Judge Felix E. Alley (1873-1957) was a native of Whiteside Cove, near Cashiers and Highlands. During most of his legal career as an attorney and superior court judge, he resided in Waynesville and served, on occasion, as the attorney for Swain and other counties. He was the author of Random Thoughts and the Musings of a Mountaineer (1941). 

“Eagles, as they still do, lived on the creek. One day in the 1890s, an eagle dropped a piglet into the yard of Orville Welch, who was living on Ecoah Branch on Eagle Creek. He kept this strange gift from the heavens, not knowing  where the eagle had gotten it, and it grew into a fine hog.”

— Duane Oliver, Hazel Creek from Then Till Now

For years I’ve been enjoying and sometimes writing about a group of old-time Western North Carolina storytellers I think of collectively as “The Mountain Humorists.” These weren’t professional storytellers in the sense that they made formal appearances for pay or aspired to produce books. They were individuals located in various counties during the late 19th and early 20th centuries who could be counted upon to tickle their neighbors’ funny bones on a regular basis with either tall tales or humorous observations. 

John Baker (Little John) Cable Jr. is one of the prominent figures in Horace Kephart’s Our Southern Highlanders (1913; revised and expanded in 1922). He steals the show in Chapter 4 (“A Bear Hunt in the Smokies”), which most everybody — including those who don’t care much for other parts of the book — agrees is a fine piece of writing.

When I was a boy growing up in south-central Virginia during the early 1950s, my home was situated near a wooded area, one side of which was traversed by a narrow dirt road beyond which there was a natural spring.

Let’s talk some sports radio. I began thinking about this piece the afternoon before the Super Bowl. The Panthers were out of it … but I still listened. I’d listen to the play-by-play of a ping-pong match, so long as it’s broadcast on the radio. 

Some musings on the New Year, from one who never cared much for noisy midnight celebrations of any sort, but I have always enjoyed New Year’s ceremonials. 

The walnut family is relatively small, but it contains some of the more interesting and valuable tree species found in Western North Carolina. In WNC there are only two genera, the walnuts (Juglans) and the hickories (Carya).

“Two or more Families join together in building a hot-house, about 30 feet Diameter, and 15 feet high, in form of a Cone, with Poles and thatched, without any air-hole, except a small door about 3 feet high and 18 Inches wide. In the Center of the hot-house they burn fire of well-seasoned dry-wood; round the inside are bedsteads sized to the studs, which support the middle of each post; these Houses they resort to with their children in the Winter Nights.”

Some steam and water-powered sawmills were established in the Smokies region during the 1870s and 1880s. But full-fledged industrialized logging didn’t commence until after the construction of the major railroads was finalized in the 1890s. This opened the region for profitable use by big time interests like Champion Fiber Company, Ritter Lumber Company, and others. These companies hired local men by the hundreds to fell, move, and process timber.

Jack Coburn was a regional entrepreneur who had come to the Smokies in the 1890s. Jack liked to laugh, drink, tell stories, and fight. He was an expert boxer. With an unlit cigar stub clinched between his teeth, Jack rode around on a horse named Button looking after his many interests and most everyone else’s, too. 

Some of my happiest times here in the Blue Ridge have been those hours spent locating grassy balds, gorges, sinkholes, boulderfields, wind forests, beech gaps, cove hardwoods, bogs, and the like. I have discovered that the things you truly find — those that mean the most in retrospect — are quite often not what you set out to discover in the first place.

It’s early October as I write this column. The first frost hasn’t, as yet, arrived. But it won’t be long coming.

I’ve never seen a timber wolf, even though they no doubt once roamed — from time to time — across the little valley west of Bryson City where I reside.

Elk have been reintroduced in the Smokies. Based upon the numerous reported sightings, it’s likely that a few cougars still reside in the Blue Ridge. One can easily imagine a scenario whereby wood bison might be reintroduced in Cades Cove. But I really can’t contemplate any scenario whereby timber wolves might be reintroduced.

I like visiting those sites here in the Smokies region where there is what I think of as an “overlay;” that is, places where both natural and human history commingle. At such places, one encounters the confluence of all or several of the major strands in the region’s natural and cultural fabric: wild areas, plants, and animals; early Cherokee and pioneer settlement influences; and the impacts of the modern era, initiated here primarily with the coming of the railroad in the late 19th century. At such places, the alert observer can experience what the French have defined as “frisson” — a moment of excitement and insight that arises when various forces coalesce.

Horace Kephart left the cabin site on the Little Fork in the fall of 1907, spending considerable time in other areas of the Southern Appalachians, comparing life there with what he had observed here in the mountains of Western North Carolina. Upon his return to the Smokies in 1910, the W.M. Ritter Lumber Company had commenced operations on Hazel Creek. Not wanting to live among that sort of activity, he moved into the Cooper House, an unpretentious boarding just off the town square in Bryson City.  He also rented a small office space over the old Bennett’s Drug Store just around the corner.  

A large yellow buckeye tree overhangs and supports the swinging gate that accesses our property. The tree has started to drop the unique fruiting structures for which it is named. Year around, it always has something interesting going on.

Some years ago, when I first became interested in plant identification, I became curious about liverworts. They are one of the distinctive plant groups (like fungi, lichens, mushrooms, etc.) without advanced vascular systems.

We are attracted to water. Mountain paths always wind down to water — springs, branches, creeks and rivers. Water is the essence of our very being here in the mountains.   

Deep Creek on the North Carolina side of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park probably has as much or more to offer in the way of recreational opportunities than any other watershed in the park.

This time of the year is perhaps the best time to enjoy flowering plants in a home garden. Many of the larger and showier species are just now coming into full bloom and will remain so into fall. 

Several evenings ago, I came home tired and sat on the deck with a glass of iced tea, and the dogs and I just watched the plants. That was sort of therapeutic. Every once in a while, it seems the perfect thing to do. Just sit down and watch the plants.

While perusing the shelves in a used bookstore recently, I spotted a title that was irresistible: From the Banks of the Oklawaha — Facts and Legends of the North Carolina Mountains. Pulling it out for further examination, I discovered that the book was the third and final volume in a series self-published between 1975 and 1979 by Frank L. FitzSimons of Henderson County.  

The yellow jackets are back. They inundated my home office this morning. First they gnawed through the ceiling from a nest site that allows access under the eaves. 

The whistle of the excursion train on the far side of the river shrieked three times. From where I sat in the graveyard on the knoll overlooking Bryson City, I could see tourists waving from their windows the way travelers never do when departing on a trip that’s really going somewhere. 

We are attracted to water. Mountain paths always wind down to water — springs, branches, creeks and rivers. Water is the essence of our very being here in the mountains.   

When I was a very young boy growing up in Virginia, there was a very old man in our neighborhood who was was eccentric. He almost never spoke to anyone, except to scold them in a cackling tone. He was said to be very wealthy but scarcely ever spent so much as a dime. What’s more, he was reputed to have built his own coffin in the work shed behind his house.  

I had my first introduction to the showy and curious hibiscus flowers when I was a boy. Rose-of-Sharon was a common where I grew up, just as it is here in Western North Carolina.

Note: Every July 4th from 1973 through 1990, I used to go in Bennett’s Drug Store here in Bryson City and order my yearly “banana split” … two scoops of strawberry ice cream on sliced bananas with chocolate syrup, whipped cream, and a maraschino cherry (or two) on top. One a year was enough. I still can’t walk by the old storefront without smelling the maraschino cherries. 

Perhaps you’re looking for a new site to visit this summer?  If so, consider making a visit to Black Rock State Mountain Park, which is situated in Rabun County, Ga., just off U.S. 441 several miles south of where Macon County adjoins Georgia. It’s about a half-hour drive from Franklin. The 1,500-acre park is the highest in the Georgia system of state parks and is one of the most interesting to visit. Named for the numerous dark granite outcrops, it stretches for more than three miles along the Eastern Continental Divide. 

A plant that always gets me to thinking with my stomach is common elderberry (Sambucus canadensis), which is just now coming into bloom along roadsides in the lower elevations throughout Western North Carolina. 

I wrote first by hand and then with a manual typewriter. Starting about 1990, I moved “up” to a Tandy writing machine generated by an IBM “Writing Assistant” program diskette that stored information on floppy discs. No hard drive. During the last decade of the 20th century (before I moved “up” again to a “real” computer), I generated a lot of floppy discs.