitions. But a large number, probably the majority, were arson.

Will the fires increase the chance to flooding and landslides?

The U.S. Forest Service’s Burned Area Report identified several areas where there is a high risk of flooding or landslides due to loss of vegetation and water-repellent soil.

However, even with multiple heavy rains this winter, there haven’t seemed to be any issues. Many areas that the team completing the report initially observed to have water-repellent soil seem to be absorbing water much more readily.

Is a spring fire season likely?

Typically, spring fire seasons tend to be more severe than fall fire seasons. The humidity is lower, winds are gustier, and the sap flowing through the trees makes them more volatile.

So, while fuels are pretty wet right now, the region is still in drought. The potential for a spring fire season will depend on what the weather does over the coming months.

To a degree, though, the fire season could depend on people. Of the 20plus fires that burned through WNC last fall, only one is thought to have resulted from natural causes. Humans caused the rest, either accidentally or on purpose.

How did the fires affect the Appalachian Trail?

South of the Smokies, 58 miles of the AT run through North Carolina and are maintained by the Nantahala Hiking Club. Of those 58 miles, 26 miles were part of the burned area, according to the club.

Of those 26 miles, about 90 percent experienced pretty mild burning.

About 10 percent burned hot, consuming wooden anti-erosion features on the trail and creating hazards like holes in the ground and dead trees.

What is on the U.S. Forest Service’s to do list this spring?

Rehabilitating fire lines will be a big task for the Nantahala Ranger District as the weather warms up. While firefighters made significant headway toward naturalizing the dug-up lines as fire season wound down, there are still about 30 miles of fire line that need to be dealt with.

Especially on steep slopes, non-rehabilitated fire lines lead to erosion, as there are no roots or leaves covering them to stop water from flushing the dirt downhill. They can also open up the forest to invasive plants, whose seeds can easily take root in the bare soil.

Many of the district’s roads took a pretty good beating from bearing heavy equipment all fall. And because the fire burned through two timber sale areas that were already sold, the Forest Service will have to make some adjustments to those contracts.

The Forest Service will also be addressing threats from invasive species in areas other than fire lines. Across nine fires, the Forest Service received $55,000 to prevent their spread, primarily by using herbicide.

— Smoky Mountain News

50

A helicopter drops water on a fire. NPS PHOTO

Forest economist Jeffrey Prestemon is project leader at the Forestry Sciences Laboratory in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina.

His research includes understanding, predicting, and forecasting arson and intentional wildfires.

In a Forest Service report “Wildfire Ignitions: A review of the Science and Recommendations for Empirical Modeling” Prestemon, and others, found 39 percent of fires across most of the Southern Appalachians between 2000 and 2008 were arson.

Prestemon told Smoky Mountain Living that high wildfire indices, like drought and fuel load, are also predictive of arson.

In other words, arsonists know when conditions are good for setting fires.

And one of the highest predictors of arson is simply the fact that arson has recently occurred.

This is because serial arsonists are common.

“If they have success setting one fire, they’re likely to try again, plus you have copy cat arsonists,” Prestemon says.

Prestemon says access is also a big factor.

He noted that population, coupled with road density, means more fires.

He also noted that arson is more common near forest/urban interfaces where there are large numbers of human lives and property at risk.

To learn more about people who set forest fires please see the sidebar on page 54.

SMOKY MOUNTAIN LIVING VOLUME 17 • ISSUE 2

Providing Nationwide Charter Bus Services for Western North Carolina since 1969

800-882-1227

www.cherokeeboysclub.com

WWW.SMLIV.COM

51

Burn damage to the Chimney Tops is evident even from the trailhead.

HOLLY KAYS PHOTO

EFFECTS OF THE 2016 WILDFIRES A large number of wildfires burned across a variety of forest habitats in the Southern Appalachians for more than a month.

These fires burned with different intensities and different severities depending on topography, weather conditions, fuel load and other factors.

There were different intensities and severities even within the same fire perimeter, so effects of the fires varied. Forest Service, Park Service and other organizations will be monitoring the burns and some effects may not be known for years.

One of the major hotspots was the Camp Branch Fire on Wayah Bald in Macon County, North Carolina. It burned the roof

off the Wayah Bald Fire Tower.

Gary Kauffman, fire management specialist with the U.S. Forest Service, says the Camp Branch Fire at Wayah Bald, was the highest intensity fire site that he visited.

He says the fire raced up the mountain, through a high elevation red oak forest with flame lengths greater than 100 feet.

“Many of the red oaks and chestnut oaks had fire scars up their entire stems. I suspect many will die,” he says.

He also noted that while the tops of the rhododendron were burned, much of the root mass was still in tact and, depending on the oak mortality, that the bald could perhaps transform to a heath bald.

But many of the fires, probably most, didn’t burn with that kind of intensity or severity.

“Many areas had low to moderate intensity

fire that will likely not result in widespread tree mortality,” says Adam Warwick, stewardship manager at The Nature Conservancy.

He believes most of the fires were “generally beneficial from an ecological perspective.”

Rob Klein, fire ecologist with the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, says fires in the Park burned about 11,000 acres and 16 percent of that was high-severity.

Klein says a small portion of the highseverity burns could see complete stand replacement.

Most of that happened on steep, dry, slopes populated with pine and oak.

Klein noted that table mountain pine, one of the species in that habitat, is quite adapted to fire.

Some table mountain pines produce serotinous cones that require heat, generally from

“Many areas had low to moderate intensity fire that will likely not result in widespread tree mortality.”

— Adam Warwick, stewardship manager at The Nature Conservancy

52

SMOKY MOUNTAIN LIVING VOLUME 17 • ISSUE 2

fire, to open and disperse seed.

Klein cautioned that it will take years for these forests to reestablish themselves but noted that kind of regeneration is a natural part of forest ecology – or, at least, used to be before widespread fire suppression.

Many of the 2016 wildfires burned across fire-adapted communities. But many of these fires were unusual in the fact they burned into more moist areas.

There were instances like the Tellico Fire and the Rock Mountain Fire, where the fire burned all the way to the edge of streams in cove forests.

Kauffman said half of the burns he surveyed were in areas with less fireadapted vegetation, but noted the fires within these areas were low in intensity and severity.

Initially there should be little negative impact on wildlife.

Klein says most medium to large mammals and birds simply move out of the fire’s path. Most reptiles and amphibians were already dormant beneath the soil. Of special concern, however, is the noonday globe snail, Petera clarkia Nantahala.

This federally threatened snail is endemic to the Nantahala Gorge in Western North Carolina and much of its known habitat was within the perimeter of the Tellico Fire. Effects of the fire on the noonday globe will not be known until this spring when biologists survey the area.

Any large areas of tree mortality could mean less mast available next fall. The flip side of that is high-intensity and stand-replacing fires could be beneficial to wildlife that depends on herbaceous vegetation and early successional habitat.

The largest immediate negative impact associated with the 2016 fires was smoke pollution.

Many towns and urban areas as far away as Charlotte, and Atlanta, and Chattanooga and Knoxville experienced code orange and code red air quality alerts.

Other ongoing concerns include erosion and flooding primarily in those areas where the duff layer was burned away, leaving bare soil exposed.

Moderate to heavy rains could not only cause erosion but because there is no duff to absorb and slowdown runoff, flooding could occur.

visitwytheville.c com 1-877 7 -347-83 307

Photography by ©RoadRUNNER Magazinee

WWW.SMLIV.COM

53

Profile of a forest arsonist Paul Steensland has more than 40 years experience with the U.S. Forest Service, CalFire and in private practice investigating forest and wild land arson. He is past chair and a current member of the National Wildfire Coordinating Group’s Wildfire Investigation Working Team.

To begin with, forget all that TV and the movies would have you believe about pyromania and pyromaniacs, he says.

Steensland doesn’t believe pyromania comes into play when dealing with arsonists.

He noted that the mental illness pyromania is an impulse control disorder. The patient can’t help himself from starting fires.

The forest arsonist, on the other hand, will certainly change his mind about setting a particular fire should he think there is a high possibility of being discovered.

And, Steensland says, sometimes arsonists simply stop setting fires.

“Most [arsonists] know what they are doing is wrong but choose to do it any way,” he says.

Steensland cautioned that statistical profiles are based on majorities and averages and that a particular arsonist may not fit the profile exactly but it provides a good starting place.

Profile: y Most likely male y High school education at most y Usually unemployed or underemployed y Single, divorced or estranged y Lives alone or with a parent or parents y Generally low socioeconomic standing but often from middle class parents y Age 16 – 35. y Mostly white or reflective of the majority ethnicity of the area.

Steensland noted that forest arson generally falls in one or more than one of six categories or typologies. y Vandalism – usually associated with brush fires.

Mostly juvenile offenders. y Excitement – thrill seeker, looking for recognition or attention. Often hangs around the scene. Often videos or photographs the fire. Steensland said of 65 cases he worked that fell in this typology, 33 percent of the arsonists were firefighters – mostly volunteer. y Revenge – Could be revenge against an individual or an organized group. Steensland said he feels a lot of these types of arsonist are lashing out at society.

They’re angry – frustrated – and it’s a way for them to feel good about themselves. y Crime concealment. y Profit. y Extremism – fires set in hopes of furthering some kind of political, social or religious cause.

Steensland said it’s often difficult to catch a onetime arsonist. However, most arsonists are serial arsonists and tend to get careless over time.

54

Some trails remained closed across the Smokies because of fire damage.

PERFECT STORM OR NEW NORM This is an issue that will likely be answered in hindsight a few years down the road.

There was certainly a confluence of events that came together in the Southern Appalachians in the fall of 2016, which precipitated this unprecedented fire season: Decades of fuel buildup, drought, warm temperatures, low humidity, wind and then ignition.

Many scientists, ecologists and forest managers believe climate change may have played a part and may continue to do so though no scientist would point to this fire season and say, “climate change caused this.”

There is no way to know for sure at this point.

But Steve McNulty, director of the USDA Southeast Regional Climate Hub, believes climate variability likely played a large part and that climate change plays a part in climate variability.

Climate change refers to gradual, long-term change – the heating of the Earth and the Earth’s atmosphere over the past century or so and climate variability refers to changes in weather patterns from month to month or year to year.

More greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere, like CO2, trap more heat in the atmosphere creating more energy and that translates into more extreme weather patterns.

McNulty noted that rain events producing more than 2 inches of rain over a 24-hour period have increased by 20 percent since 1950.

But with a warmer atmosphere drying and evaporation occur faster, which can lead to more drought.

There are also more subtle climate variability changes that can impact wildfire. McNulty noted growing seasons that last two to three weeks longer.

They produce more biomass, which can increase fuel load.

And adding more people into the mix also increases the chances of wildfire.

More people equal more campers, more hikers, more hunters and that means more campfires and more opportunities for accidental ignitions.

More property owners equal more lot clearing and more debris burning, which also adds to the chances for accidental ignition. And sadly, more people and more access lead to more arson.

This fire season could have been a perfect storm, the experts say. But it appears the conditions that created that storm are becoming the new norm.

SMOKY MOUNTAIN LIVING VOLUME 17 • ISSUE 2

A RETREAT BETWEEN THE MOUNTA AINS AND A THE RIVER IN N THE HEART T OF GATLINBUR T RG

SPRING G UP for an unforgettable family get-a-away.

SUMMER UP

forr long days and starry nights with family and friends.

SET OUT

and explore the many nearrby mountain trails and downtown n Gatlinburg.

S Start your fam mily’s Summer Adventure he ere.

At the foot of the stunning Sm moky Mountains, across the street from Ripley's Aqua arium, in the heart of downtown and jusst a short drive to all the fun and entertainment of Do ollywood, the Greystone Lodge on the River is the ideal location for your family adventu ure.

G AT L I N B U RG • T E N NE S S E E

Visit greysttonelodgetn.com or ca all 800.451.9202

Family owned for over 50 years. We lov ve where we are. We love w what we do. And we love ssharing it with you.

SETTLE IN

and relax as you hearr the sounds of rushing water from your private balcony.

SNUGGLE UP with thee ones you love in one of our all new modern and cozy rooms.

‘Be part of our comeback’ Ron Crivellone has a simple answer when customers call about getting married in the Smokies this spring.

“I’m pretty much telling them that we are open for business,” he says. “The best way you can help the area is to come spend money.”

He’s the president of the Smoky Mountain Wedding Association and owner

an image problem.

The wall-to-wall news coverage of the fire left the impression that Gatlinburg was destroyed, says Logan Coykendall, president and CEO of Hospitality Solutions, Inc. That’s far from the truth.

The downtown, arts and crafts community, and many other places, suffered no damage.

Gatlinburg is open for business this spring and leaders there say the best way to support the town after the fires is to visit.

of Smoky Mountain Sounds, a wedding DJ business.

The wedding industry is huge in the Gatlinburg-Pigeon Forge-Sevierville area.

Sevier County, Tennessee, is third in the nation for the number of chapel weddings – right behind Las Vegas and New York, he says.

Barn weddings are a big draw here.

Crivellone once did a country wedding, complete with cowboy hats, for a couple from New York. They told him they could have done it back home, but it wouldn’t have looked right.

Like many business owners in this tourism-dependent community, Crivellone is worried about the lingering impact of last fall’s forest fires.

The Chimney Tops 2 fire killed 14 people in the Gatlinburg area and destroyed half a billion dollars in property. Entire neighborhoods were wiped out.

As if the tragic loss of life and property wasn’t bad enough, Gatlinburg now has

56

“Our two real gems of tourism were left untouched and they are ready, willing and able to take care of visitors,” he said.

His company owns the Hilton Garden Inn, the Courtyard by Marriott and the Hampton Inn in Gatlinburg. It manages the historic Gatlinburg Inn. In Pigeon Forge, the company manages a second Hampton Inn and Hilton Garden Inn. The company suffered $2.5 million in smoke and wind damage. Seventeen employees lost everything.

Taking care of those employees has been a top priority for his company, and many others, in town.

Hospitality Solutions assigned a full time staffer to help workers find housing.

It raised $50,000 internally to help staff get resettled.

The money paid for the first few months of rent and furnishings among other needs.

Today, everyone has a place to live and is ready to work.

SMOKY MOUNTAIN LIVING VOLUME 17 • ISSUE 2

Coykendall, like others here, sees a bright future for business in Gatlinburg.

The company is investing $30 million this year in new hotels and $30 million more in the next three years.

But the business has to come back to make it a real success story, he says.

“The best way to help us recover is to come visit us and see how beautiful the area still is,” he says.

Even the places that burned inside Great Smoky Mountains National Park, like the Chimneys trail, present new opportunities. Watching how the environment rebuilds will be something visitors can count on again and again.

“I think it’s going to be neat to see what happened to those areas that did burn as they rejuvenate,” he says.

Jackie Leatherwood, general manager of Greystone Lodge on the River, shares Coykendall’s concerns, but she’s also optimistic.

“We are booming with new opportunities,” she says. “If you come to town, and you just drive through the center of town, you don’t even really know there has been a fire in our area, because our downtown is still intact.”

Like many hotels here, her 241-room inn suffered smoke damage. It has since been professionally cleaned.

She made sure to take the time to do the job right.

“When my guests walk in the front doors, I want them to have the experience they had prior to the fires,” she says.

She’s telling customers they can expect the same great experience across Gatlinburg when they call asking about the aftermath of the fire.

“You just ask people to come and see for themselves,” she says. “Come and see it, come and experience it and be part of our come back.”

Right now the focus is on attracting the spring break crowds.

Leatherwood’s confident but, like Coykendall, she worries about the longterm impact on the workforce if the spring season is soft.

“You have workers that are working in these restaurants who need to make a living through the winter,” she says. “So we need the people to come back to help. I think people want to be a part of that and they will come back.”

“They may not be the same as they were the day before the fire but they will recover to become the forests of tomorrow.”

— Josh Kelly

LESSONS FOR THE FUTURE Josh Kelly, of MountainTrue, and Adam Warwick, of TNC, both credit the Grandfather Restoration Project, which uses prescribed fire to restore forests on the Grandfather Ranger District, with greatly reducing the risk of the Paddy’s Creek Fire and the Buck Creek Gap Fire.

In a fire season briefing last fall, Warwick noted these two fires, in areas that had been previously treated through prescribed burns, were caught small and resulted in little to no damage.

“It’s a little counter-intuitive, but forests that burn more frequently burn with less severity,” says Kelly. “This is because frequent fires do two things. First, they consume some of the fuels that would be more dangerous during drought conditions. Second, they

Management experts say the forests will recover from last fall’s fires but people should take fire into account when planning development across the region. HOLLY KAYS PHOTO

change the vegetation over time. In our area, that means trees that are wider spaced and a transition from dangerous shrubby fuels, like mountain laurel, to herbaceous and grassy fuels that don’t burn so severely.”

But prescribed burns are not a landscapewide panacea.

There are areas of the forest where, due to topography and human habitation, prescribed burns aren’t prudent. And much care must be taken to manage smoke during a prescribed burn.

Environmentalists, ecologists and fire managers across the country are reaching out to stakeholders to prepare for, and mitigate, the effects of increasing wildfire on the landscape.

Programs like the National Cohesive Strategy and Fire Adapted Communities offer agencies, organizations and stakeholders ways to address issues like managing fuel loads,

protecting homes and communities, managing human-caused ignitions and effectively and efficiently responding to wildfire.

Kelly noted two main takeaways from the 2016 wildfires.

“First, the Southern Appalachians are not immune from large wildfires,” he says. “Second, it’s critical that people take fire into consideration when planning development.

Everything from the vegetation of the site, to the steepness of the slopes, to the building materials used, to the difficulty or ease of fire fighter access during an emergency.”

Rob Klein of the Park Service says it’s important for people to understand that fire is a natural process.

“Fire has been on the landscape for thousands of years and forests will recover naturally,” he says. “They may not be the same as they were the day before the fire but they will recover to become the forests of tomorrow.”

Find Your Adventure in

Hendersonville, NC An exciting summer getaway awaits travelers in the Blue Ridge mountain town of Hendersonville.

Once the sleepy southern neighbor of nearby Asheville, the town has emerged with a vibrant mix of arts, culture and locally brewed spirits.

Special-interest trails create custom LWLQHUDULHV IRU YLVLWRUV )URP JDOOHULHV À OOHG with pieces by independent artists, to wineries, breweries and cideries producing small-batch spirits, to orchards where visitors can pick their own apples — Hendersonville’s trails encourage exploration.

Be moved.

Because that’s what happens in Hendersonville.

1.800.828.4244

visithendersonvillenc.org

Art Gallery Trail

ART Gallery

Western North Carolina artists draw inspiration from the surrounding Blue Ridge Mountains, and their work UHÁ HFWV WKH UHJLRQ·V QDWXUDO EHDXW\ +HQGHUVRQ &RXQW\ DUWLVWV VSHFLDOL]H LQ ERWK À QH DUW DQG À QH FUDIW *DOOHULHV exhibit handmade jewelry, blown glass, pottery, sculpture, metalwork, paintings and more. Several artists open their studios, allowing visitors a glimpse into the creative process.

Trail

A Guide to Fine Art & Fine Craft 244 .828.4 rg 1.800der son ville nc.o

visit hen

Cheers! Trail CHEERS! Trail

A Guide To

e

Orchard Trail A Guide to Locally Grown Fruits & Vegetables

4244 1.800.828.illen c.org

visith ende rsonv

Cider 1.800.828.4244

visithe nderso nvillen

c.org

Garden Jubilee Memorial Day Weekend, May 27-28

Farm Market Trail Farm Market Trail A Guide To Farm Fresh: Vegetables Fruits Herbs 1.800.828.4244

visithendersonvillenc.org

Rhythm & Brews Third Thursday, May-September Art in Bloom May 26-29

Wine &

North Carolina is the seventh-largest apple-producing state in the nation, and Henderson County is the largest apple-producing county in North Carolina. The apple harvest season runs from late August through October.

Fresh apples, cider and other delicacies — such as apple cider doughnuts, apple pies and apple butter — may be purchased at roadside markets and produce stands.

Several orchards host tours and allow visitors to pick their own apples.

Farmers markets scattered across Henderson County offer the freshest fruits, vegetables and herbs. During planting season, vegetable transplants and bedding plants are available. Baked goods, such as breads, cakes and pies, as well as jams, jellies and preserves show off the culinary talents of mountain residents.

Other treasures include arts and crafts, handmade soaps and fresh-cut flowers.

Flat Rock Playhouse Mainstage March-December

Beer

Crest of the Blue Ridge Orchard Trail Crest

Flat Rock Playhouse: Music On The Rock February-November

Apple Country Cider Jam April 22

Across Henderson County, breweries, wineries and cideries make handcrafted beverages. Hendersonville residents are turning the abundance of locally grown apples into hard cider and wine. Virginia-based Bold Rock Hard Cider opened its second production facility in rural Mills River, and Flat Rock Ciderworks operates a tasting room on Hendersonville’s Main Street. Two vineyards produce high-quality wines from European varietals. Sierra Nevada’s new state-of-the-art EUHZHU\ LV D PHFFD IRU FUDIW EHHU DÀ FLRQDGRV

of the Blue Ridg

Upcoming Events

Monday Night Live!

Every Monday in June Street Dances Every Monday, July 10-Aug. 14 Music On Main Street Every Friday, June 16-Aug. 18 North Carolina Apple Festival Labor Day Weekend, Sept. 1-4

Quilt Trail Quilt Trail Quilt Block Trail A Self Guided Tour of Henderson County’s Quilt Blocks

1.800.828.4244

visithendersonvillenc.org

The newest Henderson County trail leads visitors along scenic mountain roads. Colorful quilt blocks hang on the sides of barns, homes, businesses, public buildings and historic properties.

The squares’ patterns tell the stories of the places where they hang and honor the traditional craft of quilting.

Hikers venture into Harpers Ferry along the Appalachian Trail.

APPALACHIAN TRAIL TOWNS Hot Springs, Damascus & Harper’s Ferry

60

SMOKY MOUNTAIN LIVING VOLUME 17 • ISSUE 2

B Y K AT I E K N O R O V S K Y

W

alking all 2,200 miles of the Appalachian Trail is a dream for some. But for many, the time commitment puts thru-hiking out of reach.

We love the AT at Smoky Mountain Living and all the wonderful towns that dot its path.

To make the trail more accessible, we’ve broken a few classic parts down into small trips in an occasional series called Appalachian Trail Weekends.

Our first trek takes us to Hot Springs, North Carolina, and Damascus, Virginia.

Look for our piece on Dawsonville and Dahlonega, Georgia, this summer.

Hot Springs, North Carolina

F

or centuries the 600-person town of Hot Springs, North Carolina, has drawn tourists.

First they came for the purported healing powers of the mineral water that bubbles at 100-plus degrees—a natural phenomenon first discovered by Native Americans—here at the confluence of the French Broad River and Spring Creek.

By 1778, colonists were sending their sick and lame over the mountains to “take to the waters,” and in 1831 the first in a series of elegant hotels opened on the site of the springs.

These days, Hot Springs also offers the healing power of

civilization for some 2,000 annual Appalachian Trail hikers.

As the southernmost trail town—aka the first outpost of creature comforts on a northbound thru-hike—the white blazes lead right down Main Street. It also makes a one-of-a-kind weekend getaway, whether or not hiking is at the top of your agenda.

WHAT TO DO: Gone are the days of marble baths and sprawling banquet halls in this little mountain town, but the Hot Springs Resort & Spa still offers comfortable accommodations and yearround alfresco soaks in private mineral baths. Today, the legendary mineral water flows through Jacuzzi-style hot tubs on covered wooden decks scattered along the secluded banks of Spring Creek and the French Broad River. Whether staying at the resort or elsewhere, visitors can book hot tub sessions by the hour. Deluxe tubs include heat lamps and more privacy. BYO snacks and drinks.

WWW.SMLIV.COM

61

WHERE TO STAY: Hot Springs Resort & Spa offers standard rooms as well as suites, cabins, camping, and RV hookups. Some suites and cabins include private hot tubs fed by the mineral water. B&B lovers and history buffs retreat to country-style inns such as the Mountain Magnolia Inn, a restored Victorian mansion partially modeled after the grand 1886 resort that once stood here.

OTHER TOWN HIGHLIGHTS: Bluff

Mountain Outfitters is a one-stop shop for mountain lovers. On the street level, commodities range from bulk food and freeze-dried meals to souvenir T-shirts, books by regional authors, and, yes, outdoor gear.

Upstairs, there’s a pinball machine as well as a room plastered in trail maps.

In the historic Iron Horse Station Inn building across from the railroad tracks, ArtiSUN Gallery provides just about any other commodity you might desire during a weekend here: Coffee drinks and bottles of wine, tea and candles, local art and crystals.

A favorite for live music, Spring Creek Tavern & Inn stands out with a covered deck overlooking the creek and elevated bar food such as the $17 appetite buster called the AT Burger—a triple-decker with cheddar and a whopping 18 ounces of angus chuck.

HIT THE TRAIL: Though technically a stroll down Main Street counts as a pass on the AT, hikers shouldn’t skip following the trail across and along the French Broad, then climbing the river bluffs up to Lover’s Leap for a spectacular view over the valley. And only 20 miles southwest, about 45 minutes away by

Iron Horse Station in Hot Springs, North Carolina, top, provides just about any commodity from coffee to wine. The French Broad River, left, offers spectacular valley views.

COURTESY OF CIRQUEFIT

62

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.

May 26-28, 2017

FREE

June 9th, 10th, 11th

in Downtown Brevard, NC

Fri. 1-5 | Sat. 10-5 | Sun. 1-5

Best Spring Music Festival in WNC!

Best of the arts in the mountains of North Georgia Habersham, Rabun, Towns & White Counties

The

Octopus Garden

Self guided driving tour.

SMOKE SHOP

Seven locations serving Western North Carolina.

828.232.6030

WhiteSquirrelFestival.com

706-947-1351 ArtsTour.org

MAY 9-13

Come join us in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee for the th

27 Anniversary Wilderness Wildlife Week!

This special free event features more than 200 educational seminars, 30 outdoor excursions into Great Smoky Mountains National Park and the surrounding area, a farmers’ market, as well as more than 50 onsite exhibitors.

Featured sessions include presentations by: Ken Jenkins, Dr. Bill Bass and Art Bohanan, Sam Venable, Bill Landry, Elizabeth Rose, Faye Wooden, Dwight McCarter, Doug Elliott, Kim Delozier, as well as the 2nd Annual Appalachian Homecoming at Patriot Park.

...and many other remarkable activities!

The LeConte Center at Pigeon Forge 2986 Teaster Lane Pigeon Forge, TN 37863 For more information, visit MyPigeonForge.com or telephone the Pigeon Forge Office of Special Events at (865) 429-7350

WWW.SMLIV.COM

63

car, is one of the AT’s most scenic spots, Max Patch. The trail traverses the grassy summit of a 4,629-foot-tall bald, where 360-degree panoramas take in the Great Smoky Mountains to the south and Mount Mitchell to the east. Section hikers can explore the bald on a loop hike of 1.4 or 2.4 miles long.

WHEN TO GO: During April, thru-hikers

and AT lovers convene here for the three-day Hot Springs Community Trailfest. June brings the Bluff Mountain Music Festival, July’s Wild Goose Festival celebrates social justice, and September buzzes with the French Broad Brew Fest.

To plan your trip, see hotspringsnc.org.

Damascus, Virginia

T

he Appalachian Trail is but one of the beloved paths to traverse “Trail Town, USA.”

In this close-knit outdoors-loving town in southwest Virginia, there’s also the Virginia Creeper Trail along an historic rail bed, the Trans-America National Bicycle Trail, the Iron Mountain Trail, and the Virginia Birding and Wildlife Trail.

Plus, just 30 miles away is the Mount Rogers National Recreation Area, home to Virginia’s highest peak, hundreds of miles of A sign for the AT, above, shows hikers the way in downtown Hot Springs. Damascus, Virginia, or “Trail Town, USA,” below, has plenty of hiking and biking paths in addition to the AT.

64

Great Seafood · Arts and Crafts · Antiques Fri. 3pm-9pm Sat. 10am-9pm Sun. 10am-5pm BRING A CHAIR OR BLANKET TO SIT BACK AND ENJOY THE MUSIC!

June 2-4, 2017

Musical guests include: Gnarly Fingers, Country River Band, Ma Rogers Rolling Bones, Gold Standard Band Breaking Point The Buck and Oz band

NO COOLERS

Mayors Park • Hwy 76 WE ID Young Harris, Ga. Free Parking • Admission $5 • Children under 12 free Crane Creek Winery and Engelheim Vineyards Visit northgeorgiahighlandsseafoodfestival.com for more info.

Presented by:

706.897.6179

City of Young Harris Robin Roberts, Promotions LLC

Sponsored By:

1805-08

Just to name a few…

DAHLONEGA

“Top 20 Best Small Towns in America to Visit” - Smithsonian Magazine, 2016

Breakfast & Lunch Daily!

GOLD, WINE & WATERFALLS Site of the first major U.S. Gold Rush and the Heart of Georgia Wine Country, Dahlonega offers an authentic mountain getaway only an hour north of Atlanta. Enjoy outstanding arts and award-winning wineries, gold history attractions, and outdoor adventure.

Fresh-Baked Cakes & Pastry Delicious Old-World Breads

From the Chattahoochee National Forest to the National Registered Downtown Historic Districts, unwind in Dahlonega... “It’s Pure Gold”!

www.HOFERS.com

www.dahlonega.org

|

(706) 864-3711

|

(800) 231-5543 WWW.SMLIV.COM

Mail-order Service Available

(706) 878-8200

Helen, GA

65

Damascus, Virginia, hosts 20,000 outdoors lovers each year for Appalachian Trail Days Festival, above left. The AT crosses streams, above right, and offers spectacular views over Damascus.

hiking, and a roaming herd of wild ponies.

Each May, this town of 800 residents explodes in population, attracting more than 20,000 hikers and outdoors lovers for its three-day Appalachian Trail Days Festival, May 19–21, this year.

“Damascus is the one place in the world that has struck the perfect balance between an outdoor-recreation vibe and the ‘Mayberry’ lifestyle,” says Adam Woodson, founder of the Damascus Brewery, which makes 45 types of beer and welcomes all ages with free bar games from darts, to foosball and corn hole and live music on Saturday nights.

BEYOND THE TRAIL: Fuel up with coffee and breakfast at Mojo’s Trailside Café, and reserve a bike and shuttle ride up to Whitetop Station, the highest point of the Virginia Creeper Trail.

“The 17-mile ride to town is through some of the most beautiful land the Appalachians have to offer,” Woodson says.

Once back in town, he recommends riding downtown for lunch at Hey Joe’s with an order of fish tacos or an “everything burrito.”

66

Before unwinding with a craft beer at his Damascus Brewery, browse downtown’s antiques and artisan shops and stop in at Mount Rogers Outfitters to plan any hiking adventures. In addition to doling out trail tips, this AT institution offers gear and hiking services such as a hostel, long-term parking, and shuttles to trailheads within a 100-mile radius of town.

HIT THE TRAIL: In town, pick up the Iron Mountain Trail— originally part of the Appalachian Trail—and follow its yellow blazes for 2 miles, crossing streams and winding uphill in the footsteps of early thru-hikers such as Gene Espy and Emma “Grandma” Gatewood.

At the sign, take a short blue-blazed trail to the AT, then follow the white blazes for another 2 miles as you cross a ridge with sweeping views over Damascus. Once you reach the Virginia Creeper Trail, follow it back down to town.

To plan your trip, see visitdamascus.org.

SMOKY MOUNTAIN LIVING VOLUME 17 • ISSUE 2

WWW.SMLIV.COM

Harpers Ferry, West Virginia

Y

ou know what a thru-hiker is. But what about a flip-flop hiker? No, it’s not a hiker with questionable footwear.

says, as “one of the most scenic and historic locations on the entire East Coast” at the confluence of the Potomac and Shenandoah Rivers.

“Thomas Jefferson said the view from the rock outcropping that was later named after him was ‘worth a voyage across the Atlantic,’” she says.

Rather, the memorable term refers to someone who hikes the entire AT by starting and ending somewhere in the middle of the Appalachian Trail. If that sounds like cheating, rest assured that the Appalachian Trail Conservancy is such a fan of the unconventional route, last April it launched the Flip-Flop Festival in Harpers Ferry, West Virginia.

Last year, an estimated 3,377 thru-hikers began in Georgia, the majority in March and April. Flip-flop hikes help spread out the crowd, according to Laurie Potteiger, a spokesperson for the Appalachian Trail Conservancy.

As the headquarters of the ATC and the “psychological midpoint” of the trail, Harpers Ferry also stands out, Potteiger

Scenic views in Harpers Ferry are some of the best on the East Coast.

Above: Harpers Ferry is the only AT trail town also designated as a national historic park. John Brown's Fort is one of the historic buildings.

LAURIE POTTEIGER PHOTO • NPS PHOTO

68

SMOKY MOUNTAIN LIVING VOLUME 17 • ISSUE 2

TOWN HIGHLIGHTS: Harpers Ferry is

the only trail town to also be a national historic park. Attractions in this preCivil War-era town range from a dry goods store and candy shop to the brick fire engine house where abolitionist John Brown and his followers barricaded themselves during their doomed raid in 1859. Just outside the park boundary, adjacent to Harpers Ferry’s Lower Town, cafés and restaurants offer everything from ice cream to filet mignon. Twelve miles away, historic Shepherdstown is worth a visit for its college-town charm. Join locals on the patio of Blue Moon Café.

HIT THE TRAIL: To make the most out

of a visit to this historic stretch of the AT, start at the ATC visitors center.

Check out its exhibits, books, maps, and souvenirs, and be sure to chat with staff and volunteers, who are eager to answer any questions about Harpers Ferry and area hiking. From there, the AT crosses the Potomac and follows a 3mile portion of the historic C&O Towpath along the river in Maryland— “the easiest 3 miles of the entire AT” says Potteiger.

Or, for more of a challenge, albeit one that leaves the AT, a climb up Maryland Heights rewards hikers with an eagle’seye view over the town, the rivers’ confluence, and the spine of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Signs along the way tell the story of Civil War battles fought from the mountain. “Anyone who visits the historic downtown and walks across the footbridge over the Potomac River will have walked the AT in two states,” Potteiger notes.

To plan your trip, see historicharpersferry.com.

WWW.SMLIV.COM

69

70

SMOKY MOUNTAIN LIVING VOLUME 17 â&#x20AC;¢ ISSUE 2

Something Old, Something Brewed Craft breweries revive historic sites that time forgot

BY BECKY JOHNSON

Microbreweries of the mountains are peddling more than pints these days.

The Smokies’ national acclaim as a craft-beer destination has led the burgeoning microbrewery scene on a quest for expansion, one that’s intersecting with the region’s rich history.

For this issue, we visited three breweries that are breathing new life into once-iconic historic sites. A shuttered train depot, a rural dairy farm and a Civilian Conservation Corp camp are all being revived as destination breweries that serve up cold brews with a side of history.

Yee-Haw Brewing, Johnson City, Tennessee.

WWW.SMLIV.COM

71

Down on the farm FONTA FLORA BREWERY RECLAIMS THE AGRICULTURAL HERITAGE OF BEER

F

or decades, the pastoral soundscape of bluebirds and barking dogs in the foothills community of Nebo, N.C., has been punctured by an occasional splintering crash reverberating across the valley.

It’s another plank sheering off the Whippoorwill dairy barn and clattering to the ground, each ricochet a nostalgic reminder of the fading agrarian heritage.

A piece of that heritage will soon be revived, however, thanks to the back-to-theland motto of a local craft brewery.

Fonta Flora based in nearby Morganton, N.C., has purchased the abandon Whippoorwill dairy farm with plans to turn the long-dormant property into a farmhouse brewery and till the land once more. The lofty mission is a big leap for a small hometown brewery.

“A lot of things are easy. The things that you do that are hard is what makes the difference,” says David Bennett, one of Fonta Flora’s owners who grew up in Morganton.

“You take some steps now that are arduous, but we have a long-term vision.”

Fonta Flora’s beer is inspired from the land.

A farm-to-mug brewery with a penchant for the locally-grown, Fonta Flora hangs its hat on seasonal ingredients born from the Appalachian landscape.

Reclaiming the long-latent farm for a craft brewery is iconic.

“That was always my dream to have a farm brewery,” says Todd Boera, the head brewer and co-owner.

Boera’s vision as a brewer is driven by local ingredients, a fusion of agriculture and ingenuity. While the farmhouse brewery concept will allow Fonta Flora to grow some of the harder-to-find raw ingredients behind its unique craft recipes, it will never replace the strong bond between the brewery and local growers.

Boera bought 2,000 pounds of peaches alone last year, and another 1,200 pounds of blueberries.

While the acreage is an important

“It would be a lot easier to set up shop in a brand new industrial park and start brewing.

But we are closely tied to agriculture so being in a farm setting speaks to what we are.”

— David Bennett

showcase for what Fonta Flora stands for, it’s got a bigger row to hoe. Repurposing the historic barn and milking parlor into a production brewery is a huge undertaking.

“It would be a lot easier to set up shop in a brand new industrial park and start brewing,” Bennett says. “But we are closely tied to agriculture so being in a farm setting speaks to what we are.”

BREW IT AND THEY WILL COME Demand for Fonta Flora is so high, the brewery rarely has beer to spare for selling outside its own tap room.

When a new beer recipe is finally ready to tap, so many craft beer aficionados descend for the release party, the brewery limits the number of bottles each person can buy. It’s a crazy business model on one hand, but a needed safety net for microbrewery connoisseurs from far-and-wide hoping to land a bottle of Meemaw, brewed with wild high country cherries, or the Funk and Flora, brewed with wild-foraged yarrow, sourwood leaves, ginger and black locust flower.

For last summer’s release party of the raspberry-infused Razzmatazz, Fonta Flora issued numbered wrist bands starting at 8 a.m. — with no proxies allowed — even though tap-room doors didn’t open until the afternoon. It still didn’t quell the lines, however, so for last fall’s release of Rhythm Rug, a strawberry beer, Fonta Flora tried selling advanced tickets online, only to sell out in the first three minutes.

Since its inception in 2013, the only way to get Fonta Flora was to come to Fonta Flora, and that was part of the allure.

“When people make a journey there is definitely something to that, in terms of the experience,” Bennett says. “People like visiting our brewery. Our setting and ambiance is top notch, with a great foothillsmountain small-town feel to it.”

The new production facility will be fivefold increase in capacity, from a 3-barrel to 15-barrel system.

What’s a Fonta Flora?

Fonta Flora. It sounds familiar, one of those words you’ve heard before but can’t put your finger on. Maybe it’s a type of snail? The nickname of a Yellowstone geyser? Or something to do with flora and fauna?

There are a lot of things to love about Fonta Flora beer, and its name is one of them. A stroke of luck and genius at the same time, the Fonta Flora guys stumbled on the name while trolling for local historical references.

“We were in the North Carolina Room at the local library here in Morganton, digging around for ideas, and one of the nice old ladies there mentioned the name Fonta Flora,” recalls David Bennett, one of the brewery’s owners.

A forgotten share-cropping village, Fonta Flora was lost to history a century ago when Lake James was created for hydropower.

The rising water flooded the settlement of mostly African-Americans and poor whites, and Fonta Flora was nearly erased from memory. But not anymore.

“We’ve kind of revitalized the name in some respects,” Bennett says.

Little did the Fonta Flora crew know how serendipitous the name would ultimately be. In desperate need of more brewing capacity, Fonta Flora purchased the historic Whippoorwill Dairy Farm outside Morganton last year with plans to turn the site into a farmhouse brewery. It’s located on shores of Lake James, not far from the original Fonta Flora settlement.

“When we decided to call our brewery Fonta Flora, we loved the folklore and it’s a beautiful name,” says Todd Boera, the head brewer and co-owner. “We had no idea we would be moving in to the very in the valley where the community Fonta Flora existed. It’s going to feel like home once we are there.”

“It’s better to be lucky than good sometimes,” Bennett adds.

72

SMOKY MOUNTAIN LIVING VOLUME 17 • ISSUE 2

The 3rd Gateway to the Smokies Half Marathon follows nearly the exact same course as previous years, begining on Main Street in beautiful downtown Waynesville and winding through neighborhoods & scenic farmlands to ďŹ nish in Frog Level, a revitalized railroad district listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

New this year is the 4-Miler, which starts and ďŹ nishes at the same place as the Half Marathon.

WWW.SMLIV.COM

73

Craft-beer aficionados line-up for hours outside Fonta Flora’s tap room in downtown Morganton, N.C., to get their hands on the limited supplies during special releases days. BETH PATTON PHOTO

Fonta Flora owners Todd Boera and David and Mark Bennett toast to their endeavor to repurpose the historic Whippoorwill Dairy in Morganton, N.C., as a farmhouse brewery. BETH PATTON PHOTO

74

SMOKY MOUNTAIN LIVING VOLUME 17 • ISSUE 2

The question now is whether the unrequited demand for Fonta Flora’s beer can be replicated on a larger scale with a network of off-site retailers.

Bennett has no doubt that Fonta Flora beer will find a distribution audience, however.

“Absolutely,” he says. “When you are making a very high-quality product, you can always find a market. We don’t really distribute at all right now and that’s been our issue. This allows us to extend what we have to offer.”

It’s capacity clearly tapped out, Fonta Flora has been in desperate need of more production space. But the chance to land the historic dairy farm was the tipping point.

“They kind of go hand in hand,” Bennett says of the expansion. “It is an amazing piece of property.”

A FORTUITOUS PARTNER Fonta Flora couldn’t have saved the historic dairy farm alone. The brewery partnered with Foothills Conservancy, a land trust, to protect the vast, rolling pasture land surrounding the farm buildings — some 48 acres in all. Fonta Flora couldn’t afford the entire tract.

That’s where Foothills Conservancy stepped in, purchasing 40 acres of the farm, which are being deeded to the adjacent Lake James State Park.

“We knew we wanted to build our second brewery out in the country, but Whippoorwill always seemed like an unattainable dream. Thanks to our partnership with Foothills Conservancy it has become a reality,” Boera says.

Foothills Conservancy, in turn, owes its role in the historic farmland preservation and state park expansion to private donors and a grant from the N.C. Clean Water Management Trust Fund.

To honor the partnership, Fonta Flora did what it does best. It created a special beer called Land Trust, an Appalachian Apple Saison brewed with locally foraged spice bush twigs, hand-pressed apple juice from Fox Gap Farm in Burnsville, North Carolina, and local grain from the Riverbend Malt House in Asheville, North Carolina.

Despite its big, new digs on the horizon, Fonta Flora will keep its tap room in downtown Morganton humming. For starters, the downtown

HIGH HAMPTON INN — An Inn to Remember Gracious hospitality, excellent cuisine and memories await you. Enjoy golf, tennis, fly-fishing, world-class spa, 35-acre private lake, hiking trails, golf schools, wellness retreats, bridge tournaments, and fun holiday weekends. Stay at the Historic Inn, a Cottage, or a Mountain Rental Home. Call or go online for details about Special Packages and Events. Golfers are welcome to play High Hampton’s George Cobb designed course. Call the Pro Shop at 828-743-2450 for details. High Hampton’s dining room is open for visitors staying in the area. Reservations are recommended.

FOR MORE INFORMATION & RESERVATIONS:

800.334.2551 ■ 828.743.2411 1525 Hwy. 107 S. ■ Cashiers, NC

www.HighHamptonInn.com 1805-36

WWW.SMLIV.COM

75

Farm to Mug From persimmons and paw-paws to sea salt and spice bush twigs, Fonta Flora infuses its brews with Carolina-grown ingredients.

Fonta Flora’s Todd Boera has a talent and passion for brewing craft beer with locally-harvested and wild foraged ingredients.

BETH PATTON PHOTO

76

SMOKY MOUNTAIN LIVING VOLUME 17 • ISSUE 2

T

odd Boera takes the craft of craft beer seriously.

Every batch of Fonta Flora beer he brews in Morganton, North Carolina, starts with a journey through the seasonallandscape of Appalachia.

Whether he’s scavenging the countryside in search of honeysuckle and dandelion, scouring mom-and-pop farms for fennel and carrots, or tracking down local honey and sorghum cane juice, Boera is on the cutting edge of the farm-tomug movement.

Sourcing local ingredients is labor intensive, however, and Boera is often torn between the role of brewer and purveyor.

“If there’s things to be done, I don’t have four hours to go wandering around the woods hoping I run into some spice bush twigs,” Boera says.

But the time spent on farms and in forests is the source of his creative roots as a craft brewer.

“Finding paw-paws in the woods is one of the most joyful things,” Boera said.

Building relationships with local growers is critical to Fonta Flora’s brewing philosophy: A fusion of his ingredients and the beer.

“It is becoming a competitive scene with a lot of breweries wanting to get their hands on these ingredients now,” Boera said.

But Boera is more than just a buyer, he’s forged lasting friendships with farmers.

“It ends up being a pretty social thing.

Of course, it is really incredible making these connections with people, but by putting in that time my hope, at the end of the day, is they are going to think of me first when it comes time to harvest,” Boera said.

Take the heritage corn variety known as Bloody Butcher, so called for its burgundy colored kernels. Grown by Fox Farms in Burnsville, North Carolina, the corn variety has exploded in popularity as an Appalachian novelty and is the namesake behind Fonta Flora’s signature Bloody Butcher Appalachian Grisette.

“It is hard to come by. There was nobody else growing it, and you can’t just go

find it in the fall,” Boera says.

The locally-sourced mantra limits what beers Fonta Flora can brew year-round, but it’s a handicap Boera embraces.

“You have a quite an intimate connection with the ingredients you are using, rather than opening up a jar of raspberry puree from Oregon,” Boera says. “It truly does mean beers that honestly represent the seasons in Western North Carolina and the bounty it provides.”

Boera wasn’t sure, off the top of his head, exactly how many Fonta Flora brews he’s created since opening their doors 3 years ago.

“Gosh, at least 100,” Boera said.

With that many brews, some had to be busts. But Boera says he’s never retired a recipe.

“It’s sort of like being a good cook in a way. You either get it or don’t,” Boera says.

“I’m more of the cook who can look at a spice rack and just feel how much of what is going to go in.”

When brewing a new beer, he writes down what he’s doing as he does it, “so I can have some repeatability when I go to make this beer again,” he says.

Fonta Flora’s unusual ingredients aren’t always detectable in a blind taste-test.

“We just came out with a beer with chanterelle mushrooms, but a lot of people don’t know what a chanterelle mushroom is going to taste like,” Boera says.

“There’s others that are far more blatant, like the beet saison. If you hate beets, you aren’t going to like it.”

Often, the ingredients are the driving force for a new brews, like the eureka discovery of a farmer growing kiwis, a rare crop to find in the mountains. Boera bought the farmer’s entire harvest — 500 pounds of kiwi — and created Vestige Bloom Appalachian Wild Ale. “There are certain ingredients I desperately want to work with so I try very hard, and there’s others I feel like I have to work with in a way,” Boera said.

Fruit tops the list of obligatory ingredients.

“Fruit season is pretty insane for us,” Boera says. “The season starts with strawberries and it doesn’t really stop from there. Raspberries, blueberries blackberries, black raspberries, elderberries persimmons, peaches, apples — you name it.

Really every fruit that is out there.”

Boera spent $30,000 on fruit alone last year. Fonta Flora’s overhead for ingredients is unusually high for a small homegrown brewery.

“It is frightfully more expensive on every level,” said David Bennett, one of the co-

WWW.SMLIV.COM

owners. “Our cost per ingredient is very high.”

Buying a pick-up truck of sweet potatoes from a family farm costs more than a tractor-trailer dropping off pallets from a mega factory farm.

“We are buying on a very micro level from local farms with small production. In many cases we are their largest customer,” Bennett said.

Fonta Flora collaborates regularly with the local craft food industry.

Boera came up with the Sal De Gusano stout specifically to showcase cacao nibs from French Broad Chocolates in nearby Asheville, North Carolina, finished with sea salt from the Outer Banks.

Boera launched an entire series of oldworld kvass style beers brewed in collaboration with local bakeries, using bread in the fermentation process. There’s Smoke Signal Kvass made with Carolina-grown wheat bread from Smoke Signal bakery in Marshall, North Carolina, or the Underground made with rye pretzels from the Underground Bakery in Hendersonville, North Carolina.

Boera discovered his love for both brewing and farming as a student at Warren Wilson College in Black Mountain, North Carolina. Boera fulfilled his campus work duty by toiling in the communal garden. Meanwhile, he’d begun dappling in home brewing, and soon put two-andtwo together.

He planted hops and barley in the college garden to experiment with homegrown ingredients in his homebrew, but soon found himself eyeing the other crops, like pumpkins, and wondering how he could work those in as well.

Before launching Fonta Flora with three other business partners in 2013, Boera worked as a brewer at Catawba Brewing Co. where he began experimenting with local ingredients.

“I didn’t quite see how big the connection could be yet,” Boera says. “But when it was me calling the shots, I was like, I can make this work. The ingredients cost more money, are harder to find and take a lot more work, but it is truly feasible to do.”

A novelty of Fonta Flora beers is the ingredient list on the bottle. Brewers aren’t required to list their ingredients, and few actually do. But for Fonta Flora, why not?

It’s their bragging right, after all.

“The majority of the beers we bottle are predominantly brewed with locallysourced ingredients,” Boera said. “Putting it on the bottle is the final stamp of ‘Here’s the ingredients we used to make this beer.’”

77

taproom will remain the hub for recipe innovation. It’s got a strong local following, a willing and loyal bunch who never shirk their duty as tasters for the latest brews.

Fonta Flora is an anchor in Morganton’s downtown scene, and that’s an important role to Bennett.

“It is a cornerstone of who we are,” says Bennett.

Bennett and his brother, Mark, also a coowner of the brewery, grew up in Morganton, and value their role in its downtown revival.

“We are very closely tied to the downtown community and everything that is going on there,” says Bennett. Morganton’s downtown was already on the upswing when Fonta Flora opened in late 2013, but like any craft-brewery worth its hops, it boosted the vibrancy factor.

But it’s also a destination in its own right.

“Our brewery brings in a lot of out-of-town visitors strictly to come see us,” Bennett said.

Back from the dead BURIAL BEER CO. TO RESTORE THE LEGACY OF FORMER CCC CAMP AS DESTINATION BREWERY

J

ess Reiser sidled up to the stoop of a rustic, clapboard building, riffled through a key ring and opened a door to history.

“It has a lot of soul and character,” Reiser says, her eyes drifting upward to the giant lag bolts and sturdy, hand-hewn beams buttressing the story above.

For decades, this historic Civilian Conservation Corps camp has been hidden in plain sight. It’s spitting distance from the hustle-and-bustle of the posh Biltmore Village district of Asheville, North Carolina, yet worlds away from the throngs of tourists strolling the boutique shops and upscale restaurants.

Burial Beer Co. has a vision to revive the legacy of this forgotten historic site as a destination brewery.

“An opportunity to bring back something that was important to this area once upon a time, that just really fits with our brand,” says Reiser, co-owner of Burial Beer Co. “It’s a tribute to something that once was.”

Legions of men were based at the CCC camp while building the Blue Ridge Parkway in the 1930s. They lived in dorms, ate in a mess hall, and were trucked back-and-forth daily to the parkway grade, where they toiled by hand to cut the scenic motor road through the remote and rugged mountains above Asheville.

“This property pretty much went dormant,” Reiser says. “It was abandon and over-grown.”

78

The repurposed buildings on the two-acre site will not only house brewing operations, but also a two-story craft beer bar and standalone restaurant.

At its heart, however, the CCC camp restoration project is driven by the raw need for more space. Maxed out at its downtown tap room, the Burial team was eager to expand its production capacity.

The old CCC camp sits on two-acres, with a sprawling collection of buildings. One seems to be an old dorm. One was some sort of machinery shed. Another was a sign shop where the Parkway’s first signs were made.

But much is left to conjecture.

“Doing everything ourselves from brewing to running the tap room, that gave us a foundation of getting to know our patrons. We have regulars, which I feel like is a dying breed. It is a place people come and feel like they belong.”

— Jess Reiser

“We don’t know the full history of each building,” Reiser explains.

The important thing now is what each building could be retrofitted for. Aside from the bar, restaurant and brewing operations, site schematics had to accommodate a warehouse for finished kegs and cans awaiting shipment and a storehouse for grain and raw ingredients.

With Burial’s large, new brewing system now humming full tilt, the focus has now shifted to the build-out of the accessory buildings. It’s been an all-hands-on-deck affair. The team has left their comfort zone of fermenting tanks and hoses and taken up circular saws and nail guns.

“Burial is so bricks and mortar that every employee has literally helped build it,” says Erin Jones, Burial’s marketing director. “The brewers have been able to build their own space. So it forged a real connection to what we’re creating.”

Doubling as brewers and construction workers has been taxing, but the team has SMOKY MOUNTAIN LIVING VOLUME 17 • ISSUE 2

grown closer to each other, as well as the brewery’s mission.

Despite being dormant for decades, the hodge-podge of buildings scattered across the two-acre site were in surprisingly good shape.

The buildings have good bones, both structurally and aesthetically.

The rustic beams, hewn plank siding and gnarled wooden floor-boards were prized assets to be showcased.

While the property has been vacant, it has had a caretaker. A local church bought the site from the U.S. Forest Service in the 1990s in hopes of renovating it for a retreat center. It never came to be, but the church kept the buildings stable and in good repair over the decades, before eventually selling to Burial last year.

The climb from upstart to self-actualized has happened quickly for Burial, but it wasn’t happenstance. Since tapping their first batch four years ago, the Burial team has worked toward the vision now coming to fruition.

“We always planned to expand but our goal was to grow organically and get to this size eventually,” Reiser says.

This isn’t Burial’s first growth-spurt. Ask the brewers about their expansion, and they’ll clarify first before answering: expansion I or expansion II? It’s not the first revitalization under Burial’s belt either. Breweries ignited the renaissance of Asheville’s South Slope over the past few years. But the downtown fringe district was still tagged with “up-and-coming” status when Burial opened its tap room there in 2013.

Burial’s non-descript downtown brewery, housed in an industrial-chic former HVAC repair shop, was an easy retrofit for their humble brewing equipment.

“We opened for less than what my wedding cost,” Reiser recalls.

At first, Burial was just another small-batch start-up in the crowded Asheville beer landscape. But it’s following soon outpaced its capacity. Burial only had enough beer to be open three days a week.

By the end of their first year, Burial was already eyeing an expansion, and soon grew from its one barrel system to 10. It finally had enough beer to can, and for bars and restaurants to have on tap.

Expansion II has been a far greater undertaking. From the dedicated 20-barrel production facility to extensive renovations of the rambling historic buildings, Burial gambled that the demand for their beer would justify the investment.

“If it were free and easy then everybody would do it,” Reiser says.

2017 Spring

WilD

flower Pilgrimage A FIVE-DAY EXPLORATION OF PLANT AND ANIMAL LIFE IN THE SMOKIES April 11-15, 2017 W.L. MILLS CONFERENCE CENTER GATLINBURG, TENNESSEE

GATLINBURG, TENNESSEE

Choose from 144 guided walks and indoor talks led by 110 professional leaders!

Learn about wildflowers, birds, bears, medicinal plants, butterflies, ecology, plant identification, nature photography and sketching, natural and cultural history and more in the Smokies.

For detail go to: springwildflowerpilgrimage.org Email Springwildflowerpilgrimage@gmail.com to receive email updates WWW.SMLIV.COM

79

Since cranking up their new production system, Burial hasn’t had to shop around for distributors willing to stock their beer. They’ve been lucky to have a wait list, Reiser said.

“A lot of our relationships with retailers is built on something much purer than ‘I have product, take it from me, I need to sell it,’” Reiser says. “Opening small and growing from that size allowed us to form a lot of relationships.”

Reiser’s business partners and co-owners include her husband, Doug, and head brewer Tim Gormley. They moved to Asheville from Seattle a few years ago with the goal of starting a brewery. The chose Asheville intentionally for its sense of community “Starting so small, we are very communitybased. Doing everything ourselves from brewing to running the tap room, that gave us

a foundation of getting to know our patrons,” Reiser says. “We have regulars, which I feel like is a dying breed. It is a place people come and feel like they belong. It is a much bigger thing than just a brewery.”

Ask craft beer connoisseurs what brew Burial is known for, they’ll be hard pressed to pinpoint a single signature beer. There are some favorites — Skillet Donut Stout and Bolo Coconut Brown Ale come to mind. But Burial doesn’t churn out the tried-and-true brews at the expense of experimentation.

“We don’t have any dedicated beers,” Reiser said. “We are always what rotating brands and circling back to them.”

It’s a conscious decision to stay inventive.

“With a production brewery, you can get pigeon-holed into brewing three or four beers,” Reiser says. “We could easily sell

Skillet 365 days a year, but we decide that wasn’t what drives our passion. At least once a month we will be brewing a brand new beer here.”

During a canning day in late winter, an army of shiny cans shuffled along conveyor belts overhead. Stacked and cinched into sixpack rings, they slid down a stainless steel shoot.

True to the all-hands-on-deck mantra among the Burial team, marketing director Erin Jones threw back her scarf and pushed up her sleeves. Grabbing a spare rag, she jumped onto the assembly line and scooped up six-packs to wipe down before they went onto cardboard flats.

“We have brands that are our tried-andtrue favorites, but we still like to play and experiment,” Jones says.

The new production brewery operation of Burial Bear Co. is running at full-tilt as its new location — a historic CCC camp that once housed workers building the Blue Ridge Parkway outside Asheville, N.C. BECKY JOHNSON PHOTO

Burial Beer Co. owners Tim Gormley and Jess and Doug Reiser.

80

SMOKY MOUNTAIN LIVING VOLUME 17 • ISSUE 2

Laying tracks YEE-HAW BREWING TURNS ABANDON RAILROAD DEPOT INTO FLAGSHIP FOR JOHNSON CITY

Y

ee-Haw Brewing has a unique origin story for a microbrewery.

It doesn’t start with a garage homebrew experiment, nor a drunken bet over a game of cards.

No, Yee-Haw has far tamer roots. It started with a bike ride to preschool.

“I would ride my bike down through town to take my children to preschool in the morning and pass the old train depots,” says Joe Baker, the founder of Yee-Haw Brewing in Johnson City, Tennessee. “It was just sad to me that these beautiful old train depots were just sitting there in disrepair. For a million reasons, it was calling to us to renovate them and create something special.”

Johnson City is anchored by two historic train depots. They were the hub of commerce and travel in their heyday, and the development of Johnson City hinged on them.

When they were shuttered and abandon, downtown slipped into an era of long, slow decline — a fate shared by so many downtowns across America.

Luckily, Johnson City had Baker in its corner.

“They were both distressed and in such disrepair they would have been lost if something hadn’t been done,” Baker recalls. “This spectacular corridor of Johnson City was once bookmarked by these beautiful old train depots. It didn’t make sense to me, especially for a town like Johnson City that was built on the rails.”

So Baker bought them. He tackled the Clinchfield Railroad Depot first, renovating it to house the signature Southern diner Tupelo Honey Café, a regional chain with Asheville, North Carolina, roots. It became a formidable draw and a boon to downtown, but Baker was nagged by the feeling the job was only half done.

“Why didn’t we renovate both of them?” Baker says.

So he scooped up the old Tweestie depot next, and the vision for Yee-Haw brewery crystalized.

“We bought it with the specific intent of rehabilitating the building and bringing it back to life,” Baker says.

WWW.SMLIV.COM

81

“It’s a demonstration to our commitment to building communities rather than a place that just makes and sells beer.”

The Tweetsie depot closed in the mid-20th century, but was occupied for the next 50 years by Free Service tire and auto shop. The railroad leased the property all those decades, and this is where Baker played another historic role: Negotiating a sale.

“It took some convincing to get them to sell it,” Baker says. “But I think they saw the value of preserving the historic element.”

No doubt a bargaining chip in Baker’s corner, the railroad depot was on its last leg.

“It was in total disrepair. Water was flowing freely through the roof into the building,” Baker recalls.

Renovating the 1891 depot would ultimately be a multi-million dollar project with lots of heavy lifting. Aside from housing the massive brewing equipment, it would need a bar and taproom, plus a commercial kitchen and restaurant — a spot ultimately claimed by the famed White Duck Taco of Asheville origins.

But Baker wanted to be compassionate toward the original structure, despite the added cost.

“If you look at the walls and the roof lines and the rafters, it took a lot of work to

refurbish the roof system as it is, but the beams and the trusses that are in the building are the original materials that built that depot,” Baker says.

While Baker had some business ventures under his belt — most notably the start-up Ole Smoky Moonshine and Whiskey Distillery in Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge, Tennessee — he was an attorney by trade.

Meanwhile his wife was in medical school at East Tennessee State University. With three small children to boot, their lives were clearly full, but they went for it. Baker credits his wife as a business partner, supporting the endeavors every step of the way as his rock and his sounding board.

LEAP OF FAITH When Yee-Haw opened in summer 2015, it was a magnet for downtown. Foot traffic increased, not only among locals on a business lunch or night out, but travelers who gave Johnson City a second-look as a destination and, of course, craft beer connoisseurs.

“As our brand and distribution has grown.

There are folks coming from Chattanooga and Knoxville and Asheville to see the brewery and what Yee-Haw is doing,” Baker said. “You’ve got another crowd of people

coming to experience the town, and it creates that snowball effect.”

But Baker, a humble guy by nature, claims he was just a piece of the puzzle in downtown’s revitalization.

“When we started these projects we really hoped to be a catalyst for improving and growing the community. I am proud that we could be a part of that. We certainly can’t take credit for more than our little part of it,” Baker says.

City leaders were actively pursuing downtown revitalization as well, setting the stage for redevelopment with public projects.

“The city at that point was serious about improving the parks and public spaces downtown, and with that kind of added infrastructure it made successful development more achievable,” Baker says. “This was probably the best example of creating good synergy between private and public investment, and a real win-win for the residents of Johnson City and the businesses.

It has all come together just at the right time.”

Still, Yee-Haw, like any entrepreneurial venture, was a leap of faith.

There was risk that revitalization was going to take in downtown Johnson City. There was risk that the old train depot would be a remodeling nightmare, full of hidden faults.

Perhaps the most risky move: Launching

Yee-Haw’s head brewer Brandon Greenwood.

Yee-Haw Brewery played an important role in the revitalization of downtown Johnson City by saving the abandon historic train depot — which had served as an auto shop for five decades.

Yee-Haw’s head brewer Brandon Greenwood (left) and owner Joe Baker weren’t messing around when they decided to start a brewery, building a state-of-the-art, large-capacity brewing system out of the gate.

Full-Steam Ahead Yee-Haw Brewing takes craft beer scene head on

I

f you shout Yeeee-Haaaaaw, will a beer magically appear in front of you?

That’s one of the frequently asked questions posed on Yee-Haw’s FAQ page.

While the jury’s still out, the chances are getting better every day, courtesy of YeeHaw’s ever-expanding distribution footprint.

Yee-Haw has defied the typical trajectory of a mountain microbrewery.

Yee-Haw came out big when it opened its brewery in Johnson City, Tennessee, in the summer of 2014. It essentially skipped the start-up stage, and hasn’t let up since.

“We may be a new brewery but we are not new to the game,” say Jeremy Walker, Yee-Haw’s sales and marketing director.

“We knew what we needed to do, when, where, and how — and we went and did it.

Not that it was easy.”

Most craft breweries open with an inhouse brewing capacity just big enough for their own bar patrons. If, and when, the brewery proves its mettle with a local following, it expands a few barrels at a time to tap larger markets.

Not Yee-Haw. It built a production-scale brewery out of the gate. Within 6 months of opening, Yee-Haw was knighted as the Official Craft Beer of the Bristol Motor Speedway.

Not even 2 years old, Yee-Haw beer is sold at hundreds of locations from Chattanooga to Nashville and upward into southwest Virginia.

“We took off a little faster than expected. And you hold on and keep work-

84

ing and that’s what we did,” Walker says.

That kind of success took more than a cool name. It took good beer, and that’s where Yee-Haw’s head brewer Brandon Greenwood comes in.

Yee-Haw isn’t Greenwood’s first rodeo by a long shot. He’s been a brewer for a quarter century, with five breweries on his resume before Yee-Haw. He’s done it all, from head brewer to setting up new facilities, including the retrofit of a 300,000-square-foot steel factory in Chicago into a Lagunitas brewing facility.

Yee-Haw, at just 10,000-square-feet, is his smallest foray by far, but offered just what he was looking for: A ticket out of the corporate beer world and creative license to create something of his own.

“The idea of building a brewery and hiring the team and developing the products was a big factor to join this project. It allowed me to put into play everything I had been learning over the past 20 years,” Greenwood said. Plus, it got him out of Chicago and into the mountains.

Greenwood credits the vision of YeeHaw’s founder and primary investor, Joe Baker, for giving his team on the ground free rein.

“Joe trusts my experience and background. He gave me carte blanche to build a world-class, state-of-the-art brewery,” Greenwood says.

Baker ensured the brewery was wellcapitalized, hired top people, and turned them loose.

“We absolutely cut no corners,” Walker says. “We were fortunate enough to have the tools at our disposal to come out swinging and we did.”

SMOKY MOUNTAIN LIVING VOLUME 17 • ISSUE 2

Greenwood’s philosophy as a brewer is simple, literally.

“Keep it simple. That is my overarching principle,” Greenwood says. “Beer shouldn’t have such a complex pallet that people are confused by it.”

Some craft beers come with a white paper describing their brewing formula and ingredients. But Yee-Haw prides itself on being “user-friendly.”

“We joke that our beer is made for drinking, not thinking,” Walker says.

Don’t be fooled, though. A biology major and chemistry minor, Greenwood has it dialed in.

Yee-Haw’s lab has all the same equipment as Sierra Nevada or New Belgium.

“Every batch of beer, every bottle and every keg will have been tested 36 times before it’s released. So we are intimately familiar with our products,” Greenwood says.

The expertise Greenwood brought to the brewing side, Walker brought to the distribution side. His official job title is the “director of exponential mayhem,” but he’s also known as the sales and marketing director.

Like Greenwood, Walker had an impressive resume, from managing distribution territories for New Belgium out West to overseeing the East Tennessee territory for Eagle Distributing.

Walker admits the beer business is “incredibly competitive,” but it pales in comparison to Yee-Haw’s in-house beard competition.

“We’re just having fun,” Walker said. “It isn’t everyday you get paid to go to bars and talk about beer for a living.”

the brewery with a 30-barrel brewing system. It’s far bigger than your typical craft brewery start-up. But Baker banked on Yee-Haw making it big.

“We entered into it with some degree of risk that we would not get our investment back. It is a difficult business. The beer industry is not easy,” Baker said.

“But with the right group of people we have created a product that’s been warmly embraced.”

Leading that right group of people is Brandon Greenwood, Yee-Haw’s head brewer. He was undaunted by the go-big-or-go-home approach.

“We built the brewery out right out the gate to do its maximum capacity,” Greenwood says.

As for that leap of faith?

“Truthfully, I was never really worried about it,” Greenwood says.

Nor was Jeremy Walker, YeeHaw’s sales and distribution guru.

“I’m good at what I do so I wasn’t worried about it. Plan your work and work your plan,” Walker says.

Yee-Haw has 30 employees between the taproom, brewery production and business operations. And that’s the biggest reward for Baker.

“Some of the great benefits of entrepreneurship come not from the profits we create but the opportunities we create for other people,” Baker says. “Absolutely we are in business to create revenue and generate a profit, but the success is measured on a lot of different levels.”

Walker is prone to pontifications of his own, and likes to remind people that America’s founding fathers met in a bar to launch a country.

“From a philosophical sense the one thing people do all around the world is to sit down and share a beer.

It is a corner stone of our society. I just love beer.”

But Yee-Haw’s legacy will be remembered in Johnson City for generations — not just for its beer, but as the savior of the old depot and a force for downtown revival “I think it represents the craft element of our brand,” Baker said.

“You look at the building and see the commitment we made. That’s a representation of who we are as a brand and a business.”

3rd Saturday in May

4th Saturday in September

4th Saturday in September YadkinValley.org 336-526-1111

Follow us on Facebook for more info on upcoming events WWW.SMLIV.COM

85

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

Waynesville, N.C. 828.926.1575 • boydmountain.com FOLKESTONE INN Originally a 1920s mountain farmhouse, Folkestone Inn has been a B&B for over 30 years. The Chef/Owner Innkeepers have created a comfortable atmosphere—from front porches looking toward the mountains, to snacks and bountiful breakfasts. Before you know it, you’ll find that carefree Smoky Mountains state of mind. While Bryson City is quiet and relatively uncommercial, it offers a wealth of activities, all just minutes from the Folkestone Inn. 101 Folkestone Rd. • Bryson City, N.C. 828.488.2730 • 888.812.3385 • folkestoneinn.com GLEN-ELLA SPRINGS INN & RESTAURANT 16 distinctive guest rooms, rocking chair porches, amazing gardens and award winning dining provides the ideal setting for the discriminating traveler.

Clarkesville, Ga. 706.754.7295 • www.glenella.com HEMLOCK INN This historic inn, set just off Main Street in downtown Blowing Rock, is only steps from shopping, restaurants and event activities. Eighteen unique rooms, including suites with fully-equipped kitchens. All rooms are non-smoking. Rooms feature private baths, cable TV, air conditioning, phone services, microwave ovens, refrigerators and WiFi. Take advantage of a variety of packages offered throughout the year.

Downtown Blowing Rock, N.C. 828.295.7987 • hemlockinn.net SMOKETREE LODGE Smoketree’s cozy atmosphere and prime location gives visitors the choice of enjoying the peace and solitude of the Blue Ridge Mountains or the opportunity to partake in many activities available in the High Country.

11914 NC Hwy. 105 S. • Banner Elk, N.C. 800.422.1880 • smoketree-lodge.com THE SWAG COUNTRY INN Chosen by readers of Conde Nast Traveler magazine as the #2 Best Small Hotel in the Unites States, the secluded hideaway itself consists of 250 private acres. The main lodge and cabins, consisting of 15 rooms, are built of 17th and 18th century hand hewn logs and local field stone. For 33 years, visitors have been able to experience just how remote, rustic, refined and remarkable it can be at 5,000 feet. Three gourmet meals are served daily, with turn down service each evening.

Waynesville, N.C. 800.789.7672 • theswag.com THE WAYNESVILLE INN GOLF RESORT & SPA This resort has been welcoming visitors to the mountains with southern hospitality since the 1920s. Amenities include historic and mountain view lodging, 27 holes of championship golf, restaurant and tavern, plus outdoor event space and pro shop.

Convenient location provides easy access to shopping, skiing, fishing, hiking and more.

176 Country Club Dr. • Waynesville, N.C. 800.627.6250 • thewaynesvilleinn.com 86

SMOKY MOUNTAIN LIVING VOLUME 17 • ISSUE 2

14 luxurious accommodations.

World-class hiking and fine dining.

Outstanding service.

Book now.

TheSwag.com • Waynesville, NC • 800.789.7672

looking for a

THEY ARE

FAMILY. Folkestone Inn

A Smoky Mountain Getaway 1805-61

Foster and adoptive families are needed every day for children who can no longer remain in their homes. You can help us provide a for-now home or a forever family for a child in need.

Just one mile from Downtown Waynesville and 5 miles from the Blue Ridge Parkway, The Waynesville Inn is the ideal home base for everything from shopping to hiking, skiing and viewing elk in the Smokies.

Casual Charm with Modern Amenities Bountiful Gourmet Breakfasts Minutes to Hiking and Outdoor Recreation A Perfect Event Venue for Weddings, Reunions, Parties & Meetings

Amenities: • On-site Restaurant and Bar • Full Hot Breakfast with Stay • 27-Hole Golf Course & Pro Shop • Seasonal Outdoor Pool • Wedding and Event Venues

Chef-Owned & Operated

800.627.6250 | TheWaynesvilleInn.com

101 Folkestone Rd. Bryson City, N.C.

CROSSNORE h

school & children’s home

For more information, contact Adam Gamache at 336-721-7600 or agamache@crossnore.org.

176 COUNTRY CLUB DR. | WAYNESVILLE, N.C.

888-812-3385 · folkestoneinn.com

1805-52

Smoketree Lodge HISTORIC...RUSTIC...REFINED Our inspiring environment, outstanding food and exceptional upscale country setting.

11914 Hwy. 105 S. Banner Elk NC 28604 706-754-7295 • www.glenella.com

Restaurant open most evenings. Reservations recommended.

WWW.SMLIV.COM

828-963-6505 Smoketree-Lodge.com Managed by Vacation Resorts International 87

STORIES Community

Never Drive a Nail In a Tree

BY MICHAEL RENO HARRELL

T

hat spring the late afternoon thunderstorms had become such a regular occurrence that Eddie and I knew the minute those fast moving black clouds made the sun blink the first time that we needed to head for the house.

We each had saved a nickel from a quarter allowance with which we had each bought a pack of Black Cat firecrackers. We were in the woods behind the house reenacting the battle of Iwo Jima with a platoon of little green plastic soldiers when we heard that telltale distant rumble. Matches and ordnance were quickly gathered and limbless synthetic warriors were crammed into blue jeans as we raced the first spatters home.

Mama was standing on the back stoop holding the screen door open with one hand and waving us on with the other as we sprinted the last two dozen yards across the new grass and into the kitchen with the rain ripping through the trees on our heels like a man-eating tiger after a couple of Sri Lankan woodcutters. We slid to a squeaking stop on the linoleum as the crack of the screen door slamming was drowned out by the explosion of lightning striking some poor old maple down by the creek.

Eddie and I went directly into our bedroom to triage our wounded troops. The rain on the roof sounded like the Soco Mountain Cloggers as we knelt there beside our twin beds examining the Black Cat mangled horde of GI’s laid out before us. We were determining which of our troops might live to fight another day when what sounded like a 500-hundred pounder loosed from an enemy bomber shook our house. The instantaneous clap of thunder was as deafening as the grand finale at the annual Cherokee Park Fourth of July fireworks extravaganza.

Ears still ringing, I felt an odd allover tingle and the next moment I was looking down at two red horizontal burn marks running across my shirtless stomach. They were exactly the same distance apart as the top and bottom wires of the bedsprings that I had been leaning against.

We heard a thump and ran into the kitchen to find Mama lying on the floor, a dishrag in one hand and the handle of a two-quart saucepan in the other. Knowing full well that she was dead, Eddie and I began to scream, at which point Mama’s eyes fluttered open and she looked at the two of us as if we were three headed trolls.

Then she slowly sat up, gazing in wonder at the pot handle in her hand. The pot itself was lying nearby along with the screw and lock washer that had until only moments ago held the assemblage to-

88

gether. The two of us helped Mama to her feet and into a kitchen chair. That’s when we discovered that the green Formica, which had once been the table top, was now just a wavy sheet of plastic perched atop the particle board to which it had until very recently been glued.

Mama slowly shook her head, laid the pot handle on the Formica and said, “I saw that bolt of lightening hit the tree in the backyard.

I swear it hit dead center of the nail that the thermometer was hanging on. At that same instant I saw a blue flame whizz along the aluminum trim around the countertop and disappear into the oven.”

Eddie walked over to the back door and looked outside. He spun around and yelped, “Holy June bugs!”

I jumped to my feet and ran to see what out there in the back yard could elicit such language.

There was a strip of bark about a foot wide missing from the point where the nail, which had held the thermometer, had been extending down to the ground at the base of the old oak. The soil of the yard along the path of a large root was ripped up as if a John Deere had drug a plow from the tree to the back steps. The back steps had been constructed of bricks. Those bricks were scattered around the backyard as if someone had dumped them out of a helicopter.

MANDY NEWHAM-COBB ILLUSTRATION

The clock on the stove read 4:43 until I was a senior in high school, when it suddenly started up again and ran fine ever after.

The water heater and oven elements had to be replaced and the toaster only toasted bread on one side. And every wall outlet cover in the house shattered. We found pieces of the plastic embedded like shrapnel in the sheetrock walls of the hallway and bathroom.

From that day till this I can’t hear thunder without getting the urge to drag a mattress into the hallway and cowering under it. But, nowhere near an electrical outlet.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Michael Reno Harrell travels across America singing his self-penned songs and telling stories about life in the Southern Appalachians. He makes his home in Burke County, North Carolina.

SMOKY MOUNTAIN LIVING VOLUME 17 • ISSUE 2

Large Acreage Homesites from the 70â&#x20AC;&#x2122;s

Brand New Home and Cottage Inventory!

Take an Open House Tour Today!

866-370-5242

www.DiscoverChinquapin.com