The irises my wife, Elizabeth, cultivates in our yard are coming into full bloom as I write this. Their shapes and colors and fragrances are almost too intricate to describe.

The name iris, meaning rainbow, was given to the group of flowers so-called because of their varied and subtle colors. Some also know them as “fleur-de-lis” (flower-of-Louis) because the crusader Louis VII selected an iris as his family emblem. And many also know them as “blue flags” for the obvious reason that the blue varieties seemingly hold forth their stately blooms like flags in a parade. By any name, the irises we encounter here in the southern mountains are among our most showy and interesting wildflowers.

To my knowledge, five iris species have been reported from the Smokies region: dwarf-crested iris (Iris cristata), slender blue flag (I. prismatica), yellow flag (I. pseudacorus), dwarf iris (I. verna), and southern blue flag (I. virginica). Northern blue flag — the largest of the blue-colored species (I. veriscolor) — grows wild only as far south as Virginia in the mountains.

Three of these species are commonly encountered. Dwarf-crested iris, which grows in rich woodlands, is no doubt the most common. The four-inch high plants literally carpet the ground in places from April into May, and can be observed flowering on into June in the higher elevations. Dwarf iris resembles dwarf- crested iris but is slightly taller, has a less conspicuous crest on its sepals and narrower leaves, and favors dry, rocky woodlands. My favorite species is southern blue flag, which grows about two feet high and displays a yellow blotch at the base of each sepal. It appears in marshes and along stream banks.

The next time you encounter an iris growing in the wild, take time to observe the plant closely. You’ll find that it has devised an ingenious floral architecture that virtually prohibits self-pollination, thereby insuring a more vigorous and robust population.

Bumblebees are the primary iris pollinators. They can land only on the outer tip of the horizontal sepals. The colorful lines, crests, or blotches on the inner part of the sepal are called “nectar guides.” They have the same purpose as the lights on an airplane runway; that is, they guide the insect toward the nectar located at the base of the flower.

To get there, a bumblebee must first push under the upturned female parts. If there is pollen on the insect’s back from another iris, it will be deposited on this stigma and the setting of fruit will occur via cross-fertilization. Once past the female part, a bumblebee must rub its back against the pollen-bearing male part before reaching the nectar source.

After feeding on iris nectar, bumblebees normally slip out of the side of the flower through special openings. But even if the insect exited the way it entered, its back won’t touched the upturned female part because of the way it’s tilted. But the stigma of the next iris it enters from the front will be dusted with the pollen on its back. Any opportunity for self-fertilization is virtually eliminated.

The wildflower colors and shapes and fragrances we seek out and admire for their aesthetic values are in every instance the result of long-term relationships with various pollinators: beetles, flies, bumblebees, hummingbirds, gnats, etc. The old adage that “form follows function” is nowhere more true. It follows that the more closely we observe the specific interrelationships wildflowers have with pollinators, the more fully we can appreciate floral architecture.

George Ellison wrote the biographical introductions for the reissues of two Appalachian classics: Horace Kephart’s Our Southern Highlanders and James Mooney’s History, Myths, and Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees. In June 2005, a selection of his Back Then columns was published by The History Press in Charleston as Mountain Passages: Natural and Cultural History of Western North Carolina and the Great Smoky Mountains. Readers can contact him at P.O. Box 1262, Bryson City, N.C., 28713, or at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

Is this going to be a bumper year for wild mushrooms? Maybe so, if the rainfall we have been experiencing in recent weeks continues to any significant extent into late summer and fall.

My wife, Elizabeth, and our youngest daughter, Quintin, went on a mushroom foray in Swain County this past Sunday. It was a Father’s Day event of sorts. I’m not sure how many fathers got to go (or wanted to go) mushrooming as a gift, but I did. And I thoroughly enjoyed myself.

It’s still very early in the mushroom season, which will peak from mid-August into early November. But we found mushrooms. One woodland area yielded perhaps 25 beautiful “Lactarius volemus” (one of various species in the “Lactarius” genus, all of which exude a white fluid when cut) that we call “milkys.” These are choice edibles.

Back in the late 1980s, Elizabeth and I took a Smoky Mountain Field School course conducted by Ron Peterson, then the mycologist at the University of Tennessee. This gave us the rudimentary skills required to make accurate identifications. There are about 15 species that we now confidently harvest for the table.

Anyone interested in the natural history of this region should be aware of the Smoky Mountain Field School, which is administered by the University Outreach & Continuing Education Department of the University of Tennessee. SMFS offers courses (usually one-day Saturday outings from late March into early November) on every natural history topic one could think of: orienteering, photography, edible and medicinal plants, wildflower and fern identification, fly fishing, salamanders, mosses and liverworts, geology, elk, bears, nature sketching, stream life, and much more.

A SMFS program listing is available online at: www.outreach.utk.edu/smoky. Or call 865.974.0150 to request a printed catalog.

S. Coleman McCleneghan will be instructing two courses this summer that she has designed for beginners interested in learning to identify “Edible and Poisonous Fungi.” One will be taught in the Great Smoky Mountains Nation Park on Saturday, Aug. 29, 9-4 p.m.; the other at Roan Mountain on Saturday, Oct. 3, 9-4 p.m. The fee is $49 per participant. Consult the sources cited above for additional information.

Elizabeth and I never consider ingesting any species that’s in a genus where poisonous species are found. Misidentifying a bird or a wildflower isn’t a big deal, but misidentifying a mushroom that you’re going to eat can be a really big deal.

When I was growing up in piedmont Virginia, my folks never made reference to “mushrooms”; instead, they invariably called them “toadstools” — a negative label that implied they were suspect and not to be fooled with any more than true toads were to be handled because they supposedly gave you warts.

But all of the earliest European settlers in North America (including my ancestors) had come to this continent with a long-standing tradition of harvesting and ingesting mushrooms. And they immediately began harvesting and ingesting North American species that resembled the ones they had been fond of in the Old World. Trouble was that not a few of these proved to be deadly “look-a-likes.”

That situation pretty much cured most of our early ancestors from fooling around with “toadstools.” On the west coasts of the United States and Canada, this “look-a-like” scenario continues to be replayed into this century as modern immigrants from Asia make deadly mistakes when they harvest and ingest species that closely resemble ones that had been choice edibles in their homelands.

Interesting from a cultural viewpoint is the fact that the Native American peoples of both North and South America brought with them to the New World a great tradition of harvesting and ingesting mushrooms which has been continued to this day. One supposes that they have done so by trial and error; that is, the Native Americans no doubt made deadly identification errors, as did the Europeans, but they apparently recorded those errors in their oral traditions and tended not to repeat them.

If you took a basketful of recently harvested mushrooms into a barbershop in Cherokee, a lively discussion as to their identification and where they were found would commence. The Cherokees have their own names for each species and they often know the exact type of habitat in which each was harvested.

“Armillariella mella” is known to the Cherokees as “slicks” and to whites as the “honey” mushroom. The Cherokees call them “slicks” because they “just slide right down your throat.” This is true. Once the cap of a “slick” is heated a little, it becomes viscous, like an oyster, and slides right down, one after the other.

The Cherokees have also traditionally collected “milkys,” “wishys” (apparently the species known to whites as “hen of the woods”), and others.

George Ellison wrote the biographical introductions for the reissues of two Appalachian classics: Horace Kephart’s Our Southern Highlanders and James Mooney’s History, Myths, and Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees. In June 2005, a selection of his Back Then columns was published by The History Press in Charleston as Mountain Passages: Natural and Cultural History of Western North Carolina and the Great Smoky Mountains. Readers can contact him at P.O. Box 1262, Bryson City, N.C., 28713, or at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

Elevations above 4,000 feet in the Blue Ridge Province can be thought of as a peninsula of northern terrain extending into the southeastern United States, where typical flora and fauna of northeastern and southeastern North America intermingle.

Many plants and animals find their southernmost range extensions in the Blue Ridge, which extends from southern Pennsylvania (just south of Harrisburg) into north Georgia (just north of Atlanta), inclusive of portions of central Maryland, western Virginia, eastern Tennessee, western North Carolina, and northwestern South Carolina. These include Blue Ridge St. John’s-wort, blue-bead lily, pink-shell azalea, witch-hobble, rosebay and purple rhododendron, mountain wood fern, narrow beech fern, mountain ash, table mountain pine, mountain and striped maples, fire cherry, Fraser magnolia, red spruce, northern flying squirrel, least weasel, woodland jumping mouse, rock vole, New England cottontail, bog turtle, brook trout, muskellunge, saw-whet owl, ruffed grouse, common raven, and numerous salamander species.

Not a few of these high-elevation species are endemic to the province, being found no place else in the world. Some are only encountered in a few counties and no place else in the world. But most are “northerners” who have discovered there is suitable habitat down south.

No wildflower outing into the upper elevations of the mountains would be complete without an observation of Canada mayflower (Maianthemum canadense). Rather inconspicuous in regard to individual plants, this member of the Lily Family often forms dense colonies that carpet the forest floor.

It flourishes in the high-elevation, cool, moist, spruce-fir region above 6,000 feet, as well as, less frequently, in northern hardwood forests between 6,000 and 4,000 feet. From May into June the plant displays dense clusters of small, white flowers described by botanist Peter White in Wildflowers of the Smokies (1996) as “having a starburst appearance.”

White also noted that Canada mayflower “is a rather unusual member of the Lily Family in that the flower parts are in twos and fours instead of the usual threes and sixes.” Flowering colonies are quite fragrant, producing a sweetish odor that can be detected along a high trail during the moist morning hours.

The spreading, underground stems of the plant produce erect stems from two to eight inches tall that are zigzagged in appearance. Each stem usually has two heart-shaped shiny leaves with lobed bases that clasp the stem. Those producing but one leaf will not bear flowers.

The generic designation Maianthemum means May-flower, while the species tag canadense is also appropriate in that the plant is primarily northern in distribution, ranging throughout Canada, the northeastern United States, and southward in the mountains.

A good place to look for Canada mayflower is the picnic area at the Balsam Mountain Campground in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. This location in the park is accessed via a spur road off the Blue Ridge Parkway above Cherokee. Also look for a dense stand at the trailhead adjacent to the Bear Pen Gap parking area alongside the Blue Ridge Parkway at milepost 427.6.

Any place that you encounter this glistening little “northern” groundcover will be a fine place to be.

George Ellison wrote the biographical introductions for the reissues of two Appalachian classics: Horace Kephart’s Our Southern Highlanders and James Mooney’s History, Myths, and Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees. In June 2005, a selection of his Back Then columns was published by The History Press in Charleston as Mountain Passages: Natural and Cultural History of Western North Carolina and the Great Smoky Mountains. Readers can contact him at P.O. Box 1262, Bryson City, N.C., 28713, or at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

Spiders are one of the most interesting — and sometimes disconcerting — critters to observe. Especially fascinating, to me, are the various webs they create to capture prey and provide themselves with protection.

Spiders are often confused with insects, which are related to crabs and lobsters and have a skeleton of sorts on the outside of their bodies. Unlike insects — which normally have three distinct body parts (head, thorax, and abdomen) and six legs — spiders have only two body parts and four pairs of legs.

Spiders live mostly on insects, which they subdue with poisonous fangs. Two leg-like structures behind the fangs are often held out like antennae. These probably serve as sense organs. Unlike insects, spiders have several simple eyes (sometimes as many as eight) rather than compound eyes.

The success of spiders as a group can be attributed to their ingenious use of silk, which is made as a viscous plastic in special glands located in the lower abdomen. The liquid silk is gathered in nipple-like organs called spinnerets. It solidifies when drawn through the small spigots on the spinnerets — a process similar to that used in the production of synthetic fibers. Authorities maintain that spider silk is actually stronger than steel of comparable thickness!

From this elastic “steel” spiders weave complex webs that appear in almost every design imaginable. The most complex spider webs are created by the garden species known as orb weavers. These consist of a series of radiating lines that support a spiral thread covered with highly sticky droplets, which attract and ensnare insects.

Every few days the orb weaver creates a new spiral thread so as to keep it fresh and sticky. While waiting for insects to come along, the spider resides in a silken retreat of rolled up leaves off to the side of the web. Vibrations along a special silk line leading from this retreat to the sticky spiral thread let the orb weaver know that dinner’s ready.

In the early morning after a heavy dew, beads of moisture collect on the spider webs constructed in grassy meadows, making them easy to spot. After the sun dries the dew later in the morning, the webs are still there, of course, but are much harder to locate.

Many of these meadowland webs are constructed by sheetweb weavers, which are spiders that usually have a pattern on the abdomen. Take a closer look at these glistening structures and you’ll observe that they’re shaped like domes or bowls. Two of the most interesting of the sheetweb weavers found in the eastern United States are the ones known as the hammock spider and the bowl-and-doily spider.

Hammock spiders construct a web shaped like a hammock. The spider stays concealed in a far corner of his creation until he nets an insect. Leaves that fall into the web are sometimes used as hideouts as well.

The bowl-and-doily spider constructs a shallow silken bowl about six inches across that sits directly upon a doily-like flat maze of threads. The bowl is clearly designed to trap insects. When they fall into the bowl, the spider bites them from below and wraps up their bodies in the silk for safekeeping. The purpose of the doily is less certain, but it perhaps serves to protect the spider from attack from below by predators.

George Ellison wrote the biographical introductions for the reissues of two Appalachian classics: Horace Kephart’s Our Southern Highlanders and James Mooney’s History, Myths, and Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees. In June 2005, a selection of his Back Then columns was published by The History Press in Charleston as Mountain Passages: Natural and Cultural History of Western North Carolina and the Great Smoky Mountains. Readers can contact him at P.O. Box 1262, Bryson City, N.C., 28713, or at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

Belted kingfishers are one of my favorite birds. A pair fishes along the small creek on our property during the breeding season. In winter they move downstream to the Tuckasegee River, although the male will make infrequent appearances from mid-November into March, probably to maintain control of his hunting territory. Each spring they return for good, raising a ruckus as they fly over our cove with rattling calls that are a part of their mating ritual.

With most bird species, the male is usually the more conspicuous. The female kingfisher is an exception, however, having a chestnut breast band in addition to the gray one displayed by the male. Because she broods her young deep in the ground, the female's maternal duties don't make her an easy target for predators. She has no real need for the sort of subdued protective coloration characteristic of female cardinals, towhees, and countless other species. Her decorative breast band makes her one of the few female birds in the world with plumage more colorful than her mate’s.

If you have kingfishers that are active in your vicinity from March into early summer, look for their nesting dens. Situated in a steep bank, the entrance hole is about the size of a softball. If it’s being used, there will be two grooves at the base of the hole where the birds’ feet drag as they plunge headfirst, in full flight, into the opening. The tunnel leading to the nesting cavity may be from three to 15 feet in length. Kingfishers have toes that are fused together, thereby helping them excavate more efficiently. Obviously designed to prevent access by predators, these nesting dens can be located some distance from water, often in roadway cutbanks or where there has been excavation around a building site.

Ornithologists have determined that an adult-sized bird consumes about 10 fish, each about four inches long, per day. A pair of kingfishers with nearly-grown young would have to catch about 90 fish per day to feed their offspring and themselves. That’s a lot of fish. During inclement weather, the number of fish caught is drastically reduced because of murky water. Crayfish are used as a substitute food; nevertheless, nestlings often starve to death during such periods.

Once the kingfishers are fledged, their parents teach them to fish by dropping dead fish into the water for retrieval. After 10 or so days of this sort of instruction, they are expected to catch fish on their own and are driven from the parental territory.

It’s not surprising that such a conspicuous bird would have a place in Cherokee bird lore. They composed stories that accounted for the kingfisher’s fishing tactics and incorporated the bird into their medicinal ceremonies.

When anthropologist James Mooney was collecting Cherokee lore here in Western North Carolina during the 1880s, he recorded two accounts of how the kingfisher (“jatla” in Cherokee) got its bill. Some of the old men told him the animals decided to give the bird a better bill because it was so poorly equipped to make its living as a water bird: “So they made him a fish-gig and fastened it on in front of his mouth.”

A second version Mooney recorded was that the bill was a gift from the benevolent Little People, the Cherokee equivalent of Irish leprechauns. They had observed a kingfisher using a spear-shaped fish as a lance to kill a blacksnake that was preying upon a bird’s nest. So they rewarded him his own spear-shaped bill.

This outsized bill accounts for the kingfisher’s success as a fisherman. One of the prettiest sights in the bird world is that of a kingfisher hovering over the riffles in a small stream before plunging headfirst underwater after its prey. Its success rate is phenomenal. Before going fishing, the Cherokees evoked the kingfisher in sacred formulas (chants and songs) that would hopefully insure equal success.

Because it was so adept at penetration in regard to excavating its nesting tunnels and fishing below the water’s surface, the Cherokee medicine men also evoked the kingfisher in medicinal formulas that were a part of the healing ceremonies used to cure internal diseases. They wanted their medicines derived from plant materials to penetrate their patients’ bodies deftly, like a kingfisher plunging into its burrow or diving under water. And they wanted to extract the diseases with dispatch, like a kingfisher emerging from the water with its prey firmly clamped in its bill.

George Ellison wrote the biographical introductions for the reissues of two Appalachian classics: Horace Kephart’s Our Southern Highlanders and James Mooney’s History, Myths, and Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees. In June 2005, a selection of his Back Then columns was published by The History Press in Charleston as Mountain Passages: Natural and Cultural History of Western North Carolina and the Great Smoky Mountains. Readers can contact him at P.O. Box 1262, Bryson City, N.C., 28713, or at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

One of the best pieces of advice I ever received in regard to learning wildflowers was to “concentrate on one family at a time.” The person advising me didn’t, of course, intend that I should devote my attention exclusively to the species in a given family and ignore any plants outside that group. But she rightly intuited that making real progress in a systematic manner required some sort of focus.

My choice was the Lily Family (Liliaceae). In retrospect, I realize that picking this family was a rather grand first choice since it includes many genera and an array of species. I could have started with a less complicated group. But I was attracted by the showy — sometimes even gaudy — species represented in the Liliaceae: fly poison, wild hyacinth, lily-of-the-valley, trout lily, swamp pink, Indian cucumber root, grape hyacinth, bog asphodel, star-of-Bethlehem, Solomon’s and false Solomon’s seal, featherbells, rosy twisted stalk, the numerous trillium species, the bellworts, turkey beard, etc.

The centerpiece genus of the Liliaceae is, of course, Lilium or the so-called true lilies. Here in the southern mountains this genus is comprised of five quite distinctive species: turk’s-cap lily (Lilium superbum), Canada lily (L. canadense), wood lily (L. philadelphicum), Michaux’s or Carolina lily (L. michauxii), and Gray’s lily (L. grayi).

Of these, only the turk’s-cap and Michaux’s lilies are, in my experience, commonly encountered. The rarest species is Gray’s lily, also known as bell lily, orange-bell lily, roan lily, and roan mountain lily. It is, for me, not only the most beautiful species in the Liliaceae but also the most beautiful wildflower I have encountered in North America.

The species is named for Asa Gray, America’s first great formal botanist. In 1840, Gray and several companions explored the high mountains of North Carolina. Among the many exciting plants they located was the spectacular red and purple-spotted lily that would, in 1879, be described as a new species and named in Gray’s honor.

Gray’s lily is a perennial, standing from two to four feet tall, with a smooth stem that bears three to eight whorls of narrow leaves. From June into early August, it displays from one to 10 bell shaped, slightly flared flowers on long stalks. The flowers are poised in an almost horizontal position. Each flower head is dark red or reddish-orange outside. Inside it is somewhat lighter in color and distinctively marked with numerous purple spots. It is a stately, almost regal plant.

This rare and endangered species is limited in its natural state to high-elevation, moist, grassy open areas and woodland thickets. Its distribution is restricted to a handful of counties in western Virginia, east Tennessee, and western North Carolina.

In an open, grassy plot alongside the creek on our property, Elizabeth and I once attempted as part of a horticultural experiment to grow several seedlings of Gray’s lily originally propagated from seeds by Kim Hawks, who was at that time the owner of Niche Wildflower Gardens near Chapel Hill. They flowered sparsely for several years and then disappeared. If we ever try to raise Gray’s lily again, we’ll create and place the plants in a moist peat bed in wooded shade.

George Ellison wrote the biographical introductions for the reissues of two Appalachian classics: Horace Kephart’s Our Southern Highlanders and James Mooney’s History, Myths, and Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees. In June 2005, a selection of his Back Then columns was published by The History Press in Charleston as Mountain Passages: Natural and Cultural History of Western North Carolina and the Great Smoky Mountains. Readers can contact him at P.O. Box 1262, Bryson City, N.C., 28713, or at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

Interesting wildflowers appear throughout Western North Carolina from late February into early November. Most wildflower identification and observation takes place during the spring. All too often the subsequent seasons are ignored.

The three peak periods are from late April into mid-May, early July into early August, and mid-September into mid-October. In my opinion, the mid-summer peak provides the most spectacular displays of truly showy wildflowers that are readily accessible.

For this reason, in part, the annual Native Plant Conference at Western Carolina University is always held during the third or fourth week in July. Participants come from across North America to take part in various symposiums and field trips. Since the early 1990s, I’ve lead an all-day, plant identification outing for the NPC along the Blue Ridge Parkway. These excursions have made me keenly aware of the floral riches that can be found in the middle to higher elevations along the parkway this time of the year.

My wife, Elizabeth, and I checked out this past Sunday some of the stops I’ll be making this year on Wednesday, July 22. As you read this, both sides of the parkway are quite literally lined with showy wildflowers for mile upon mile: turk’s-cap lily and black cohosh are prolific.

You don’t need to be part of a formal outing to get up there and appreciate what’s going on. Indeed, you’ll have just as much or more fun by yourself or with a friend. If you’re only free on weekends, then that’s when you’ll have to go. If you can, however, get away on a weekday, especially Tuesday through Thursday. The experience will be more pleasurable as traffic will then be less congested. Always be aware of traffic dangers when plant hunting near roadside edges.

Scout out seepage areas, the bases of damp cliffs, woodland edges, and open meadow-like situations. Hiking a shady trail through dense woodlands will be much less productive.

Some of the uncommon to rare species we encountered Sunday were tall delphinium, little green orchis, leather flower (a “Clematis” species), false bugbane, mountain krigia, Blue Ridge St. John’s-wort, round-leaved sundew, oxeye sunflower, and sticky tofeldia (false asphodel). There are countless stands of three of the “Monarda” species — bee balm, basil balm, and wild bergamot — but we weren’t able to locate any purple bergamot.

Curiously, there seems to be very little spotted touch-me-not (orange colored) this year, while entire slopes are covered with pale touch-me-not (yellow). Rosebay rhododendron is still flowering profusely, but Carolina and purple rhododendron are about done for the year.

If you only have a few hours to spare, the single most productive site along the parkway between Asheville and Cherokee (the section I know best) may well be the meadows and woodland edges at Deep Gap, which is situated adjacent to the Glassy Mine Overlook near milepost 437.

There, in mid-July, you won’t, to my knowledge, encounter any rare or endangered plants. But you can anticipate locating, among others, spiderwort, fire pink, sleepy catchfly, forked catchfly, Small’s ragwort, Deptford pink, black-eyed Susan, green-headed coneflower, cinquefoil, gray beardtongue, wood betony, southern harebell, wild quinine, sundrops, evening primrose, whorled loosestrife, wild lettuce, tall blue lettuce, dwarf dandelion, mouse ear, wild geranium, daisy fleabane, Indian paintbrush, several aster species, several sunflower species, several St. John’s-wort species, poke milkweed, thimbleweed, great angelica, mountain laurel, rosebay rhododendron, wild hydrangea, bush honeysuckle, heal-all, Queen-Anne’s-lace, Joe Pye weed, white snakeroot (milksick plant), Turk’s-cap lily, yarrow, houstonia, both touch-me-not species, pale Indian plantain, Carolina phlox, tall coreopsis, starry campion, common hedgenettle, flowering spurge, and all three species, already mentioned, in the “Monarda” genus: bee balm, basil balm, and wild bergamot.

Note that at Deep Gap the stands of basil balm (usually snow white petals with black spots) are interbreeding with adjacent stands of wild bergamot (usually lilac-colored petals without spots) and producing intermediate forms.

George Ellison wrote the biographical introductions for the reissues of two Appalachian classics: Horace Kephart’s Our Southern Highlanders and James Mooney’s History, Myths, and Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees. In June 2005, a selection of his Back Then columns was published by The History Press in Charleston as Mountain Passages: Natural and Cultural History of Western North Carolina and the Great Smoky Mountains. Readers can contact him at P.O. Box 1262, Bryson City, N.C., 28713, or at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

(Editors Note: George Ellison is on leave this week. But he says that his pawpaw trees have even more fruit on them this year than they did when he wrote this about them last year.)

Way Down Yonder in the Paw Paw Patch

Where, oh where, is dear little Nellie?

Where, oh where, is dear little Nellie?

Where, oh where, is dear little Nellie?

Way down yonder in the pawpaw patch.

Come on, boys, let’s go find her.

Come on, boys, let’s go find her.

Come on, boys, let’s go find her.

Way down yonder in the pawpaw patch.

Picking up pawpaws, puttin’ `em in your pocket.

Picking up pawpaws, puttin’ `em in your pocket.

Picking up pawpaws, puttin’ `em in your pocket.

Way down yonder in the pawpaw patch.

Have you ever happened upon pawpaw growing in the wild? One fine spring day many years ago I was exploring a steep ridge above our house. As I was pulling myself up with the aid of overhanging saplings, I was suddenly face-to-face with a cluster of some of the most curious and lovely flowers I’ve even seen. Although my only previous exposure had been via picture books, I knew for sure that these were pawpaw flowers. I’ve traversed that ridge many times since looking for that pawpaw with no luck.

The small tree or shrub known as common pawpaw, American pawpaw, tall pawpaw, or wild banana tree (Asimina triloba), has been reported from numerous counties throughout Western North Carolina. It is of interest that it was first recorded by the Hernando De Soto expedition in 1540.

Found in rich soils at elevations up to about 2,500 feet, a pawpaw tree rarely exceeds 25 feet in height and is normally more like a shrub. A smaller species known as dwarf pawpaw (A. parviflora) grows primarily to the east and south of WNC.

From early April into early May, the plant displays distinctive purple-brown flowers that have two circles of three petals which are arranged one inside the other. The broad lustrous green leaves are frequently a foot in length, somewhat resembling those of an umbrella-leaf magnolia. The greenish-gray fruits (which turn yellow and then black with ripening) develop in late summer.

The pawpaw is the largest edible fruit native to America. Individual fruits weigh five to 16 ounces and are 3 to 6 inches in length. The larger sizes will appear plump, similar to the mango. The fruit usually has 10 to 14 seeds in two rows. These brownish to blackish seeds are shaped like lima beans. Pawpaw fruits often occur as clusters of up to nine individual fruits. When ripe they are soft and thin-skinned.

About eight years ago Elizabeth planted two pawpaws about 20 feet apart on our property. Pawpaw flowers are “perfect,” in that they have both male and female reproduction parts. But they are not self-pollinating because the female stigma matures and is no longer receptive when the male pollen is shed. Accordingly, they require cross-pollination from another unrelated pawpaw tree.

For several years, we had no pawpaw fruits at all. After about four years, we started harvesting several pawpaw fruits per season — just enough for a taste. This year we have pawpaws galore! Every morning for the past week, we’ve been eating pawpaw slices for breakfast.

The sweet pulp is custard-like with a strawberry-banana taste. You can cut a fruit in half, scoop out the flesh with a spoon, and then eat it like you would watermelon; that is, you simply spit out the seeds as you go. The flesh is also used to make pies and other desserts. It was once rated by a panel of connoisseurs as the sixth most delicious fruit in the world.

Container grown pawpaws obtained from commercial nurseries provide the best opportunity for success. It can also be propagated from seeds or seedlings (not root suckers). Be forewarned, however, that the root suckers and seedlings can form dense thickets if not periodically controlled.

The natural history of a region consists of the plants, animals, and landscapes we can see and explore any given day. But no full comprehension of any region can be had without coming to some understanding of its spiritual terrain. When we consider this aspect here in the Smokies region, we necessarily enter the realm of Cherokee sensibility.

There are various examples. My favorite is the uktena, a monstrous serpent, because it persists as an informing presence in Cherokee lore. When anthropologist James Mooney visited the Qualla Boundary of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians in Western North Carolina during the late 1880s, he collected uktena data subsequently published as part of his classic study Myths of the Cherokee (1900). In the 1960s, Indian historians Jack and Anna Kilpatrick found that the Cherokees removed to Oklahoma in 1838 vividly retained in their collective memory stories of the serpent, which they called the uk’ten. To this day, in my experience, a conversation about them can be conducted with many traditional Cherokees.

According to Mooney’s informants, the uktena — born of envy and anger — was a representative of the Under World: the realm of darkness and decay. They were, he was advised, “as large around as a tree trunk, with horns on its head, a bright blazing crest like a diamond upon its forehead, and scales glittering like sparks of fire. It has rings or spots of color along its whole length and cannot be wounded except by shooting in the seventh spot from the head, because under this spot are its heart and life.”

Aside from the horns that resembled those of a buck deer, the most compelling feature of the uktena was the diamond-shaped crest on its forehead (the ulunsuti) that emitted flashes of light like a blazing star. Those encountering the serpent — especially little children — were doomed, moth-like, to become so dazzled by this light that they ran toward it and sure death.

But in Cherokee spiritual life there was always a balance between good and evil. The danger of the uktena was counterbalanced by the potential power of the burning stone. If an individual was brave enough to confront the serpent, he could evoke the Mythic Hawk, which represented the forces of the Upper World: peace and light. Together, they would be able to venture into the recesses of the Under World, slay the serpent, and bring the ulunsuti crystal back to the Middle World: the mundane realm of human existence.

University of Georgia anthropologist Charles Hudson has made these observations in an essay titled “Uktena: A Cherokee Anomalous Monster” published in the Journal of Cherokee Studies (Spring 1978):

“The Cherokees believed that their priests or medicine men were able to gaze into certain crystals and thereby foresee the future ... The Cherokees told James Mooney that according to their traditions only one man — Groundhog’s mother, a Shawnee medicine man and a great worker of wonders — was able to get possession of an ulunsunti. A great hunter among the eastern Cherokees still had possession of it in 1890, but he kept it hidden in a cave and would not show it to Mooney, but he did describe it in this manner: ‘It is like a large transparent crystal, nearly the shape of a cartridge bullet, with a blood-red streak running through the center from top to bottom. The owner keeps it wrapped in a whole deer skin, inside an earthen jar hidden away in a secret cave in the mountains.’

From this description Mooney concluded that the ulunsuti might be an unusual crystal of rutile quartz with metallic streaks running through it ... Of all the anomalous monsters of the old world, the one that comes closest to the uketna is the dragon, a monster which existed at one time in the belief of people in most parts of Europe and Asia ... The dragon had no ulunsuti on its forehead, but it did have a lump on its head, called by the Chinese chi’h muh, which enabled the dragon to fly, and it had a pearl of great value and power which dangled from its neck. Also, the traditional Chinese used ‘dragon bones,’ the fossilized bones of extinct animals, for all sorts of religious purposes ... We are reasonably sure that the Cherokees, and other American Indians, are descended from people who came from Siberia, across the Bering Strait land bridge at the close of the Pleistocene. Therefore it is probable that these ancestors of the American Indians categorized the universe in a way similar to that of the Asian people who were ancestors of the Chinese. It is possible, in fact, that the people who came across the land bridge 15,000 years ago believed in the existence of a dragon-like monster.”

According to ancient sources, uktenas lived in caves, gorges, or lonely passes in the high mountains. Such places were carefully designated as “where the uktena stays” from generation to generation. They resided on the margins of the Cherokee universe like dark shadows in a dream.

Such places were obviously touchstones for the collective imagination of the Cherokees from one generation to the next for hundreds of years. They were constant reminders of the angry and envious serpents in their lives and hearts. To ignore these reminders was to follow the pathway into chaos and darkness; to come to terms with them was the pathway into a bright future.

I enjoy leading natural history workshops, but I no longer derive much pleasure from herding people along a trail while naming things right and left. What continues to motivate me is helping participants learn to use specific source and identification materials (the birding CDs, Newcomb’s Wildflower Guide, The Fern Finder, etc.) so they will then have the skills to more fully explore the natural world on their own.

I must admit, however, that my favorite outings take place before scheduled workshops. I generally go out a day or two before the actual event to refresh myself regarding specific wildflowers, trees, shrubs, ferns, birds, etc., that might be encountered. I try to plan a route that will be varied in regard to habitats explored and safe in regard to potential parking areas or trail issues.

These pre-event outings give me time to immerse myself in the natural world without having to constantly respond to the query “What is that?” — which is, of course, exactly what I’m obligated (and paid) to do during a workshop. I have gone whole days scouting a trip without saying a single word.

Nevertheless, the only thing better than scouting by myself is when my wife, Elizabeth, is free and inclined to accompany me. We both enjoy the natural world. After nearly five decades of being together we communicate fairly well — both verbally and non-verbally. She doesn’t mind telling me when she thinks I’ve identified something incorrectly. We argue a lot. We laugh a lot. We get along.

Elizabeth is an artist. She “sees” the world somewhat differently from most of us. She is intuitive rather than analytical. She is also a human bloodhound. All I have to do is mention a rare plant or bird that I’d like to find and before long I’ll hear her say, “Why, there it is.” In this regard, she has some sort of sixth sense that’s hard to beat when you’re scouting a field trip.

Last Saturday, for instance, I had a “Wildflower and Fern Identification” workshop for the Smoky Mountain Field School. After starting out at the Sugarlands Visitor Center near Gatlinburg that morning, we finished up the day in the high elevation spruce-fir forests along the North Carolina-Tennessee state line. Along the way, we located and identified lots of plants — including the beautiful small purple-fringed orchid — using Newcomb’s Wildflower Guide.

At one of the last stops along the Clingmans Dome road, I told the group that one of the flowers we’d see there wouldn’t be in Newcomb’s because it’s so rare it is found only in a few high-elevation sites in the Great Smokies and no other place in the world.

So, we strolled into the nearby forest and, sure enough, there was a stand of Rugel’s ragwort (Rugelia nudicaulis), an inconspicuous plant in the Aster family that stands about 18 inches high and displays large heart-shaped basal leaves. The flower buds on this stand had not yet opened. In Wildflowers of the Smokies (1996), they are described as having “long, pointed bracts” surrounding the blossom, which forms “an urn from which the yellow or straw-colored disk flowers protrude.”

Because of a scouting trip Elizabeth and I had made Friday — during which we located Rugel’s ragwort for the first time — I’d known that the workshop group would be stopping to see the plant. This gave me a chance to conduct a little research the night before and uncover some information regarding the plant’s namesake that I was able to share with the group on Saturday.

In 1840, Ferdinand Rugel (1806-1879) came to the United States to collect biological specimens in the Southern Appalachians, though he supported himself as a pharmacist. He settled in Dandridge, Tenn., in 1842. After 1849 he moved to Knoxville, where he worked for a wholesale drug firm. His botanical companion, Samuel Botsford Buckley, described the super-eccentric Rugel as being “the best prepared and equipped for collecting and preserving specimens of any person” he had ever met.

According to Buckley, Rugel rode his horse Fox with “a large, square tin strapped to his shoulder and a straw hat tied beneath his chin.” One of their journeys into the Smokies region was uneventful until there was “a clattering of hoofs, and Fox dashed by, with Rugel crying ‘Whoa, Fox! Whoa, Fox!’ his hair streaming in the wind, with tin box and hat dashing up and down at every jump the horse made.” Buckley relocated Rugel a mile or so down the road at a steep hill where Fox had finally come to a stop.

For years, I had been reading about and looking for Rugel’s ragwort. On Friday, when Elizabeth and I were getting ready to scout out the area around the Newfound Gap parking area, I told her this was likely habitat for the plant and showed her a photo and the botanical description. We didn’t find Rugel’s ragwort at Newfound Gap but at our next stop in the high country, while I was examining some ferns, I heard her say, “Why, there it is.”

Sure enough, there it was — not five feet from where I was kneeling. Within 60 minutes of learning of a rare plant’s existence, she had tracked it down.

Radical ecologist and writer Edward Abbey (1927-1989) was born in Home, Penn., the son of a hardscrabble farmer and a schoolteacher. Hitchhiking as an adolescent through the western United States initiated a lifelong identity with that region. After being discharged from the U.S. Army in 1947, Abbey worked at various marginal jobs while studying philosophy at the University of New Mexico, from which he earned B.A. and M.A. degrees. The title of his master’s thesis was “Anarchism and the Morality of Violence.”

Abbey worked in the western states, intermittently, as a U.S. Forest Service fire-lookout and for the National Park Service as a ranger. He also, without success, tried his hand at being a social caseworker and technical writer in New York City. He wrote eight novels, seven collections of non-fiction prose, a gathering of aphorisms, the texts for five collections of photographs, and — for just for good measure — he self-edited The Best of Edward Abbey. Later in life, he taught writing at the University of Arizona. He was married three times.

According to Kingsley Widmer’s biographical sketch in American National Biography Online, “Abbey held that his main vocation was as iconoclastic literateur defending natural wilderness and freedom. [His] best-known novel, and intended handbook of troublemaking, The Monkey-Wrench Gang (1975), along with its posthumously published continuation Hayduke Lives! (1990), is dedicated to the “Luddite anarchism of sabotaging American technocracy in the remaining open West.”

Abbey’s best writing occurs in his non-fictional prose narratives and essays. The most famous of these is Desert Solitaire: A Season in the Wilderness (1968). Widmer notes that it “centers with tough candor on his times as a fire-lookout and park ranger. Here, and increasingly in later essays ... he revived anarchist Propaganda of the Deed (destroying surveyors’ markers, burning billboards, disabling diesels, protectively tree-spiking in old-growth forests, satiric sloganeering, and other measures) .... But in fact Abbey was more of a sardonic commentator than a political activist. [His] self-conscious role was to combine, in both person and writings, the ecologically sensitive wilderness westerner with the Enlightenment rebel-skeptic in a post-World War II he-man manner (he had trouble with “new feminism” and other “chicken-xxxx liberalism”).

“In spite of his considerable macho western mode — including boots and vest over flannel shirt, six-pack of beer and cigar, pickup and .357 magnum, full beard and fully scornful tongue — he was also attempting a libertarian revision of western mythology.”

Be that as it may, when he got around to doing so, Abbey could write with beautiful insight about the landscapes and entities in the natural world that he encountered. Some of his finest nature writing appears in an essay titled “Natural and Human History,” which served as the text for Appalachian Wilderness: The Great Smoky Mountains — a coffee-table size book published in 1970 that featured the photographs of Eliot Porter.

Abbey was chosen to prepare this text because he had proven his ability as a writer of descriptive prose with Desert Solitaire. And he could also point out that he had resided within 30 miles of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park for a short while in 1968. As he was departing from the Great Smokies after completing his writing-assignment visit in 1969, he noted, in passing, that, “We come next to Sylva, where I had lived the year before while teaching at nearby University of Western North Carolina.” That’s the short version of an interesting interlude in Abbey’s career.

A fuller version is provided in James M. Cahalan’s Edward Abbey: A Life (2001). Abbey felt the need for a full-time job after his wife, Judy, had given birth to their daughter, Susannah. So, he accepted a position in the English Department at Western Carolina University, where a friend, Al Sarvis, was teaching in the Art Department.

According to Callahan, “Ed, Judy, and baby Susie lived in the nearby town of Sylva, in the basement of the rambling home of Marcellus Buchanan, a colorful local politician ... Abbey hated this area and his job. He noted on Oct. 8, 1968, that ‘like a bloody idiot,’ he had accepted a teaching job ‘here at Redneck U. All for monetary greed ... $7,800, or almost $1,000 per working month, good wages for me.’ He dreaded the ‘horror the tedium the drudgery of academic life. ‘How I loathe it. All those pink faces in the classroom three xxxxxxx hours, five xxxxxxx days per week .... always there’s tomorrow’s xxxx to prepare, to read, to grade’ ... [His] first term as a full-time instructor of record was not an auspicious one ... His English Department colleague D. Newton Smith explained that Abbey was ‘very shy about that process. He didn’t know what to do, pretty much.’ Smith added that Abbey’s training in philosophy, ‘a very contemplative kind of thing,’ was certainly ‘not the same thing as teaching English.’

“On wild drunken, reckless drives through the countryside, Abbey threw his homebrew bottles out the window and raged against the ugly billboards defacing the landscape ... When Abbey got the word that he could return to Organ Pipe [Cactus National Monument] for a second full season, he was so eager to flee the classroom and the coming Appalachian winter for the Arizona desert that he quit his teaching job before the end of the quarter ... Newt Smith clarified that ‘he simply gave everybody in his class a B and left. It was not well received!’”

Edward Abbey couldn’t (or wouldn’t) teach English, but he could write it. A year later he described this moment during a wintertime journey to Clingmans Dome:

“Higher and higher we rise toward the clouds, the cloud forest. We reach a certain elevation, about 4,500 feet, where all of the trees are covered with a delicate, brilliant, impeccable snowy lace. Not snow, not ice, but frozen fog, that’s what it is ... Brittle and fragile crystals of frost. Apparently the needles act as condensation nuclei, around which the cloud vapors gather and freeze. The effect is stranger than that of snow or ice; each tree, seen against the sun, seems to glow, to radiate an aura of intense white light.”

George Ellison wrote the biographical introductions for the reissues of two Appalachian classics: Horace Kephart’s Our Southern Highlanders and James Mooney’s History, Myths, and Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees. In June 2005, a selection of his Back Then columns was published by The History Press in Charleston as Mountain Passages: Natural and Cultural History of Western North Carolina and the Great Smoky Mountains. Readers can contact him at P.O. Box 1262, Bryson City, N.C., 28713, or at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

Anthropologist James Mooney (1861-1921) devoted his life to detailing various aspects of the history, material culture, oral tradition, language, arts, and religion of the Eastern Cherokee, Cheyenne, Sioux, Kiowa, and other tribes, adding a new dimension to the writing of Indian history by combining various methods of research and utilizing sources from the Indians themselves.

He is most widely remembered for his research and writing on the Ghost Dance Religion. But some of his most inspired work took place in the mountains of Western North Carolina, where he lived among the remnant Eastern Band of Cherokees [now officially designated as the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians] for parts of four years from 1887 through 1890 and for interim periods thereafter through 1916. He was the first serious student of that then neglected tribe and probably the most influential. According to University of Georgia anthropologist Charles Hudson, States, Mooney “possessed just the right combination of persistence and tact to do superb fieldwork,” allowing him to publish works on the Cherokee without which readers “would know next to nothing about the world view of the southeastern Indians.”

The major works dealing with the Eastern Band that Mooney saw through the press during his lifetime were Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees (1891) and Myths of the Cherokee (1900). Both appeared as Bureau of American Ethnology publications. They provide insights into the interrelated themes of tribal history, lore, and ritual Mooney sought to explore and correlate throughout his career.

In 1885, Mooney was working for the Bureau of American Ethnology at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. That summer he met Nimrod Jarrett Smith, principal chief of the Eastern Band, who was often in Washington lobbying for official recognition of the tribe in North Carolina as a legal entity or for responsible use of tribal resources. He warmed to Mooney and invited him to visit Cherokee.

The 26-year-old budding ethnologist who disembarked at the rail and telegraph station at present day Whittier, on the Tuckasegee River about six miles south of Yellow Hill (as Cherokee was then known), was “a small, agile man with long dark-brown hair and large gray eyes,” about five feet, four inches in height. He wore a mustache and sometimes kept his hair shoulder-length. Not physically imposing, Mooney’s greatest asset, as one of his co-workers noted much later, was an “intense emotional attitude.”

Mooney credits “nearly three-fourths” of the stories related in Myths of the Cherokees to a shaman named Swimmer, who lived in the traditional Big Cove community (which remains a bastion of Cherokee traditionalism to this day). Once the ethnologist gained Swimmer’s trust they spent “day and night, talking and writing” about “the whole range of Indian life and thought.” Shortly after the great medicine man’s death, Mooney penned an elegiac tribute to his friend: “He died in March, 1899, aged about sixty-five, and was buried like a true Cherokee on the slope of a forest-clad mountain. Peace be to his ashes and sorrow for his going, for with him go about half the traditions of his people.”

The 576-page Myths of the Cherokees consists of seven parts: “Introduction,” “Historical Sketch of the Cherokee,” “Notes to the Historical Sketch,” “Stories and Storytellers,” “The Myths,” “Notes and Parallels,” and “Glossary.” The mythic materials are further subdivided into seven groupings: “Cosmogonic Myths” pertaining to the origins of the universe and man; “Quadruped Myths:” “Bird Myths:”; “Snake, Fish, and Insect Myths:”; “Wonder Stories” pertaining to supernatural beings and places; “Historical Traditions:” and “Miscellaneous Myths and Legends.”

The Cherokees were exceptional observers of bird life long before the first Europeans arrived and began to survey the avifauna of North America. Mooney discovered that their stories and legends were saturated with bird imagery. These selections concerning eagle lore are from a general overview of “The Bird Tribes” (Bird Myth 35) and “The Eagle’s Revenge” (Bird Myth 47).

The eagle is the great sacred bird of the Cherokee, as of nearly all our native tribes, and figures prominently in their ceremonial ritual, especially in all things relating to war ... The eagle must be killed only in the winter or late fall after the crops were gathered and the snakes had retired to their dens. If killed in the summertime a frost would come to destroy the corn, while the songs of the Eagle dance, when the feathers were brought home, would so anger the snakes that they would become doubly dangerous. Consequently the Eagle songs were never sung until after the snakes had gone to sleep for the winter ....

When the people of a town had decided upon an Eagle dance the eagle killer was called in, frequently from a distant settlement, to procure the feathers for the occasion. He was paid for his services from offerings made later at the dance, and as the few professionals guarded their secrets carefully from outsiders their business was a quite profitable one. After some preliminary preparation the eagle killer sets out alone for the mountains, taking with him his gun or bow and arrows. Having reached the mountains, he goes through a vigil of prayer and fasting, possibly lasting four days, after which he hunts until he succeeds in killing a deer. Then, placing the body in a convenient exposed situation upon one of the highest cliffs, he conceals himself near by and begins to sing in a low undertone the songs to call down the eagles from the sky. When the eagle alights upon the carcass, which will be almost immediately if the singer understands his business, he shoots it, and then standing over the dead bird, he addresses to it a prayer in which he begs it not to seek vengeance upon his tribe .... On reaching the settlement, the feathers ... are hung up in a small, round hut built for this special purpose near the edge of the dance ground ... and known as the place “where the feathers are kept,” or feather house .... The eagle being regarded as a great ada’wehi [i.e., magician or supernatural being], only the greatest warriors and those versed in the sacred ordinances would dare to wear the feathers or to carry them in the dance.”

And further on in the book:

Once a hunter in the mountains heard a noise at night like a rushing wind outside the cabin, and on going out he found that an eagle had just alighted on the drying pole and was tearing at the body of a deer hanging there. Without thinking of the danger, he shot the eagle. In the morning he took the deer and started back to the settlement, where he told what he had done, and the chief sent out some men to bring in the eagle and arrange for an Eagle dance. They brought back the dead eagle, everything was made ready, and that night they started the dance in the townhouse.

About midnight there was a whoop outside and a strange warrior came into the circle and began to recite his exploits. No one knew him, but they thought he had come from one of the farther Cherokee towns. He told how he had killed a man, and at the end of the story he gave a hoarse yell, Hi!, that startled the whole company, and one of the seven men with the rattles fell over dead. He sang of another deed, and at the end straightened up with another loud yell. A second rattler fell dead, and the people were so full of fear that they could not stir from their places. Still he kept on, and at every pause there came again that terrible scream, until the last of the seven rattlers fell dead, and then the stranger went out into the darkness. Long afterward they learned from the eagle killer that it was the brother of the eagle shot by the hunter.

George Ellison wrote the biographical introductions for the reissues of two Appalachian classics: Horace Kephart’s Our Southern Highlanders and James Mooney’s History, Myths, and Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees. In June 2005, a selection of his Back Then columns was published by The History Press in Charleston as Mountain Passages: Natural and Cultural History of Western North Carolina and the Great Smoky Mountains. Readers can contact him at P.O. Box 1262, Bryson City, N.C., 28713, or at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

Jewelweed, or “touch-me-not,” is one of the most appealing wildflowers commonly encountered throughout Western North Carolina. Many recognize the plant from the time it appears in early spring as a pale green seedling, on through the long and showy summertime blossoming period, and into fall — when its pods become explosive mechanisms triggered by the slightest touch.

Two species are native to the southern highlands: spotted jewelweed (Impatiens carpensis), which has orange flowers with reddish-brown spots, and a nectar spur bent underneath and parallel to the flower; and pale jewelweed (I. pallida), which has lemon-yellow flowers only sparingly dotted with red markings, and a nectar spur bent at a right angle to the flower. Both flourish in moist woodland areas or alongside streams.

Thirty years ago, I didn’t see too much pale jewelweed. But in recent years it seems to be dominating its cousin, spotted jewelweed. Extensive segments of the roadside embankments along the Blue Ridge Parkway are now swathed in the yellow-flowered species. I don’t know why this change has occurred. I doubt that it’s global warming.

The common name jewelweed probably refers to the way water beads up on its leaves. Some maintain, however, that this designation refers to the plant’s robin-egg blue seeds.

The common name touch-me-not undoubtedly refers to the plant’s method of seed dispersal. The seeds mature inside a tightly coiled capsule. This capsule “explodes” when fully ripe or when activated by human touch.

Spotted jewelweed flowers have small openings that favor pollination by hummingbirds and insects that can hover. The small opening forces pollinators to push past either the mature male stamens (which cover them with pollen) or past small green pistils (which receive pollen). To negate the possibility of self-pollination, a given flower is initially male before transforming into a female.

Pale jewelweed has a much larger opening that favors insects like bumblebees. It is found in the lower elevations alongside spotted jewelweed. But in my experiencethe pale jewelweed is more prevalent in higher elevations. (My wife disagrees, maintaining that elevation has nothing whatsoever to do with species frequency.) There is an infrequently encountered cream-colored variant of pale jewelweed that sometimes occurs on cold, north-facing slopes at high elevations.

Various American Indian tribes, including the Cherokees, have put this plant to use as a skin salve. And many people to this day maintain that the sap from its succulent leaves and stems will cure or at least ease poison ivy itch. Others stoutly maintain that this medicinal application is a hoax. “Scientific” studies have supported both sides.

Dr. James A. Duke is one of this country’s most respected authorities in regard to botanical medicines. In The Green Pharmacy (NY: St. Martin’s Press, 1997), Duke made the following observations:

“I’m not the only fan of jewelweed for preventing the unpleasant symptoms that develop following exposure to poisonous plants ... whenever I teach a three-day class on medicinal herbs, I treat my students to a dramatic little demonstration. I find a poisonous plant, usually poison ivy [and] apply its juice to the sensitive undersides of both of my wrists. A minute or two later, I wipe one wrist with a ball of crushed jewelweed leaves and stems. Three days later, the wrist that I didn’t treat with jewelweed shows the typical itchy, blistery poison-plant rash. The wrist rubbed with jewelweed invariably shows much less of a rash, and sometimes none at all.”

Duke noted that Dr. Robert Rosen at Rutgers University isolated “the active ingredient in jewelweed” that “binds to the same molecular sites on the skin as urushiol,” the active poisonous agent in poison ivy.

I have, in the past, used jewelweed as an antidote for poison ivy. And I have found that it provides some relief. But the very best antidote, for me, is one that I only discovered within recent years. That’s Dawn dish detergent. Something in that brand of detergent, which is also a degreaser, seems to completely neutralize the effects of urushiol on my skin. I apply the detergent liberally to the irritated area and let it dry. After just a few minutes, there is almost immediate relief. And after an hour or so, the irritation is pretty much eradicated.

George Ellison wrote the biographical introductions for the reissues of two Appalachian classics: Horace Kephart’s Our Southern Highlanders and James Mooney’s History, Myths, and Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees. In June 2005, a selection of his Back Then columns was published by The History Press in Charleston as Mountain Passages: Natural and Cultural History of Western North Carolina and the Great Smoky Mountains. Readers can contact him at P.O. Box 1262, Bryson City, N.C., 28713, or at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

Horace Kephart is best known for Our Southern Highlanders (first published in 1913, with an expanded edition in 1922) and his role in helping to found the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. But he also published a book that is now recognized as one of the cornerstones of American outdoor literature, Camping and Woodcraft.

After moving to the Great Smokies, 20 years before the national park was founded, Kephart lived in a cabin on the Little Fork of the Sugar Fork of Hazel Creek from 1904 until 1907. From 1910 until his death in 1931, he resided in Bryson City.

During those years on Hazel Creek, he became preoccupied with living as efficiently as possible in a somewhat remote setting. Despite outdoor experiences dating back to childhood, he discovered that he now “had to make shift in a different way . . . seeking not novelties but practical results.” These “results” he published in outdoor magazines.

By 1906, he had compiled enough material to put together the first edition of The Book of Camping and Woodcraft; A Guidebook for Those Who Travel in the Wilderness, published by the Outing Publishing Company in New York. An expanded edition published in two separate volumes appeared in 1916 and 1917, respectively; and in 1921 it came out in a hefty “two volumes in one” format as Camping and Woodcraft: A Handbook for Vacation Campers and for Travelers in the Wilderness.

In the process of expansion and revision, the book became a compendium of anecdotes, recipes, adventures, and practical advice on tent camping, path finding, route sketching, bark utensils, knot tying, backcountry exploration, bee hunting, and more. It remains remarkably useful and is great fun to rummage around in on a rainy day.

I was recently doing just that when I happened upon a section that focused my attention. It is headed “Nature’s Guide-Posts.” Therein, Kephart notes that, “There are two questions that woodsmen will argue, I suppose, until doomsday. Having given my views on one of them I may as well tackle the other, and then have done with controversy. Are there any natural signs of direction that will give a man his bearings when the sky is obscured? . . . I shall endeavor to show that there is more in this matter than is generally credited.”

After a lengthy digression regarding the pros and cons of the old notion that moss always on the north side of trees, Kephart turns his attention to “Tips of Conifers,” noting that, “A rule that holds good in the main, wherever I have had a chance to study it, that the feathery tip, the topmost little branch, of a towering pine or hemlock, points toward the rising sun, that is to say, a little south of east. There are exceptions, of course, but I have generally found this to be the case in three-fourths of the trees examined.” I suspect that the direction of the bend is random and that it is caused by perching birds more often than “the rising sun.”

About “Bark and Annual Rings,” he notes that, “The bark of old trees is generally thicker on the north and northeast sides than on the other sides. A more reliable indicator of direction, though one that a traveler seldom has opportunity to test, is the thickness of annual rings of wood growth, which is more pronounced on the north than on the south side of a tree.

The part that interests me concerns “Compass-Plants.” In that section he first notes that, “Some plants show a decided polarity in their habit of growth,” citing “compass-plant or rosin-weed” as his prime example.

“I have often used the compass-plant as a guide,” he recalls, “and never was led astray by it; in fact, the old settlers on the prairies, if they chanced to get lost on a dark night, would get their bearings by feeling the leaves of the compass-plant.

Now we get to Kephart’s (and my) mystery plant. I would very much like to hear from anyone who can identify the “north-and-south plant” he describes:

“But what think you of plant roots that persistently grow north and south? The woodsmen of the Great Smoky Mountains declare that there is a ‘north-and-south plant,’ as they call it, with two long roots that grow respectively north and south. Doctor

Davis of Ware’s [Wear’s] Valley, on the Tennessee side described it to me as follows: ‘It resembles wild verbena, grows thigh-high, is a rare plant, and generally is found in hollows on the south side of mountains in rocky neighborhoods, near trickling streams. Its leaf is serrated, 1.5 by 1 inch, or larger, with purple heart, yellow edges, and the rest a bright red. Its roots usually do grow north and south. The plant is one of the most valuable medicinally that I know of, particularly for syphilitic affections. I do not know it by any other name than the native one of North-and-South. I gather it when I can find it, and use it in my practice.’

“Many others have given me similar reports,” Kephart concludes. “I do not know the plant; have never hunted systematically for it.”

Any ideas?

George Ellison wrote the biographical introductions for the reissues of two Appalachian classics: Horace Kephart’s Our Southern Highlanders and James Mooney’s History, Myths, and Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees. In June 2005, a selection of his Back Then columns was published by The History Press in Charleston as Mountain Passages: Natural and Cultural History of Western North Carolina and the Great Smoky Mountains. Readers can contact him at P.O. Box 1262, Bryson City, N.C., 28713, or at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

Naturalist, herbalist, lecturer, writer, adventure trip leader, folklorist and prize-winning harmonica player Doug Elliott has a new book. Titled Swarm Tree: Of Honeybees, Honeymoons, and the Tree of Life (Charleston, SC: The History Press; soft cover; 160 pages; illustrated by the author; $17.99), it is vintage Doug Elliott.

There are 13 essays devoted to or touching upon various topics such as migratory beekeeping, how to pick up a skunk, fish grabbing, “Republicans in the Ramp Patch,” hitchhikers with butterfly nets, and a lot more — all designed “to illuminate the confluence of nature, humanity, and spirit.”

Elliott related in a recent email that, after graduating from the University of Maryland in 1970, “For most of the following decade, I traveled extensively from the Canadian north to the Central American jungles studying nature and spending time with traditional country folk and indigenous people, learning their stories, folklore, and traditional ways of relating to the natural world. For a number of years I made my living as a traveling herbalist collecting, displaying, and selling herbs, teas and old time remedies at folk festivals and country fairs. Attracted by the biodiversity and the richness of the traditional culture, I found myself spending more and more time in the Southern Appalachians. Accordingly, I’ve made my home in Western North Carolina since the mid-1970s, presently residing in Rutherford County with my wife and son. I still travel nowadays, teaching about nature, and performing stories and songs.”

In addition to programs on birds, bugs, reptiles and amphibians, rainforests, bogs and traditional foods, he can provide the following: “Woodslore and Wildwoods: Wisdom Stories, Songs and Lore Celebrating Animals, Plants and People;” “Groundhogology: Of Whistlepigs and World Politics;” “Possumology: Everything you never thought you wanted to know about America’s favorite marsupial” and “Everybody’s Fishin’, A Crosscultural Fishing Extravaganza: Wrestling Sea Serpents, Tickling Trout, Grabbing Catfish by the Snout!”

Elliott’s botanical knowledge is sound and extensive. Through the years, he has carefully observed, photographed, and drawn plants, including their underground systems, while at the same time collecting information from varied sources regarding their “history, legends, and lore; their uses in various cultures, medicinal properties, food value, as well as other practical ways we can use wild plants every day.”

In addition to Swarm Tree, he has published the following books: Wild Roots: A Forager’s Guide to the Wild Edible and Medicinal Roots, Tubers, Corms & Rhizomes (1976, reissued 1995); Woodslore (1986); and Wildwoods Wisdom, Encounters with the Natural World (1992).

The stories Elliott writes up for his books are natural extensions — in regard to content and style — of the stories he relates for live audiences. They don’t derive as directly from a literary tradition as they do from the rich storytelling tradition of the southern mountains; that is, they ramble around here and there, relating this and that, and then they end. As in this selection from Swarm Tree, ‘possums are often involved. In retrospect, the reader realizes that he or she has been entertained while learning something worthwhile about the natural world.

“Of Ginseng, Golden Apples and

the Rainbow Fish”

“If you want to go ‘seng hunting, you come up this fall, and we’ll run yo’ little legs off!”

That sounded like both a challenge and an invitation to go on a ginseng hunt. The offer came from Ted and Leonard Hicks when I was visiting their family homestead high on Beech Mountain in Western North Carolina. I had come there, like so many others, to listen to their dad tell stories. Their father, [the late] Ray Hicks, was a national treasure, known for his incredible repertoire of old-time Appalachian stories.

I had long enjoyed Ray’s storytelling. He was a master of the Jack tale s —stories about the naive, but resourceful, archetypal trickster character named Jack. Many of us first heard about Jack in the story “Jack and the Beanstalk.” As it turns out, the beanstalk story is only one of hundreds of these stories that were brought over from Europe by early settlers, and they were kept alive and relatively intact by those who settled the isolated hills and hollers of the Appalachian backcountry. Ray knew dozens of these wild, elaborate and fanciful tales and was more than willing to share them with anyone who came his way.

Ray was getting too old to roam the hills like he used to, so the opportunity to go ginseng hunting with his sons was too good to pass up. Ginseng is a valuable medicinal herb found in the deep shady hollows and hillsides of the Appalachian Mountains. So one morning in early October, when I knew most of the ginseng berries would be ripe and the leaves would be turning that distinctive shade of yellow, I showed up at the Hicks homestead. There I met Leonard at the top of the driveway, where he informed me that both he and Ted had gotten jobs and they had to go to work that morning.

Since I was there already, I went down to the house to say hello to Ray and Rosa. I knocked on the door and heard Ray say, “Come in.”

I could tell that he sort of recognized me from previous visits, but it seemed like he was having trouble placing me. His wife, Rosa, hollering in from the kitchen, reminded him I was the “possum man” and that I had been there a few times over the years.

I don’t know about how it is where you live, but among these folks mentioning ‘possums is a great icebreaker. And indeed Ray warmed quickly to the subject. He started talking .... and he pretty much kept on talking till later that afternoon when I stood up and said I had to leave . . .

We talked about ginseng and about how ginseng hunting gets in your blood. He was saying that when you’re walking through the woods, you can tell the places where ginseng is likely to grow — in the richer coves often near chestnut stumps, grapevines or black walnut trees.

“Thar’s a little fearn . . .” Ray was saying, speaking in his rich Appalachian dialect, full of archaic expressions and word twists. At first I didn’t understand what he was trying to tell me about. Then I realized he was talking about a fern, pronouncing the word like “fee’-ern.”

“Thar’s a little fearn I look for,” he went on to say. “If’n you find that fearn, you’ll find ‘seng (if somebody ain’t got there first and dug it). See, this here fearn, ‘hit’s all hooked up with ginseng. Thar’s a fungus hooked up thar ‘tween their roots.”

I realized he was talking about rattlesnake or grape fern (Botrychium sp.). This little fern grows in the same rich hollows as ginseng, and many mountain folks call it “‘seng sign” or “‘seng pointer” because it’s commonly known to grow in association with ginseng.

When I got home, I looked up the word “fern” in my dictionary, and it said that our word “fern” comes from the Anglo-Saxon “fearn.” So here was this backwoods mountaineer, a vestige of another era, living without a phone or indoor plumbing, speaking an ancient, archaic dialect. yet he was discussing subterranean microscopic mycorrhizal associations between plants — something that is only just beginning to be understood by modern scientists.

George Ellison wrote the biographical introductions for the reissues of two Appalachian classics: Horace Kephart’s Our Southern Highlanders and James Mooney’s History, Myths, and Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees. In June 2005, a selection of his Back Then columns was published by The History Press in Charleston as Mountain Passages: Natural and Cultural History of Western North Carolina and the Great Smoky Mountains. Readers can contact him at P.O. Box 1262, Bryson City, N.C., 28713, or at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

Angler and writer Harry Middleton (1949-1993) is an elusive figure. Except for what he chose to reveal in his books — which are part memoir and part novel — little is known, outside of family and friends, about his too brief life. But the books speak for themselves in a voice that is at once haunting and uplifting. There is nothing else quite like them in American nature or outdoor writing. On the Spine of Time: An Angler’s Love of the Smokies (1991) is one of the finest books yet written about this region.

As a boy, Middleton was almost constantly on the move as his father shifted from one military base to the next. During the mid-1960s, he did spend influential years — learning to fly fish and explore the natural world — with his grandfather, his great-uncle and their Sioux friend, Elias Wonder, on the grandfather’s farm in the mountains of northwestern Arkansas. Those experiences were warmly captured in his first book The Earth is Enough: Growing Up in a World of Trout and Old Men (1989).

He initiated his literary career by writing about food, art, music, and books for Figaro, an alternative newspaper published in New Orleans. During that period he met Walker Percy, the post-existentialist southern novelist whose ruminative style and philosophical perspectives are reflected in Middleton’s work. In the early 1980s, he began writing about regional and personal themes for Louisiana Life magazine in a column titled “Louisiana at Large.” That led to his becoming a writer and editor for the Southern Progress Corporation in Birmingham, Alabama, which publishes the widely distributed Southern Living magazine.

Middleton wrote for various magazines that the corporation issued, but his passion was a monthly “Outdoor South” column contributed to Southern Living. He had apparently suffered from chronic depression for much of his adult life, but the column gave him a positive identity that stabilized his personality. He was apparently happy, for the most part, and productive.

In 1989, a new Southern Progress magazine titled Southpoint, for which Middleton was also writing, failed after just nine issues. On June 21, he was called into the CEO’s office and fired. June 21, 1989 ... that date was seared into his memory bank. It was the pivotal point at which his life began to unravel: “On the day that I lost my job, waves of depression hummed and sizzled in my gray-pink brain like downed electrical wires.”

Descriptions of that sort permeate The Bright Country, published several weeks after his death in July 1993. In that book he described his immediate flight from Birmingham to Denver, Colo. There on the edge of the Rockies he found a job as a hack writer; he consulted with a psychiatrist, Dr. Lilly Mutzpah; he interrelated with an outrageous group of misfits that included Dr. Truth, who spoke wisdom from a folded chair on a street corner, and a pair of grifters, Swami Bill and “his main squeeze” Kiwi LaReaux; he went fly fishing every weekend in the streams west of Denver; and in the fall of 1990 — “the year which haunts this story” — he returned to Birmingham, where he worked “on the crew of county garbage truck No. 2 for two years.” Shortly before his death from an apparent heart attack, Harry Middleton — one of the very best southern writers of his time — had been hired by The Birmingham Herald to write restaurant reviews.

On the Spine of Time was written before and based upon experiences that took place prior to June 21, 1990. It is a love song in prose composed for the Great Smokies and the adjacent mountain ranges he had discovered by accident in the early 1980s. One reviewer, Jason C. Sheasley, observed: “His salvation was fishing cold mountain streams with a fly rod. For over a decade Middleton traveled from his home in Birmingham ... to the Great Smoky Mountains. There he found relief wading the trout streams with his 4-weight Winston fly rod in hand. On the Spine of Time captures the essence of those trips through the Smoky Mountains and provides us with a glimpse into the quiet splendor of this place ....”

These excerpts from On the Spine of Time track Middleton’s constant yearning, while residing and working in Birmingham, to get away from it all, if only for a short while to the Great Smokies. In that regard, he captures the feelings of many others, past and present, who have shared the same yearning: the desire to find a place of refuge in the high country. In this instance, his objective was Hazel Creek on the North Carolina flank of the national park:

A few words of explanation on this cold and windy mountain night. This is not a book about the history — social, cultural, or otherwise — of the Great Smoky Mountains or the high country of southwestern North Carolina, which is where most of the high country trout streams that haunt and soothe me are located. Neither is this some great quest or sojourn, nor a chronicle of some ambitious pilgrimage, angling or any other ... It’s a look at life, its losses and joys, its tragedies and happinesses, what is lost in a life and what is found ... I began going into the Great Smoky Mountains and into the nearby Slickrock Wilderness and Snowbird Mountains more than a decade ago. I was on my way to West Virginia and got side-tracked. Lucky me ... For years I have tried unsuccessfully to abandon this peculiar need of mine for mountains, for high country and trout streams, for the economy of life that seems to follow a steady rise in altitude. It’s a serious malady, a vexing obsession ... The mountain I live on rises 1,100 feet above a narrow valley spreading to the south ... On good days, days when the air is not thick with the heavy, gray clouds of smog rising up from every city between central Alabama, Atlanta, and Knoxville, I am sure, quite sure that I can look out this window and see all the way to Tennessee and beyond, all the way to the high dome-shaped peaks of the Smoky Mountains, mountains that appear briefly in the bright light as though they are momentary illusions ....

The day I set up camp [on Hazel Creek] I purposely ignored a wide pool of alluring water just downstream from the small rise above the creek bank where I put up the blue tent ... It was a stretch of water worth saving, for tomorrow or the next day, or a morning such as this ... I sat alone on the big stone by the tent. The rod was ready, as was the angler, and the creek ran fast and cold. Daylight widened along the creek, giving a flat shine to the stones and the damp ground littered with a chaos of fallen leaves heaped by the wind into low swales, against outcrops of stone, in weathered coverts, ravines, and cuts, scattered like winnowed duff about the deep shadows of the forest floor. With each breath of wind the landscape shuddered, became almost liquid, a geography of colors rather than of fixed landmarks and boundaries, colors endlessly mingling one with the other .... All along the upper ridges, the thick deciduous forest glowed in the hazy autumn light. Under a press of wind, the trees and their fashion of dead, brightly colored leaves bent and swayed like great coils of undulating ribbon, bolts of warm, rich color.

Sitting on a large, flat, comfortable stone, I took a No. 18 Royal Wulff from my small metal fly box, examined it carefully, decided it looked too well kept, too tidy, too much the imposter to entice a fish as suspicious as trout, especially at this time of the morning. Instead of putting the fly through expected routine of preening, making it presentable, I intentionally mussed it up, giving it a rumpled, tacky, almost ruinous look, like an insect truly fallen on hard times and in deep trouble, a morsel ready for the taking, a temptation tied invitingly about a fine well-sharpened hook and knotted securely to nine feet of 6X leader and tippet ... Rod in hand I walk up the creek. Brittle leaves crumbled underfoot. At the instant of my first cast above and across the deep pool’s smooth dark surface ... a kingfisher across the creek squawked harshly.

George Ellison wrote the biographical introductions for the reissues of two Appalachian classics: Horace Kephart’s Our Southern Highlanders and James Mooney’s History, Myths, and Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees. In June 2005, a selection of his Back Then columns was published by The History Press in Charleston as Mountain Passages: Natural and Cultural History of Western North Carolina and the Great Smoky Mountains. Readers can contact him at P.O. Box 1262, Bryson City, N.C., 28713, or at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

Those of you who enjoy reading books about the Smokies should make an effort to locate a copy of Hidden Valley of the Smokies: With a Naturalist in the Great Smoky Mountains (Dodd, Mead & Company, 1971) by Ross E. Hutchins. It is one of more informative books yet written about the natural history of this region.

Hutchins (1912-1983) possessed a trained scientist’s mindset and powers of observation. Unlike many scientific writers, his long experience as a writer for popular magazines and books enabled him to describe the somewhat technical processes that interested him in an engaging manner.

Hutchins was born in Alder Gulch, a gold mining camp in Montana. He grew up on a cattle ranch in the high Rockies near Yellowstone National Park, never descending below 5,000 feet elevation until he was over 20 years of age. In his autobiography, Trails to Nature’s Mysteries: The Life of a Working Naturalist (1977), he reflected: “Having grown up in a mountainous area, it was perhaps inevitable that I should become attracted by the Great Smoky Mountains, the nearest one to my adopted home in the South.”

The “adopted home” was Starkville, Miss., where since the 1930s Hutchins had been professor of entomology and zoology at Mississippi State University as well as longtime director of the State Plant Board of Mississippi. He was the author of more than 40 books — all illustrated by his photographs, which were exceptional in regard to magnification of minute details.

In addition to books about seeds, dragonflies and damselflies, grasshoppers, galls and gall insects, ants and similar subjects, he wrote three excellent general accounts of natural history: Island of Adventure: A Naturalist Explores a Gulf Coast Wilderness (1968); Hidden Valley of the Smokies; and the 1977 autobiography.

It was perhaps in the mid-1960s, but exactly when Hutchins and his wife established seasonal residence at Elkmont on the Tennessee side of the national park is unclear. In Hidden Valley of the Smokies, he advises the reader: “I call it Hidden Valley with good reason; to me, that name is most descriptive of its nature. Places I love I usually designate by my own special names ... and thus named, a place becomes ‘mine.’”

While exploring “Hidden Valley” he considers topics such as seed dispersal mechanisms, the pollination tactics of various plants, skunks and “chemical warfare,” why many trees have twisted grains, medicinal and deadly plants, and more.

An entire chapter titled “Leaves in the Sun” is devoted to leaf shapes, leaf “drip tips,” leaf flight patterns, leaf volume and the special “voice” each tree possesses — it is a veritable tour de force of leaf lore. After reading Hutchins on leaves, you’ll never look at a leaf the same way again. Here are some excerpts:

“Leaves, seemingly in infinite number, festoon the trees and herbaceous plants of the valley, and one afternoon I wondered how many there actually were. My first thought was that it would be impossible to make even a wild guess. Yet when I considered the matter, it occurred to me that by calculating the number of leaves per square foot — not an impossible task — I might arrive at some reasonable figure ... In any case, I decided to attempt an estimate of the number of leaves — on both trees and herbaceous plants — on an acre of ground in Hidden Valley. I imagined a column, one square foot in area, reaching upward from the earth to the tops of the trees and estimated the number of leaves within it. A month later, after the leaves had fallen from the trees, I made several counts of dead leaves on the ground and obtained an average. The conclusion was that on each square foot there had been an average of about two hundred living leaves. The conifers — hemlocks and pines — ignored, since I could not decide how to classify their needles ... From the above figure I determined that on each acre of ground there had been 8,712,000 leaves. Carrying my calculations even farther, assuming there to be about six square miles in the valley, I found that there had been about 33,454,080,000 leaves ...

“Abundant as are the leaves of these forests, each one has its own individual form and structure; no two, even on the same tree or plant, are exactly alike .... Why, you may ask, are there such variations in leaf shapes? The answer is not at all simple. Some leaves have pointed, downwardly directed tips that facilitate the runoff of rain water, eliminating the water before it can injure the leaves by inducing the growth of fungi or by focusing the rays of sunlight upon the leaves’ delicate tissues. In the forest there are many examples of leaves with drip tips. On the other hand, many leaves are ovate in form, having no adaptations for the rapid elimination of water ...

“The subject of drip tips is an illusive one and I hesitate to generalize too much. Drip tips must have value; otherwise not so many leaves would be equipped with such a mechanism. I recall that the buckskin jacket of the American Indians and early trappers were almost always fringed. These fringes, contrary to the usual assumption, were not merely decorative; in effect they were drip tips, aiding water to drip off quickly, without soaking the remainder of the clothing ....

“Seated here on a boulder this mid-October afternoon, I watch the falling leaves sailing down like gayly colored confetti and marvel at the miraculous autumn season, and the indiscriminate array of colors around me ... Usually I can identify a leaf by the way it falls, although the shape in which it dries before falling from the tree also influences the path it follows. In general, maple trees spiral downward, following a helical path; oak leaves zigzag in their descent, swinging from side to side in hurried movements; the leaves of the sycamores settle gracefully down, exhibiting but little lateral movement and do not spin. (Sycamore leaves remind me of small, inverted parachutes.) Willow leaves, slender and lanceolate in form, have a most characteristic manner of all; they spin rapidly on horizontal axes. I am sure I could classify each kind of tree leaf by the way it falls. Each one by its shape is governed by the complexities of its aerodynamics.

“Against the background sounds of the roaring stream in Hidden Valley is the music of the forest, the multitudinous voices of the trees as the wind blow through them. There is the soft but audible breath of the breeze in the pines and the hemlocks, and the sonorous tones of the broad-leafed trees. Never is there complete silence in the valley, and often, while alone there, I imagine that each tree has its own special ‘voice.’”

George Ellison wrote the biographical introductions for the reissues of two Appalachian classics: Horace Kephart’s Our Southern Highlanders and James Mooney’s History, Myths, and Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees. In June 2005, a selection of his Back Then columns was published by The History Press in Charleston as Mountain Passages: Natural and Cultural History of Western North Carolina and the Great Smoky Mountains. Readers can contact him at P.O. Box 1262, Bryson City, N.C., 28713, or at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

Biologist and ecologist Robert Zahner (1923-2007) was born in Summerville, S.C., and grew up in Atlanta. But his adopted “spiritual home” was the elevated plateau on the southeastern cusp of the Blue Ridge where Highlands is situated.

Through the years, the Highlands Plateau has attracted some of this nation’s finest naturalists, biologists, ornithologists and ecologists, starting with the French botanical explorer Andre Michaux during the late 18th century. But the name attached to the region today as much as any other is Bob Zahner’s. Unlike most of the others, he didn’t just pass through or come for a season of field studies. Along with his wife, fellow biologist and constant companion, Glenda, he came to stay.

Even in condensed summary, Zahner’s professional career was distinguished. After serving in the U.S. Army air corps during World War II, he received his bachelor’s (botany), master’s (forestry) and Ph.D. (Ecology) degrees from Duke University. From 1953-1959, he was a research scientist for the U.S. Forest Service. From 1959-1974, he was a professor of forest botany and ecology at the University of Michigan. From 1974-1979, he was a self-employed consultant in conservation biology in Highlands. From 1980-1990, he was a professor of forest ecology at Clemson University. And from 1990-1999, he was again a self-employed consultant in conservation biology based in Highlands.

Bob Zahner was fun to be with. He was a ready source of precise information imparted in a low-key manner, but he was also a good listener. He saw the natural world through scientifically trained eyes and the eyes of a nature enthusiast.

Requested to do so, Glenda Zahner provided these “Biographical Notes on Bob Zahner”:

“Bob grew up as a rich kid in the Buckhead section of Atlanta. His family spent summers in Highlands, at their cabin on Lake Sequoia, and, later on, on Billy Cabin Mountain. Bob considered Highlands his true home; his spiritual home; a refuge from Atlanta society; with freedom to be himself and be close to nature. He loved hiking in the mountains and the forests. This is where he got his inspiration to become a forest ecologist.

“For as long as I can remember, Bob always said he wanted to retire to Highlands; to the little cabin he built after being discharged from the army air corps while awaiting admission to Duke University on the G.I. Bill.

“Bob’s ‘retirement’ came much sooner than either of us expected. In 1973 his parents decided to give the Highlands property to Bob and his brother, since they felt we were already ‘buying’ his inheritance by paying the taxes and making the mortgage payments.

“Bob was at the peak of his academic career: chairman of the forestry department, with a very productive teaching and research program and a possible candidate for dean of the School of Natural Resources. However, he was unhappy about having more and more administrative duties leaving him less time for the research and teaching that he loved and did so well.

“Within a week after we became owners of the property in Highlands, Bob resigned his position at the University of Michigan and we prepared to make Highlands our full-time residence. Friends, family and colleagues were stunned by our decision. We, ourselves, never struggled with the decision. It was as though we were ‘called’ there, but didn’t yet know why or for what purpose.

“Soon after we arrived we discovered that destructive forces were at work in the forests that Bob loved. Fifty years after the Weeks Act was passed, our National Forest was ripe again for cutting, and the clear-cuts were enormous. (It seems the timber industry was telling Congress and the forest service how much timber it wanted and that, rather than “best management practices” determined the quota.) It was totally unsustainable, and for Bob, it was heartbreaking to see what was happening in the Nantahala National Forest surrounding Highlands. From every mountaintop huge clear-cuts could be seen like pockmarks on the landscape throughout the national forest. On the ground it was devastating ....

“We decided to form a local ‘watchdog’ group to monitor forest service publication of planned timber sales on the Highlands district. This group became the Highlands Chapter of the Western North Carolina Alliance, and worked diligently on the ‘Cut the Clear-cutting’ campaign.

“Bob eschewed confrontation, but he excelled in diplomacy and had a real talent for finding common ground. He was effective in dealing with the forest service because he treated everyone with respect, including those with whom he disagreed, and he had the weight of good sound science behind him. He pointed out that to the timber industry, the term ‘sustainability’ meant sustainable timber harvest, while, to the environmental community, it refers to sustainable forest ecosystems . . .

“Bob introduced the term ‘benign neglect’ as a forest management tool, arguing that the value of a live tree on the stump continues to increase with age as it functions within the ecosystem, providing habitat, sequestering carbon and adding biomass. And he wrote a significant paper defining the characteristics of ‘old growth,’ which has been of immense help in determining stands that are in need of protection.

“Bob’s love for the land was not limited to the forest. He loved Highlands like he was a native son, which motivated him to write a book, The Mountain At The End Of The Trail, about the relationship between the town of Highlands and the iconic mountain that figures so prominently in the town’s history.

“The book is also about Bob’s own relationship with the mountain. Bob was a scientist of international repute, with scores of scientific peer-reviewed research publications to his credit. His first attempt at writing was dry, and empirical in style. I advised him to start all over and write from his heart, and the next draft was heartfelt and personal, even passionate.”

The Mountain at the End of the Trail: A History of Whiteside Mountain is both scientific and personal, a graceful blend of restrained yet “heartfelt” nature writing.

George Ellison wrote the biographical introductions for the reissues of two Appalachian classics: Horace Kephart’s Our Southern Highlanders and James Mooney’s History, Myths, and Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees. In June 2005, a selection of his Back Then columns was published by The History Press in Charleston as Mountain Passages: Natural and Cultural History of Western North Carolina and the Great Smoky Mountains. Readers can contact him at P.O. Box 1262, Bryson City, N.C., 28713, or at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

Naturalist, photographer and writer Edwin Way Teale (1899-1980) was born in Joliet, Ill.

American nature writing in descriptive prose inevitably flows from Henry David Thoreau, that insistent observer of the commonplace. John Burroughs, his 19th century follower, was the first professional nature writer in America, and he remains one of the most pleasurable to read. Then there is that forgotten gem of outdoor ruminations, Walt Whitman’s Specimen Days. By the end of the century, John Muir had introduced a sense of urgency concerning the need for preservation. Aldo Leopold, Joseph Wood Krutch, Edwin Way Teale, Edward Abbey, Gary Snyder, Annie Dillard and a few others extended that major tradition of American nature writing into the twentieth century.

Somewhat overlooked in recent years in favor of those writers whose primary interest lies in rendering their psychological reactions, Teale was one of the most gifted and influential nature writers of his era. Always methodical in regard to preparation, he was consistently able to locate significant interactions as they were occurring in the natural world and record what he was seeing in his notebooks. In his books, these events were set forth in an unvarnished yet memorable style that appealed to the common reader and the specialist alike. He intuited that experiencing nature either firsthand or via the written word was essential — that it filled “a deep need of the human heart.”

The son of a railroad mechanic and a school teacher who had emigrated from England, Teale dated his interest in nature to summer vacations at his maternal grandfather’s farm, “Lone Oak,” in the dune country of northern Indiana. In 1918, he entered Earlham College, a Quaker institution in Richmond, Ind., and studied English literature. After graduating in 1922, he married an Earlham classmate, Nellie Donovan, who became his constant companion as they crisscrossed the United States and Great Britain.

Near Horizons won the John Burroughs Medal for distinguished nature writing in 1943. His memoirs Dune Boy: The Early Years of a Naturalist (1943); The Lost Woods (1945), Days without Time (1948) and A Naturalist Buys an Old Farm (1974) have become natural history classics. Springtime in Britain (1970) is an absorbing account of his travels with Nellie through England, Scotland and Wales that covered 11,000 miles to places associated with the great figures in English nature writing: Gilbert White, William Cobbett, Dorothy and William Wordsworth, W.H. Hudson, Richard Jefferies, and others.

Teale’s most famous books consist of a quartet on the four seasons that he and Nellie traveled throughout the United States for nearly 20 years to research: North With Spring: A Naturalist’s Record of a 17,000 Mile Journey with the North American Spring (1951); Autumn Across America: A Naturalist’s Record of a 20,000-Mile Journey Through the North American Autumn (1956); Journey Into Summer: A Naturalist’s Record of a 19,000 Mile Journey Through the North American Summer (1960) and Wandering Through Winter: A Naturalist’s Record of a 20,000 Mile Journey Through the North American Winter (1965).

Wandering Through Winter was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for General Non-fiction in 1966 — but, in reality, the award recognized the literary accomplishment the entire series represented.

The spring journey from the Everglades to Maine took place in 1948. It carried the Teales through Western North Carolina from Pearson’s Falls Glen near Tryon to Highlands and up into the Great Smokies to Silers Bald and Mt. LeConte. Teale explained in the opening pages that they had been planning such a journey — “seeing, firsthand, the long upward northward flow of the season” — for many years:

“But obligations and responsibilities pushed the dream unrealized before us. Season followed season and year followed year. And while we waited, the world changed and we changed with it. The spring trip was something we looked forward to during the terrible years of World War II, during the strain and grief of losing David, our only son, in battle. [All of the books in the quartet are ‘Dedicated to / DAVID / who traveled with / Us in Our Hearts.’] When we talked over our plans with friends we discovered that our dream was a universal dream. They, too, had beguiled themselves, on days when winter seemed invincible, with thoughts of lifting anchor and, leaving everyday responsibilities behind, drifting north with the spring.”

Anyone interested in this region’s natural history will want to read North With Spring.

George Ellison wrote the biographical introductions for the reissues of two Appalachian classics: Horace Kephart’s Our Southern Highlanders and James Mooney’s History, Myths, and Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees. In June 2005, a selection of his Back Then columns was published by The History Press in Charleston as Mountain Passages: Natural and Cultural History of Western North Carolina and the Great Smoky Mountains. Readers can contact him at P.O. Box 1262, Bryson City, N.C., 28713, or at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

Editor’s note: George Ellison is on sabbatical this week and will return next week. This is a previously published column.

As I write this on Monday morning, we’ve just had our initial hard frost of the year here in Swain County. For the first time in seven or so months, I had to dig around and find my windshield scraper. While scraping away at the windshield with nearly frozen hands, I heard the birds in our backyard calling to one another as they trundled back and forth from the shrubbery to the feeders. They seemed excited that cold weather was finally arriving.

Because most birds seem so delicate and vulnerable, many of us go out of our way to feed those that overwinter here in the mountains. This no doubt helps maintain bird populations at a higher level than would otherwise be the case. But our feathered friends long ago devised basic strategies for withstanding wind and cold which are both effective and ingenious.

For the most part, it’s the insect-eating birds that migrate south. Those that stay behind are either seed eaters or insect eaters that have perfected techniques that allow them to extract morsels hidden behind and between the bark of trees, as do woodpeckers and nuthatches.

It’s not difficult to observe birds preening themselves with their bills and feet to carefully clean, rearrange, and oil their feathers. They do so, in part, to maintain flight capabilities, but in winter the process is essential for heat regulation. Birds have a “preen gland” located on their rumps just below the upper tail feathers. Oil squeezed from this gland is rubbed over the body as a waterproofing agent.

Birds have more than 25 percent more feathers in winter than during the summer months. Growing beneath the large, outer flight feathers are tiny, tuft-like, down feathers that provide one of the world’s most effective heat traps. It’s the same stuff humans have adapted for use in hats, coats, and other cold-weather apparel.

When fluffed and preened into position, these feathers trap a layer of warm air next to the bird’s body that prohibits the loss of body heat. At night or when it’s really cold during daylight hours, birds tuck their heads back under their body feathers into this warm-air source. This head-tucking technique allows them to breathe pre-warmed air and further cut down on energy expenditure.

What about their bare legs? You’ve no doubt observed birds standing one-legged on a bare branch. The seemingly missing appendage was lifted up beneath the lower feathers into that warm-air zone. The exposed leg was protected by a physical adaptation ornithologists call the “counter-current heat exchange system.” Via this system, leg arteries and veins are placed side by side so that heat in the arteries coming directly from the heart warms the chilled blood in the veins and keeps the lower extremities unfrozen. Unlike my hands, beaver tails, whale fins, and many other types of exposed animal limbs are protected in this fashion.

Making it through the night is the most challenging task facing birds during the winter months. Like humans, birds shiver involuntarily as a warming reflex, and when all else fails they, like humans, huddle and snuggle together. Finches, sparrows, crows, jays, and doves roost in dense conifers to reduce heat loss. Species such as brown creepers, white-breasted nuthatches, winter wrens, and bluebirds sometimes join one another in bird boxes or tree cavities.

There are birds in other parts of the world that actually hibernate like woodchucks, snakes, and other animals. Here in the Smokies region, the chickadee is the bird that comes closest to utilizing hibernation as a technique. This process — which is called either “controlled hypothermia” or “overnight hibernation” — reduces the rate of heat loss from a chickadee by reducing the temperature difference between the bird’s body and the surrounding air. Shivering is stopped so that body temperature drops until a level of hypothermia is reached. On a really cold night, a chickadee can allow its temperature to drop up to 12 degrees, resulting in a large overnight energy savings. The only problem is waking up quickly enough from this torpid state when a predator happens along.

George Ellison wrote the biographical introductions for the reissues of two Appalachian classics: Horace Kephart’s Our Southern Highlanders and James Mooney’s History, Myths, and Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees. In June 2005, a selection of his Back Then columns was published by The History Press in Charleston as Mountain Passages: Natural and Cultural History of Western North Carolina and the Great Smoky Mountains. Readers can contact him at P.O. Box 1262, Bryson City, N.C., 28713, or at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

Arthur Stupka (1905-1999) was the first naturalist in the National Park Service in the eastern United States. That was at Arcadia National Park in Maine, shortly before he became chief naturalist in the newly founded Great Smoky Mountains National Park. He held that position for 25 years before becoming the official park biologist for another four years. Upon “retiring,” he continued to write and conduct natural history workshops — his uniquely styled, leisurely paced but intensely informative talks, walks and tours — until the time of his death. During a career that spanned nearly seven decades, he came into contact with hundreds of thousands of people from all walks of life and enhanced their relationship with the natural world.

According to Rose Houk’s “The Golden Years of Arthur Stupka” (Smokies Life Magazine, vol. 2, 2008) — a groundbreaking and sensitive profile of his life and work that focuses on the nature journals he kept most of his life — he earned his undergraduate and masters degrees at Ohio State University. After taking the position as ranger-naturalist in Yosemite National Park in 1931, he moved the following year to Arcadia, where he spent three years on the Maine coast as park naturalist.

Margaret Lynn Brown noted in The Wild East: A Biography of the Great Smoky Mountains (2000) that after arriving in the Great Smokies in 1935, Stupka met with J. Ross Eakin, the first superintendent of the national park. Eakin, then preoccupied with overseeing Civilian Conservation Corps projects, exclaimed: “’I don’t need a naturalist because I don’t want any more visitors [until construction is finished].’” And so Eakin advised Stupka to get acquainted with the park: “’This is your baby,’” he said. Stupka spent four years hiking, observing, recording, building the park’s natural history collection, and making connections with scientists before he offered a single public hike or evening program.

Stupka’s energy and methodology attracted the attention of countless scientists and their students who came to the Great Smokies on an annual basis to study and categorize its natural assets. Fellow naturalists such as Edwin Way Teale, James Fisher and Roger Tory Peterson also called on him for assistance when visiting the national park.

It was my good fortune to meet Stupka in the early 1970s at the Hemlock Inn near Bryson City, where, after his “retirement” in 1964, he spent parts of every year as the guest of innkeepers John and Ella Jo Shell. We didn’t become intimate friends, but we always had topics of mutual interest to discuss whenever we met. And on several occasions we went for walks in park areas adjacent to Bryson City. At the inn he was a magnetic draw for those interested in natural history in general and in the flora, fauna, geology and natural areas of the national park in particular. His slide programs, nature walks and motor tours were legendary.

Like all close observers of the natural world, Arthur didn’t hurry. He sort of moseyed along — almost, at times, at a snail’s pace. He was interested in just about everything that came into view, from lichens and liverworts to toads and hawks. Unless asked, he never had much to say. But when queried, he became a memorable source of information delivered in a crisp, exacting manner.

Arthur was especially protective of the park’s flora. He summed up the lure of the annual Spring Wildflower Pilgrimage held in Gatlinburg, Tenn., each year this way: “Vegetation is to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park what granite domes are to Yosemite, geysers are to Yellowstone and sculptured pinnacles are to Bryce Canyon National Park.”

His literary output on the flora and fauna of the national park included books devoted to birds, amphibians and woody plants (trees, shrubs and vines). These aren’t identification guides but detailed observations on each plant or animal species as to habitat, seasonal variation and distribution — all based on his careful journal entries or, occasionally, upon observations made by fellow naturalists he trusted.

Arthur was for the most part, in my experience, a reticent man, but he would from time to time express his deep emotional attachment to the natural world in an almost poetic manner. This is most apparent in a sweeping chronicle, “Through the Year in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Month by Month,” he contributed to a volume of essays by various writers titled The Great Smokies and the Blue Ridge (1943). Before launching into his chronicle, Arthur paused to remind the reader in characteristic fashion that, “So omnipotent are nature’s rhythms that any vagaries she may have, if studied carefully enough and over a sufficiently long period of time, will turn out to be orderly enough in the long run.” Here are some excerpts:

“It was a warm day in early March and I was out rambling through the Sugarlands Valley of the Park. (Many Park visitors are acquainted with this long and narrow area which is marked by Chimneys Campground at its upper end and the Administration building at its lower reaches.) The spice bush and shrub yellowroot were in bloom near the stream and the first of the violets appeared in the woodlands. Anglewing, mourning cloak, and the little spring azure butterflies were on the wing, tiger beetles hurried before me in the old road, land fence lizards made for cover here and there. Suddenly the angry cries of a few crows attracted my attention, and, after making way to the foot of the pine-and oak-covered slope from whence the disturbance came, I made out the form of a great horned owl in a tall pine near the very crest of the ridge ...

Since the great horned owl is one of the earliest of the birds to nest, I made my way to the top of the ridge hoping, perchance, to come upon the structure, but before I had taken many steps the bird disappeared into the forest, and my quest proved fruitless. However, on making my way back to the valley, the unexpected discovery of the first trailing arbutus flowers of the year brought ample reward. For me these white and pinkish waxy blooms, as delightful in their fragrance as they are humble in their growth (“gravelweed,” the mountain people call the plant), always serve to mark a significant period in the chronicle of the year ...

Somber habiliments appear to be the lot of mankind in his old age, yet the mellowing year marks its period of decline with a pageantry of hues so varied that it is as Walt Whitman said of the sundown, enough to make a colorist go delirious. Here in the forests of the Smokies, where well over a hundred kinds of native deciduous trees are to be found, the spectacle challenges description; the writer feels humbled and gropes for words ...

Like the crow and the jay, to which he is related, the raven is much more in evidence in October than during the summer months. Against the background of an October sky, I have seen as many as nine of these splendid wary birds together at one time. Occasionally they leave their favored haunts in the higher mountains and appear singly or in pairs at the lower altitudes. Such invasions, however are often contested by the lowland crows who harass the bigger bird much as they do the various hawks and owls. A strong flier, the raven is capable of remarkable performances on the wing. Once, in March, while at Collins Gap, high up on the crest of the Smokies, I watched what may have been a mated pair come into view. Flying side by side, the two performed a series of thrilling acrobatics involving dipping, sailing, rolling (head foremost, as well as sideways), plunging — all executed simultaneously and in the most finished manner. On occasions they uttered a few low notes. A third raven who came upon the scene was disregarded. Through all their evolutions there was nothing which might be interpreted as an act of animosity between them. For fully five minutes I had them in good view. Once they tumbled down together into the dense forest below. Finally I lost them when, in a series of power dives, they disappeared from sight far below.

George Ellison wrote the biographical introductions for the reissues of two Appalachian classics: Horace Kephart’s Our Southern Highlanders and James Mooney’s History, Myths, and Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees. In June 2005, a selection of his Back Then columns was published by The History Press in Charleston as Mountain Passages: Natural and Cultural History of Western North Carolina and the Great Smoky Mountains. Readers can contact him at P.O. Box 1262, Bryson City, N.C., 28713, or at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

I have nothing to add to Gary Carden’s perceptive review of Horace Kephart’s posthumous novel Smoky Mountain Magic (Great Smoky Mountains Association, 2009) that appeared in last week’s “Smoky Mountain News.” I do, however, have a query regarding Bob Barnett, the real life model for one of the major characters — Tom Burbank. Burbank is the mountaineer who saves the hero, John Cabarrus, from sure death in a cavern supposedly “located” in the Nicks Nest watershed on Deep Creek above Bryson City. I place “located” in quotation marks because I doubt that such a cavern actually exists along that creek. Kephart more than likely had in mind one of the caverns situated in the Nantahala Gorge, which he “moved” a few miles eastward to suit his purposes.

Although I have written about Kephart since the mid-1970s, the importance of Barnett in his life and work hadn’t fully dawned on me until last month while writing the introduction for Smoky Mountain Magic. I have become quite interested in finding out what I can about Robert L. Barnett and would appreciate hearing from anyone with additional information. Here’s a summary from the introduction of what I know as of now:

In 1904, Kephart secured permission from a copper mining company that had gone into litigation to use one of its abandoned cabins on “the Little Fork of the Sugar Fork of Hazel Creek” in the present day Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Barnett was Kephart’s closest friend during the Hazel Creek years (1904-1907) and on into the early 1920s. Although Barnett was the younger man by 18 years, Kephart admired him tremendously. In a “Roving with Kephart” column published in “All Outdoors” magazine in 1921, he described a recent visit:

“He was the big, fat Bob who figures in ‘Camping and Woodcraft’ and ‘Our Southern Highlanders.’ He came years ago, to the old mine site where I’d been living alone with the bobcats and hoot-owls, and became caretaker for the company that had possession. It was an abandoned place — that is, no one ever lived there — and I welcomed a neighbor. Soon I shifted quarters to his house. We lived together, in various necks of the woods, for several years. Bob is now at Aquone, N.C., on the upper Nantahala, where he keeps open house for all comers.”

In Camping and Woodcraft (1906), Kephart credited Barnett as being “one of the best woodsmen in this country, a man so genuinely a scholar in his chosen lore that he could well afford to say, as once he did to me: ‘I’ve studied these woods and mountains all my life, Kep, like you do your books, and I don’t know them all yet, no sirree.’”

Many of the dialect witticisms entered in Kephart’s journals (now housed at Western Carolina University) were originally uttered by Barnett: “Bob whittled Old Pete Laney’s store-bought axe-handle for him and remarked: ‘Thar! I’ll see that Pete’ll have a decent axe-handle fer his women-folks to chop wood with, anyhow.’”

In the “Back of Beyond” chapter of Our Southern Highlanders, when the two friends were stymied by the marauding tactics of a “slab-sided tusky old boar” (which Kephart has christened “Belial,” after one of Dante’s devils), Bob remarked in frustration: “That Be-liar would cross hell on a rotten rail to get in my ‘tater patch!”

The years after Kephart left the Great Smokies in 1907 until he returned in 1910 have been more or less a mystery. A letter recently archived at Western Carolina University from Kephart to Louis Hampton, a friend who still lived on Hazel Creek, provides additional information as to his whereabouts and activities. It is dated Oct. 5, 1909, and addressed from Lindale, Georgia (near Rome), where he was living with the Barnett family. Kephart advised Hampton that he had been “to Dayton to look after my father who was very sick [and] died a year ago. Then I went to New York and Pennsylvania, and back to Dayton, and finally came down here two weeks ago. I will stay with the Barnetts until spring, and then take a long trip through the mountains from Georgia to Virginia and Kentucky, taking photographs for my books.” In closing, he observed that, “Bob has a good job and a nice home. I have plenty of writing to do, and am saving money to buy a place in the Smokies. The Barnetts have a girl baby. She is a pretty little thing, but has one bad habit, for she pisses in my lap every day. Bob is fatter than ever, and his wife is quite stout. My own health is good.”

While in Lindale, Kephart was no doubt consulting with “Mistress Bob” — as he usually referred to Barnett’s wife — who was renowned for her backcountry culinary skills. His little volume “Camp Cookery,” published in 1910, was dedicated: “To Mistress Bob, who taught me some clever expedients of backwoods cookery that are lost arts wherever the old forest has been leveled.” She reappeared in the expanded edition of Camping and Woodcraft, wherein Kephart described with obvious delight “a mess of greens of her own picking ... an olla podrida ... cooked together in the same pot, with a slice of pork” that resulted in a ‘wild salat,’ as she called it.” And in Smoky Mountain Magic she emerged yet again as the model for Tom Burbank’s wife, Sylvia (“Sylvy”) Burbank.

Kephart returned to the Great Smokies early in 1910. He chose not to settle on Hazel Creek. The W.M. Ritter Company had begun operations there and was in the process of running a railway spur, the Smoky Mountain Railroad, up the watershed. It would not be the same. Instead, he stayed for a while, yet again, with the Barnett family, who had moved from Georgia to “the last house up Deep Creek.” This house was situated at the Bryson Place about 10 miles north of Bryson City—precisely where the Burbank family resides in Smoky Mountain Magic.

By the early 1920s, Kephart was settled in Bryson City and the Barnetts had moved to Aquone, a remote community in Macon County about 30 miles west of Bryson City. Barnett passed away in 1934, when he was 54 years old, and was buried near Mars Hill, North Carolina. It’s unlikely that Kephart admired or valued any of his friends more than he did Bob Barnett — not even George Masa, the Japanese photographer with whom he also formed a special bond.

George Ellison wrote the biographical introductions for the reissues of two Appalachian classics: Horace Kephart’s Our Southern Highlanders and James Mooney’s History, Myths, and Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees. In June 2005, a selection of his Back Then columns was published by The History Press in Charleston as Mountain Passages: Natural and Cultural History of Western North Carolina and the Great Smoky Mountains. Readers can contact him at P.O. Box 1262, Bryson City, N.C., 28713, or at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

Western Carolina University biologist Jim Costa traces his interest in insect societies to studies of social interactions of caterpillars made while an undergraduate at the State University of New York at Cortland, an interest that deepened as he worked on master’s and doctoral degrees at the University of Georgia. Currently executive director of the Highlands Biological Station and a long-time research associate in entomology at Harvard’s Museum of Comparative Zoology, he has studied insect social behavior in the southern Appalachians, Mexico, and Costa Rica.

For most people, including many trained biologists, the term “insect society” conjures up images of beehives, ant colonies, wasp nests, termite mounds, etc.; that is, structured societies characterized by precise and often elaborate divisions of labor. In “The Other Insect Societies” (Harvard University Press, 2006) — a groundbreaking study of lasting significance — Costa contends that evolutionary biologists have long ignored the diverse, if less elaborate, social arrangements existing among other insects. In 767 densely-packed pages illustrated with drawings by his wife Leslie Costa and numerous photographs, he examines social phenomena from the worlds of the beetles and bugs, caterpillars and cockroaches and sawflies and spiders, demonstrating that many of them exhibit degrees of social interaction and subtle interdependencies that can be both sophisticated and intriguing.

The non-academic reader of “The Other Insect Societies” will find much therein of general interest expressed in a lively manner. But the real gem of natural history writing in “The Other Insect Societies” is tucked away — “hidden way” might be a more apt description — on pages 717-720. Therein, as his long book is winding down, Costa suddenly shifts from the scientific to the poetic and serves up a remarkable closing passage of lyrical homage titled “Coda: Sociality in an Appalachian Spring.”

I was so struck by “Coda” I asked Jim if I could include it in volume two (1900-2009) of an anthology of nature writing from Western North Carolina titled “High Vistas,” which will be published later this year by The History Press. Requested to do so, he provided (via email) an interesting recollection as to how “Coda” came to be:

“I chuckled a bit when you asked about my personal reflections on how I happened to write that ‘Coda’ for TOIS; it came about in an unexpected manner. I had largely finished revising the main body of the text and had been mulling over in my mind how best to end the book. I had several false starts with what you might call a ‘conventional’ conclusion or afterword; each time I would get partway through and realize that I was just rehashing material and arguments already laid out nicely in the book — a pointless exercise. I was half-inclined to just end with the final taxonomic chapter, on arachnids, but I had the gnawing feeling that the book really needed better closure than that. That was the state of my thoughts when I reported for jury duty in Sylva. I usually have a notebook with me to jot down thoughts and ideas, and jury duty involves, as I’m sure you know, lots of waiting. I was selected for service as an alternate juror ... and on the first full day, sequestered away with a bunch of other jurors while waiting for something or other, it suddenly came to me, as I looked out the window on the lovely mountain scenery, that a wonderful way to end the book was to somehow show that the fascinating insects I had just lengthily written about could be observed virtually anywhere — they were all around us, if people would only look. They weren’t confined to some exotic locale; any interested person, just about any place, could find innumerable examples of those neat critters. Almost immediately I hit on the device of an imaginary hike around our mountains, showing how many examples of sociality could be found overhead and underfoot, in meadow, woods, and creeks all around us. I wrote that ‘Coda’ in a single burst of insight; I started writing furiously in that jury room lest the idea somehow slip away, and in less than an hour I had the essay completely written. It just naturally flowed from my pencil; I later edited a little when typing it up, but it ended up very close to what I had written initially. My editor loved it and didn’t want to change a word, which was welcome news to me! I felt immensely pleased with it, because I felt the book ended on a very personal note that resonated with my fundamental motive for studying these insects to begin with — a sense of the beauty and wonder of the natural world. Many scientists were naturalists first, often as kids, and hopefully never lose that spark of wonderment at nature. I realized later that the ‘Coda’ in TOIS was that sense of beauty and wonder seeking an outlet in an otherwise rather academic volume.”

The full text of “Coda: Sociality in an Appalachian Spring” is over 1,500 words in length. Here are some excerpts:

“Springtime in Appalachia is justly celebrated for its astounding explosion of wildflowers. Aaron Copland’s 1944 composition ‘Appalachian Spring’ evokes the beauty, majesty, and prolific exuberance of nature in these thickly forested mountains, endless chains that were already ancient when the dinosaurs walked the continent. Let us set out on a hike on a fine late spring morning, through cove forests and over upland ridges draped with the slowly swirling mists that give the Great Smoky Mountains their name. Here, as almost everywhere, the casual naturalist cannot help but notice the insect societies stirring all around — foraging columns of ants; spectacular mating flights of termites emerging from long-rotting logs; bumblebees packing pollen for a brood developing in a distant underground nest; paper wasps on the prowl for caterpillars, fresh meat for their grubs upside-down in their hexagon-holed nest beneath a rock ledge. These insect societies are as ubiquitous as they are fascinating, evolutionary marvels. But so, too, are the insect societies not immediately noticed, other insect societies that, unbeknownst to our fellow hikers, surround us overhead and underfoot. Let me show you just how common these oft-overlooked societies are in one time and place: May or June in the mountains where I live — Appalachian spring.

“This region of eastern North America is teeming with insect societies and those of their many arthropod cousins, in almost every corner of these wet, dripping mountains. This is land with a primeval feel, mountains clothed in a verdant flora that echoes an ancient link with Asia: towering hemlock and Liriodendron trees, large-leaved tropical-looking magnolias, and lush rhododendron crowding cove forests, with coveted ginseng and a host of other herbs carpeting the forest floor. At first glance it is hard to see the forest for the trees, but the minisocieties are there. Just look ...

“Step over the fallen tree and back into a light gap to admire those ‘Helianthus’ sunflowers so common in the mountains. Why do some have leaves that droop from the middle, was the midrib cut? Flip the leaves over, and see another drama: membracid treehopper mothers tending their eggs while keeping a wary eye on probing ants. Are the ants friend or foe? Many gregarious membracids, like aphids, are ant tended for their honeydew in exchange for protection; but some ants are predators. Other ants catch our eye on the black locust branch overhead; the swarm, it turns out, is associated with the small ‘Vanduzea’ treehopper herd near the leaf axils. We cannot hear it, but that branch is humming with vibrations from the drumming treehoppers as they call to each other, and to their ant protectors.

“Treehopper herds and family colonies are all around us here — on sunflowers, ironwoods, thistle, ragweed, and more; and many other tiny families populate the forest alongside them. At lower elevations, take a look at the common horse nettle. How many naturalists, let alone more casual hikers, realize that most are home to elegant lace bug moms that chaperone their tiny jewel-like brood as they feed from leaf to leaf? ...

“You know, of course, that insects and other animals of all kinds are busily making a living all about you in this rich Appalachian forest. But did you have any idea that overhead and underfoot, inside, beneath, and on top of virtually every tree and shrub, living and dead, this forest really consists of innumerable, tiny, polities? You need not travel to exotic locales to find fascinating insect societies, animals often as beautiful in structural intricacy, color and ornament as they are instructive to those yearning to understand the evolution of sociality.”

George Ellison wrote the biographical introductions for the reissues of two Appalachian classics: Horace Kephart’s Our Southern Highlanders and James Mooney’s History, Myths, and Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees. In June 2005, a selection of his Back Then columns was published by The History Press in Charleston as Mountain Passages: Natural and Cultural History of Western North Carolina and the Great Smoky Mountains. Readers can contact him at P.O. Box 1262, Bryson City, N.C., 28713, or at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

Let us consider the relationship between grassy balds, Tom Alexander and the self-proclaimed “Potato and Rutabaga King of Haywood County.”

Highland sites at about 5,000 feet of elevation in the Smokies region were often given over to potato farming — and rutabagas, too. An example would be Hemphill Bald, where the Cataloochee Ranch resort, riding stables, and ski slope are located above Maggie Valley and adjacent to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

Most visitors assume that these grassy meadows are a part of the naturally occurring complex of somewhat similar areas known as grassy balds. Found in the Southern Blue Ridge Province from Virginia into Georgia, grassy balds are a mysterious habitat. More ink has been spilt regarding their origins than about any other natural area in the southern mountains.

The word “bald” has several meanings, of course, but when applied to terrain it refers to the lack of “usual or natural covering”; that is, in this instance, to a virtual absence of trees where trees might otherwise be expected. There are two types of balds in the Blue Ridge: (1) grassy balds and (2) shrub or heath balds. In a true grassy bald, the terrain is primarily open, being dominated by mountain oat grass and other herbaceous species.

I suspect that at least some of the initial grassy openings were forged during the Pleistocene Epoch 20,000 or so years ago when dramatic freeze-thaw intervals involving frost heaving and soil erosion occurred. These openings were expanded and maintained by wind, dryness, cold, fire (natural and manmade, starting with the earliest Indians who penetrated the region), and grazing (by settlers’ livestock, as well as by the herds of elk, caribou, and additional grazing animals that once populated the region).

Whatever their origin, these lovely natural areas are apparently not being created at the present time; in fact, those on public lands now being “protected” from fire and grazing are increasingly being invaded by shrubs and trees. They are literally disappearing in our own time.

My guess is that the potato (and rutabaga) farms established at Gooseberry Knob and Hemphill Bald in the late 19th and early 20th centuries were found — in part at least -— where natural grassy balds had existed. It’s difficult to imagine someone venturing into what would otherwise have been a high-elevation, chestnut-dominated forest and establishing such grassy expanses without the benefit of some initial open areas. It’s possible, I suppose, but it doesn’t seem likely.

This leads us to the fellow who had the gumption to establish a vast potato (and rutabaga) empire at more than 5,000 feet along the Cataloochee Divide. His name was Verlin Campbell. He is best described by Tom Alexander Sr., in a delightful book titled Mountain Fever (Asheville: Bright Mountain Books, 1995). Tom Alexander (Mr. Tom) was the founder, along with his wife, Judy, of Cataloochee Ranch in the late 1930s. Mr. Tom died in 1972. His book was edited posthumously by his son and daughter-in law, Tom Jr. and Jane Alexander.

Mr. Tom purchased the initial Cataloochee Ranch properties from Campbell. Here are some excerpts from his description of the self-proclaimed “Potato and Rutabaga King of Haywood County.” His first encounter with Campbell was while driving up the road (if you could call it that) from Maggie Valley (where the Ghost Town parking lot is now located) to the Fie Top and Hemphill Bald areas.

“Halfway up ... I overtook a Ford roadster which had stopped to cool off and water up. The occupants turned out to be Verlin Campbell, owner of Fie Top, and his son, Kyle, who lived in town and was driving his father home.

“Verlin was a huge man, with a face reminiscent of the cartoon character Alley Oop and a voice that boomed across the gorge beside us and rolled off the ridges .... No sooner than I made myself known to this enormous man than he exploded with a startling greeting: ‘Yo’re just the man I’m alooking fer! I’ve got the finest tourist place up here in the world! I want you to see hit!”

After visiting the Campbell’s picturesque residence, Mr. Tom was taken on a tour of the area, including Ned’s Lick, a site where cows were provided salt.

“Ned’s Lick was named for their former owner, Ned Moody, from whom Verlin had acquired the property. Here was a stretch of open land blanketing the gap in the ridge and lapping down into the coves on both sides. About five acres were in beans. The rest of the forty or fifty acres of clearing was in grass except for three scattered one- or two-acre patches of potatoes and a patch of oats. The dirt was black and there were no gullies ... Verlin told me that one year he had raised 935 bushels of produce — potatoes and rutabagas — on one measure acre on top of the knoll. At the time I discounted this statement. Later after learning what that wonderful soil can do, I no longer doubt it.

“Verlin’s agricultural plan was to plow up new patches of grassland each year for his potatoes, then reseed the following spring in meadow grasses and oats. His method of planting was unorthodox. Instead of preparing his ground by plowing, harrowing, and pulverizing before putting in his seeds, he planted as he plowed ... The result was an exceedingly rough-planted hillside field, with great chunks of turf standing on edge or leaning half over. But the turf caught and held the rain, preventing runoff on those steep slopes ... Verlin relied on two-crop farming. On the last, or `lay-by’ working, tender little rutabaga plants were set out by hand between the potato rows .... When the plants were large enough, they were thinned to a stand eight to sixteen inches apart, and the surplus was then set out in additional rows.”

Campbell’s unorthodox planting methods, one might note, also maintained (albeit in a limited fashion) the grassy nature of the setting. Had he not planted in this manner very little, if any, grassland could have been maintained on such a steep slope. So, in part at least, if you connect the dots, it could be argued that potatoes and rutabagas preserved the “essence” of a natural setting created many thousands of years old.

George Ellison wrote the biographical introductions for the reissues of two Appalachian classics: Horace Kephart’s Our Southern Highlanders and James Mooney’s History, Myths, and Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees. In June 2005, a selection of his Back Then columns was published by The History Press in Charleston as Mountain Passages: Natural and Cultural History of Western North Carolina and the Great Smoky Mountains. Readers can contact him at P.O. Box 1262, Bryson City, N.C., 28713, or at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

Flowing water is as central to life here in Western North Carolina as the mountains themselves. You can’t have ancient mountains like these without the seeps, springs, branches, creeks and rivers that sculpted them.

The word “creek” — a shallow or intermittent tributary to a river — also means “any turn or winding.” The word may derive from the Old Norse “kriki,” meaning “a bend or nook.”

Bends and nooks are the essence of any creek. They are magical places where the water swirls and threads its way over and among a jumble of boulders, disappears under a cutbank, braids its way through a sluice, purls in an eddy, and glints in the winter light.

Mountain pathways almost inevitably wind down to and alongside creeks, where each bend and nook will have its own voice: the unique set of sounds that arise from the confluence of water — running at a given rate — over a particular configuration of logs and stones. We are attracted when moody or meditative to certain creeks where these sounds become voices that speak to us quite clearly.

For 30 some years now, my wife Elizabeth and I have resided beside a small creek that has its headwaters in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park just north of Bryson City. From there, it flows southward out of the park, passes through our place, enters the park again for a short stretch, and finally empties into what is the Tuckasegee River part of the year and Lake Fontana the other part. I enjoy recalling from time to time that the waters of “our” creek wind up in the Gulf of Mexico via the Tuckasegee, Little Tennessee, Tennessee, Ohio, and Mississippi river systems.

We raised our family beside this creek. Our youngest daughter and her partner live up the creek from us in a house they just completed. When our oldest daughter and her brother return home for visits, their children play in the creek, as they did. The creek is a living entity in our lives — a part of the family — the last thing we hear at night and the first thing we hear in the morning.

When I drive home from my office on the town square in Bryson City each evening, I cross the lower bridge over the Tuckasegee. I could take an alternate loop away from the river and get home quicker, but I always turn left along the river. I like watching it flow in the evening light. There are several large islands and rocky shoals. As often as not, I’ll spot a great blue heron quietly fishing one of the riffles. Turning away from the river two miles west of town, I pass over a ridge and wind down to “our” creek, which I cross one more time before reaching our place at the end of the far end of the road.

After settling in, Elizabeth and I often take a walk before supper down the creek along a trail that leads to a little waterfall, where there is a bench. We sit for a while. In recent years, the dry weather reduced the creek to a trickle — a sad shadow of its normal self. In places, it was not more than three feet in width, if that. The sounds it made were feeble. We took very little pleasure in our walks. It was almost as if we were visiting a sick friend.

But the rains that descended upon us in recent months have revived the creek. These days, it has nearly recovered. Indeed, the whole valley has, in essence, come back to life. Earlier this week as we sat there in the pale evening light, a silvery mist hovered over the water, which once gain again glistened as it poured over and around the rocks, murmuring and babbling, talking to us.

George Ellison wrote the biographical introductions for the reissues of two Appalachian classics: Horace Kephart’s Our Southern Highlanders and James Mooney’s History, Myths, and Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees. In June 2005, a selection of his Back Then columns was published by The History Press in Charleston as Mountain Passages: Natural and Cultural History of Western North Carolina and the Great Smoky Mountains. Readers can contact him at P.O. Box 1262, Bryson City, N.C., 28713, or at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

One can still see why flatlanders started pouring into the Cashiers-Highlands region after the Civil War. The scenic ridge, valley and gorge country here remains one of the most interesting areas in Western North Carolina to explore.

Some of the most exciting spots in Panthertown Valley, Blue Valley, Whiteside Cove, and the gorge systems formed by the Horsepasture, Whitewater, and other rivers can be somewhat difficult to access. Others, however, can be reached in a matter of minutes. One such is Satulah Mountain, which is located within several miles of downtown Highlands.

Atop Satulah (elevation 4,543 feet) there are panoramic views of the North Carolina mountains surrounding the Highlands plateau. Back to the northeast there’s a splendid bird’s eye view of the Whiteside Mountain cliffs, while out to the west the ridges of the Nantahala range flow northward toward the Great Smokies. On a clear day, one can discern the shimmering outlines of the lake systems in South Carolina.

Satulah is classified as a heath bald since most of the mountain top is covered with a dense — in places impenetrable — cover of heath shrubs (primarily rhododendron and laurel) as well as stunted white oak, chinquapin, and witchhazel. Foot trails cut through the tangle allow one to explore the inner-workings of the habitat.

The potholes in the rock surface are said to be evidence of a fire tower that once stood on the summit. If so, one can only envy the folks who manned the tower in such an idyllic setting.

Botanically, the rock portion of the bald and adjacent cliffs are quite interesting, providing one of the best examples of this type of summit habitat. Here one can find mats of twisted haircap moss (really a clubmoss relative rather than a moss), one of the few stands of mountain juniper in North Carolina, and sand myrtle.

In an informative book titled High Lands (1964), T.W. Reynolds stated that the mountain was “sometimes affectionately called Stooly by the natives, and spelled Stuly in the old town minutes.” Reynolds made a lengthy, convoluted, and unconvincing argument as to how the name “Satulah” may derive from the Cherokee word for “Six Killer.”

Satulah is one of those places in the North Carolina mountains associated with strange quakes, tremors, and smoke. In the late 1800s, Bureau of American Ethnology worker James Mooney collected data on sites where it was thought “volcanic activity ... left traces in the Carolina mountains.” Mooney cited areas in Madison and Rutherford counties where warm springs issued forth while peaks “rumbled and smoked.” He was told by locals that a mountain in Haywood County near the head of Fines Creek suffered an explosion that “split solid masses of granite as though by a blast of gunpowder.” In Cherokee County, a violent earthquake was thought to have “left a chasm extending for several hundred yards, which is still to be seen.”

As to Satulah (which Mooney spelled “Satoola”), the crevices on the sides of the mountain were said from time to time to issue forth smoke. Mrs. Ed Picklesimer, a resident of the Clear Creek community below Satulah, told Reynolds that, “years ago she saw smoke and light there.” If one looks through the older literature about the WNC backcountry, the occurrence of so-called “smoking mountains” is rather frequent. John P. Arthur, for instance, in his History of North Carolina (1913) located a “smoker” at the head of Bee Creek in Buncombe County.

I will note that on certain days one can view the west-facing cliffs of Satulah from Little Scaly Mountain on N.C. 106 and see “smoke” curling up out of the crevices as if the inner mountain were afire. The “smoke” is in reality, however, the mist rising out of the Clear Creek Valley that is being carried into and over Satulah by eastward winds.

Even if Satulah Mountain isn’t active in a volcanic sense, it’s still a wonderful place to visit and enjoy. For online directions and additional information regarding access see: www.highlandhiker.com/Satulah_Mountain.html and www.colonialpinesinn.com/attractions.htm

George Ellison wrote the biographical introductions for the reissues of two Appalachian classics: Horace Kephart’s Our Southern Highlanders and James Mooney’s History, Myths, and Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees. In June 2005, a selection of his Back Then columns was published by The History Press in Charleston as Mountain Passages: Natural and Cultural History of Western North Carolina and the Great Smoky Mountains. Readers can contact him at P.O. Box 1262, Bryson City, N.C., 28713, or at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

We tend to hone in on the showy flowering phase of a plant’s life for observation, identification, and enjoyment. But the greatest pleasure in coming to recognize and appreciate plants occurs when we learn to follow favorite plants from their earliest appearance as seedlings (germination) into the flowering (pollination) phase and on through the fruiting (seed dispersal) stage.

The fruiting stage is the grand finale in a plant’s life. It’s quite often conducted in a manner every bit as colorful and dramatic as anything that occurs during flowering. Many plants are, in fact, more eye-catching when fruiting than when flowering. Mountain ash, ginseng, staghorn sumac, wild yam, pawpaw, blue cohosh, pokeberry, sassafras, jimson weed, virgin’s bower, speckled wood lily, and doll’s-eyes and others fall into this category. One of my favorites is the aptly named “hearts-a-bustin’ with love,” which grows as a small shrub that is almost vine-like in rich woods, ravines, and along streams.

One scarcely notices hearts-a-bustin’ (Euonymus americanus) — also known as strawberry bush — from late April to early June, when its inconspicuous, small, greenish-purple flowers appear. At that time of the year, the plant is most easily identified by its angular, four-sided, green, artificial-looking stems, that can stand six feet tall.

The rough-textured fruits that mature in September and October and persist into mid-November are an entirely different story. Each capsule is nearly an inch in diameter and can range in color from deep pink to raspberry. When these open fully, smooth-textured seeds with scarlet or orange hues are displayed. Each plump seed remains attached firmly to the capsule. No other fruit in this part of the world exhibits such extreme variations in texture and color.

Innumerable hearts-a-bustin’ shrubs grow alongside our creek. If not, I would attempt to propagate it here and there.

Horticultural specialist Richard E. Bir noted in “Growing and Propagating Showy Native Woody Shrubs” (UNC Press, 1992) that his attempts to germinate the plant from seeds have resulted in “percentages” that “have always been low.” On the other hand, he found that “semi-hardwood cuttings root readily with no hormone treatment.” He also noted that, “Although hearts-a-bustin’ will tolerate very deep shade, it fruits best when grown in light shade with a minimum of fertilizer.”

The generic designation “Euonymus” means “good plant,” which is appropriate when applied to the pleasing, eye-catching fruits. But be aware that it isn’t a “good plant” in other ways. The seeds, leaves, bark, and twigs are reported in various sources to contain toxins that have caused the death of livestock and could result in human poisoning if ingested.

George Ellison wrote the biographical introductions for the reissues of two Appalachian classics: Horace Kephart’s Our Southern Highlanders and James Mooney’s History, Myths, and Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees. In June 2005, a selection of his Back Then columns was published by The History Press in Charleston as Mountain Passages: Natural and Cultural History of Western North Carolina and the Great Smoky Mountains. Readers can contact him at P.O. Box 1262, Bryson City, N.C., 28713, or at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

For my wife, Elizabeth, and me, winter doesn’t arrive until the first of each year. From now until spring is our finest season. She doesn’t have to keep her gallery-studio on the town square in Bryson City open all the time. And I don’t have to travel conducting workshops. We spend more time at our place west of town. Keeping the wood fires burning. Catching up with reading. Enjoying the way the pathway winds slowly downstream along the creek. Suddenly noticing a high ridge shimmering with light.

After summer’s haze and the muted tones of autumn, we’re confronted not with the gloom we tend to anticipate, but with a clarity that sharpens the senses. Some part of the effect, of course, is that there is less moisture in the air in winter. We do in reality see more clearly — so much so, that objects appear to be nearer. Have you ever noticed how much closer the mountains seem in winter? You could almost reach out and touch them. Come spring, they will recede.

In the same manner and perhaps due to the same causes, sounds become more clearly defined in winter. What are the characteristic sounds of this season? Paradoxically, they are the ones heard from a distance that seem to be nearby.

From a ridge overlooking our cove, there is a spot where I can sit in the pale early-morning sunlight beneath a rock ledge that provides shelter from the wind. If I shut my eyes, a rooster’s call or the roar of a distant chainsaw or a truck engine starting up seem to be occurring just yards away. Voices carry in the crisp air: snatches of distant conversations can be deciphered. From high overhead the strident cry of a red-tailed hawk pierces the air.

Perhaps the most characteristic sounds of winter are those created by the wind: the rustling movements of air passing through a field ... the monotonous scraping of tree limbs against one another. Or at times, you can hear a patch of icy woodlands roaring in the wind. The poet Robert Burns observed in one of his letters: “There is scarcely any earthly object gives me more — I do not know if I should call it pleasure — something which exalts me — something which enraptures me — than to walk in the sheltered side of a wood in a cloudy winter day, and hear the stormy wind howling among the trees, and raving over the plain. It is my best season of devotion.”

After a lifetime of working with paint, Elizabeth has a keen sense of the colors viewed in a natural landscape. For her, there is almost no pure white light — not even in winter.

“Look,” she will say, “at the lavender shadows on that far mountainside. And see how the clouds are reflecting the setting sun down into the valley.”

Scaled down to essentials, our earthly haven becomes more distinct, more exhilarating. It’s a time for seeing things as they are, for paying closer attention to the world about us while we can.

Happy New Year.

George Ellison wrote the biographical introductions for the reissues of two Appalachian classics: Horace Kephart’s Our Southern Highlanders and James Mooney’s History, Myths, and Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees. In June 2005, a selection of his Back Then columns was published by The History Press in Charleston as Mountain Passages: Natural and Cultural History of Western North Carolina and the Great Smoky Mountains. Readers can contact him at P.O. Box 1262, Bryson City, N.C., 28713, or at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

Each season has characteristic features that signal its arrival. Winter is no exception. Two of my winter favorites: mistletoe and sycamore.

Coon Cove — the name assigned to our valley on a late 19th century deed — is surrounded on three sides by steep ridges, the crests of which mark the boundary with the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. By the time my wife and I get home during the winter months, the evening sun is setting behind the southwestern rim of the cove. This illuminates a stand of white oaks situated along the highest ridge. Globular clusters of mistletoe decorate the bare branches, glowing with pristine intensity. It’s not difficult at that moment to comprehend why mistletoe has for so long been a green emblem of renewal.

Numerous bird species — notably cedar waxwings and bluebirds — are inordinately fond of the translucent white mistletoe berries that mature in November and December. Mistletoe seeds are coated with a sticky substance (viscin) that cause them to stick to the beaks and claws of foraging birds. Birds are tidy critters. When they pause to clean themselves on tree limbs, they unwittingly distribute mistletoe seeds from treetop to treetop throughout the woodlands. These germinate and penetrate their hosts via short root-like structures (haustorium).

Late nineteenth century anthropologist James Mooney recorded that the Cherokees noted that mistletoe “never grows alone but is found always with its roots fixed in the bark of some supporting tree or shrub from which it draws its sustenance.” And so they “called it by the name ‘uda’li,’ which signifies ‘it is married.’”

When the last leaves drop from the trees, it’s past time to get serious about winter and hope you’ve got enough firewood in place. One type of wood, however, that won’t do much in the way of providing heat is sycamore. The stuff is just about impossible to split. Axes bounce off. That’s because the grain of sycamore wood is peculiar. Indeed, everything about the woody structure of the tree is peculiar.

Wood grain is determined by the alignment of the xylem cells within a given tree species. These cells form the woody tissue that conduct water and nutrients and help support the tree. In woods that split easily, the xylem cells lie in a parallel plane. That’s why it’s such a pleasure to pile up kindling from, say, tulip poplar.

Some trees are difficult to split because their cell structures are slightly irregular or even spiraled. But sycamore takes the cake — its cells alternately spiral right-handed and then left-handed in successive years, resulting in an interlocked arrangement that has been accurately described as “an ax-wielder’s nightmare.”

The outer covering of the tree is as peculiar as its inner grain. Go to the base of most any large sycamore specimen and you’ll find bark plates that have scaled off the upper trunk and limbs. The technical term for this is “exfoliation.” Apparently the outer bark isn’t able to stretch as the tree grows and is cast off. It has been theorized, but not proven, that sycamore can gather additional light-giving energy by doing so. At any rate, serpent-like, the species sheds its “skin,” exposing whitish inner bark that catches the slanting evening light and gleams like a beacon, signaling winter.

George Ellison wrote the biographical introductions for the reissues of two Appalachian classics: Horace Kephart’s Our Southern Highlanders and James Mooney’s History, Myths, and Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees. In June 2005, a selection of his Back Then columns was published by The History Press in Charleston as Mountain Passages: Natural and Cultural History of Western North Carolina and the Great Smoky Mountains. Readers can contact him at P.O. Box 1262, Bryson City, N.C., 28713, or at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

Junaluska waterfowl are plentiful, varied

A quick turn around Lake Junaluska last Sunday revealed 13 species of waterfowl and/or wetland birds. This tiny (200-acre) clear dot nestled at 2,500 feet in the highest county east of the Mississippi River must call out to migrants seeking passage through the mountains. It will consistently turn up a dozen or more species of waterfowl from now through early spring.

The trip also pointed out how quickly birders, like myself, become jaded. That Sunday I was commiserating with a couple of other regular Junaluska birders about how “not much was going on at the lake,” that morning. But when I looked at the list a little more objectively, I realized it was a pretty diverse list. It included belted kingfisher, American coot, pied-billed grebe, double-crested cormorant, ring-billed gull, bufflehead, hooded merganser, lesser scaup and others.

I remembered having seen some postings from Stephan Pagans, a birder I know from Monroe, La., on the Birdmail listserv. The postings were from a couple of surveys along a large impoundment, D’Arbonne Lake, in north-central Louisiana. When I combined the waterfowl and wetland species from Pagans’ two stops, I tallied 11 species. Nine of the 11 were present at lake Junaluska last Sunday. The two species Pagans had that were not at Junaluska were gadwall and great egret. Both species have been recorded at Junaluska and gadwalls will be present sometime between now and spring.

That little bit of species sleuthing led me to refer to another list. I have a list of birds from Lake Junaluska prepared a few years back by Jonathan Mays before he left the area for the Great North Woods of Maine. That list, which may not even be current now, has 68 species of waterfowl, waders and kingfishers from this tiny mountain lake.

The list, which was years in the making, includes a number of rarities/oddities for a small inland lake including brown and white pelican, Ross’s goose, cackling goose, surf scoter, white-winged scoter, black scoter, willet, laughing gull, Sabine’s gull and Caspian, common, Forster’s and black tern.

The waterfowl at Junaluska will ebb and flow as fronts come and go this winter. One day in December of 2000 turned up more than 500 different waterfowl and waders composed of at least 20 different species. So if you start jonesing for waterfowl this winter before you pack the car and head for the coast, take a drive around Junaluska, you might be pleasantly surprised.

The economic destiny of a given region is ultimately determined by its geology, flora and climate. That’s certainly been the instance here in the Smokies region, where logging and mining have been supplanted as the major industries by recreation and ecotourism. A casebook example of this transition exists in the southwestern tip of North Carolina. A key figure in this story was Arthur Keith, an early twentieth century geologist who has been largely (if not totally) neglected by regional historians.

The Murphy Marble Belt is an elongated, lens-shaped mass of marble and related sedimentary materials up to three miles wide that extends in a crescent from northwestern Georgia into Cherokee and Swain counties. This lens also contains talc, limestone, soapstone, and calcareous soils. The first two materials are still mined at the Nantahala Talc and Limestone Co. in the Nantahala Gorge. But it was marble that was once the linchpin of the area’s mining interests.

Some extraction of marble took place in Swain and Cherokee counties during the 19th century. But it wasn’t until the arrival of the railroad from Asheville in the 1890s that moving the excavated blocks became economically feasible on a large scale.

Then, in the latter half of the 20th century, the marble industry declined and ultimately ceased to exist in southwestern North Carolina. It was apparently more feasible in economic terms to extract and transport marble mined in the Georgia end of the belt. At about the time the marble industry was phasing out in the early 1970s, the whitewater industry arrived on the scene. And it, too, was based on geology.

In 1904, Arthur Keith of the U.S. Geological Survey observed the abnormal, almost right-angled bend to the east that the Nantahala River makes as it enters the lower portion of the Nantahala Gorge (where the power plant and raft put-in areas are presently situated). Keith theorized that the river originally ran northward from the Georgia line directly through a water gap (just east of present Topton) into the Tulula Creek watershed in present Graham County, and on into the Little Tennessee below where Fontana Dam was built.

The situation represents a textbook instance of “stream piracy,” whereby a small creek eating back westward through the soft, limestone strata of the Murphy Marble Belt in the lower gorge captured the original Nantahala, causing it to change course and flow back to the east, thereby creating the dramatic Nantahala Gorge as we know it today. In other words, a geologic event that took place millions of years ago culminated in a regional economy that went from dependency on hard marble blocks to soft rubber rafts in less than a single generation.

Near the big bend in the Nantahala River there is a state historical marker honoring botanist William Bartram’s excursion into the region in the mid-1770s. A marker commemorating Arthur Keith’s work there in the early twentieth century would not be inappropriate. The National Academy of Sciences published Chester R. Longwell’s memoir titled Arthur Keith (1864-1944) in 1956:

“The name of Arthur Keith is inseparably connected with Appalachian geology. During most of his mature life, over a period of nearly 50 years, his chief efforts were devoted to field study, mapping, and written description of selected areas distributed from the Carolinas to Maine. Sixteen folios of the United States Geological Survey, most of them under his name alone, a few prepared jointly with other workers, are in themselves a monument to his skill and industry ... He entered Harvard in 1881 and received his bachelor’s degree in 1885 ... At Harvard he rowed in the varsity crew, was a letter man in football, and became heavyweight wrestling champion. These athletic activities hardened and trained his naturally rugged physique, and helped prepare him for the strenuous field work in which he was engaged well beyond his seventieth year. Like many others in his generation at Harvard, Keith sat under Nathaniel Southgate Shaler and was fascinated by that master’s eloquence in presenting the fundamentals of geology ... In June, 1887, he became assistant in a field party of the United States Geological Survey, and spent the summer mapping in the mountains of eastern Tennessee. That experience determined the pattern of his later life. He went to Washington at the end of the field season, and became a regular member of the Federal Survey, which was still in the first decade of its vigorous early growth. The Geological Society of America was founded a year after Keith went to Washington, and he was elected to membership in 1889 ... For several decades Keith’s geologic folios in the Southern Appalachians were accepted as models, and three contiguous sheets — the Mount Mitchell, Roan Mountain, and Bristol quadrangles — were widely used as the most satisfactory geologic cross section of the Appalachian belt. His maps published between 1891 and 1907 represent detailed study and description of nearly 15,000 square miles, largely in areas with intricate bedrock structure. For nearly 20 years Keith spent his summers contentedly in strenuous field work, his winters in writing; and his high productivity continued unbroken. But at last he consented to take part in administration, and in 1906 he became chief of the Section of Areal Geology for the entire country. This assignment soon became too demanding for one man, and in 1913 a division was made into Eastern and Western Areas, with Keith in charge of the former ... He served as President of the Geological Society of Washington; as Councilor, Vice-President, and President (1927) of the Geological Society of America; as Chairman (1928-31) of the Division of Geology and Geography, National Research Council; as Council Member and Treasurer (1932-40) of the National Academy of Sciences.”

George Ellison wrote the biographical introductions for the reissues of two Appalachian classics: Horace Kephart’s Our Southern Highlanders and James Mooney’s History, Myths, and Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees. In June 2005, a selection of his Back Then columns was published by The History Press in Charleston as Mountain Passages: Natural and Cultural History of Western North Carolina and the Great Smoky Mountains. Readers can contact him at P.O. Box 1262, Bryson City, N.C., 28713, or at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

Five skunk species are residents in the United States: hooded, hog-nosed, western spotted, eastern spotted, and striped. Only the last two reside in the Smokies region.

The striped skunk — which is black with two white stripes running up its back to form a cap on top of its head — is the one that usually comes to mind when someone starts telling skunk tales in this neck of the woods.

The spotted skunk is, in my experience, more common in the higher elevations. Sometimes referred to as a civet, it is black with a white spot on its forehead and under each ear. There are also four broken white stripes along its neck, back, and sides, as well as a white-tipped tail.

Now we get to the interesting part. When provoked, a striped skunk simply raises its tail daintily like a plume and assumes a U-shaped posture that allows its hip muscles to squeeze the odiferous fluids indiscriminately out of its anal glands.

The spotted skunk has perfected that basic strategy. When frightened or angered, it will often do a “handstand” on it front feet. This posture allows the critter to look between its legs and see where to aim the spray.

Many readers of this column will have encountered skunks in the shelters along the Appalachian Trail, especially those situated in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Long before the park was established in 1934, writer and outdoorsman Horace Kephart underwent a typical skunk “invasion.” It took place in the Hall Cabin, a hut situated smack-dab on the state line between Tennessee and North Carolina. Kephart subsequently described the incident in his book Camping and Woodcraft — first published in a single volume in 1906 but later expanded to two volumes in 1916.

He somehow identified his visitor as a female but failed to note whether it was spotted or striped. I suspect it was the latter. Be forewarned that this skunk story has a sad ending.

“Another notoriously fearless pest is the skunk. It will turn tail quickly enough, but nothing on earth will make it run. If a skunk takes it into his head to raid your camp he will step right in without any precautions whatever. Then he will nose through all of your possessions, walk over you — if you be in his way — and forty men cannot intimidate him.

Once, when I was spending the summer in a herders’ hut, on a summit of the Smoky Mountains, a skunk burrowed under the cabin wall and came up through the earthen floor. It was about midnight. My two companions slept in a pole bunk against the wall, and I had an army cot in the middle of the room. It was cold enough for an all-night fire on the hearth.

I awoke with the uneasy feeling that some intruder was moving about in the darkness. There was no noise, and my first thought was of rattlesnakes, which were numerous in that region. I sat up and lit the lantern, which hung over my head. One glance was enough.

“Boys,” I warned in a stage whisper, “for the love of God, don’t breathe; there’s a skunk at the foot of my bed!”

The animal was not in the least disconcerted by the light, but proceeded leisurely to inspect the premises. It went under my cot and nosed around there for five mortal minutes, while I lay rigid as a corpse.

Then Doc sneezed. I heard Andy groan from under his blanket: “You damn fool: now we’ll get it!”

But we didn’t. Madame Polecat waddled to their bunk, and I had a vision of two fellows sweating blood.

Then she moved over to the grub chest, found some excelsior lying beside it, and deliberately went to work on making a nest. An hour passed. I simply had to take a smoke. My tobacco was on a shelf right over the skunk. I risked all, arose very quietly, reached over the beast, got my tobacco, and retired like a ghost to the other end of the cabin to warm myself at the fire.

We were prisoners; for the only door was a clapboard affair on wooden hinges that shrieked like a dry axle. The visitor, having made its bed, did not yet feel like turning in, but decided to find out what sort of a bare-legged, white-faced critter I was, anyhow.

It came straight over to the fireplace and sniffed my toes. The other boys offered all sorts of advice, and I talked brimstone back at them — we had found that pussy didn’t care a hang for human speech so long as it was gently modulated.

That was a most amiable female of her species. True, she investigated all our property that was within reach, but she respected it, and finally she cuddled up in the excelsior, quite satisfied with her new home.

To cut an awfully long story short, the polecat held us spellbound until daybreak. Then she crawled out through her burrow, and we instantly fled through our shrieky door. Doc had a shotgun in his hand and murder in his heart. Not being well posted on skunk reflexes, he stepped up within ten feet and blew the animal’s head clean off by a simultaneous discharge of both barrels.

Did that headless skunk retaliate? It did, brethren, it did!”

George Ellison wrote the biographical introductions for the reissues of two Appalachian classics: Horace Kephart’s Our Southern Highlanders and James Mooney’s History, Myths, and Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees. In June 2005, a selection of his Back Then columns was published by The History Press in Charleston as Mountain Passages: Natural and Cultural History of Western North Carolina and the Great Smoky Mountains. Readers can contact him at P.O. Box 1262, Bryson City, N.C., 28713, or at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

You’ve noticed how old barns are recognized as special places? When a person says, “I’m going down to the barn,” he or she always emphasizes the “the.” That’s because each barn is a unique entity. They hold special associations. But old barns are becoming a thing of the past.

Over a year ago I clipped an article from USA Today titled “American Landscape Losing Its Old Barns” that reads, in part, “The American barn is disappearing from the landscape. It may not evoke the nostalgia of a one-room schoolhouse or covered bridge. But for more than two centuries, it has stood as a symbol of hard work and a rural way of life. These simple structures that dot the countryside are becoming victims of decay, suburban sprawl, changes in farming practices and a growing trend to use old barn wood in new ‘rustic’ buildings.

“We call them an endangered species,’ says Jennifer Goodman, executive director of the New Hampshire Preservation Alliance. ‘Barns are disappearing so rapidly, I often find myself saying, ‘Ouch. Lost another one,’ when I drive down rural roads.

“Nobody knows how many old barns exist. The Midwest once had 10,000 barns painted with Mail Pouch Tobacco advertisements — a free paint job in exchange for ad space. A few hundred remain.

“Steve Stier, who restores barns in Michigan and wrote a manual for identifying barn styles, says, ‘When an old barn falls, we lose more than a building. We lose a sense of place.’

“In trying to figure out how many barns exist, the National Trust uses the number of farms as an indicator. The United States had 6.5 million farms at the peak in 1920. There were 2.2 million farms in 2000. Including barns that survive on defunct farms, there are roughly 3 million barns across the nation. But that number is deceptive. Barns constructed after World War II are usually built with lightweight poles and metal siding. The design is inexpensive and functional.”

Well, maybe so, but I maintain that any barn is better than no barn at all. I have myself contributed to the modern “inexpensive and functional” phase of barn building. Back in 1977, I built, with another person’s assistance, what may be the most “inexpensive and functional” barn ever erected in the Smokies region. It was concocted so as to maintain Surtees, my wife’s first horse.

All will agree that the design was basic and the materials minimal. With a bow saw we cut down eight black locust trees for poles. Four were placed in holes in the back, four in the front, each spaced at eight-foot intervals, with a three-foot span in the center to allow for a doorway in front. Accordingly, the barn is 19 feet long and eight feet wide. The rear is 10 feet high, while the front is eight feet high. The (used) tin roof has a two-foot pitch back to front. This was done because the barn is situated on a slope. We wanted the water to run off of the roof and away from the barn rather than back under it. We discovered that water goes pretty much where it wants to go.

The sides were framed with eight-foot (used) 2-by-4s placed at four and eight feet above the ground. A neighbor contributed 14 (used) 4-by-8 pieces of plywood siding that were nailed to the posts and framing. We hung an old wooden door on the front side. The floor is dirt. On one end we built a tin-roofed stall for Surtees. Total cost: $100.

Several years ago my wife purchased a second horse, Sochan, so one afternoon my son and I added another roofed stall on the other end of the barn. Then last fall my son was given some building materials that he used to add a small tack room for his mother to one side of the front entrance. The tin for the roofs of the second stall and the tack room probably cost another $100 dollars or so. So, we’re talking about a $200 barn, which certainly falls well within the “inexpensive and functional” category.

Early last winter, Surtees died at age 30 and is buried near his barn. Sochan resides there with Silver the cat. Elizabeth keeps hay in the main structure and has her saddle and lots of other gear, including feed for the horse and cat, in her new tack room.

Some wouldn’t call this juryrigged structure a barn, but we do. It has dark places and rich smells and a lot of memories. When Elizabeth tells me that she’s been “up at the barn,” I know she’s been to a place that is, for her, a special place.

George Ellison wrote the biographical introductions for the reissues of two Appalachian classics: Horace Kephart’s Our Southern Highlanders and James Mooney’s History, Myths, and Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees. In June 2005, a selection of his Back Then columns was published by The History Press in Charleston as Mountain Passages: Natural and Cultural History of Western North Carolina and the Great Smoky Mountains. Readers can contact him at P.O. Box 1262, Bryson City, N.C., 28713, or at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

The professional career of biologist Millard C. (“Bill”) Davis — who was born in 1930 in Utica, N.Y., and now resides in Dunnellon, Fla. – included stints as a teacher and editor in various capacities. He has been president of the American Nature Study Society and president of the Audubon New Jersey Wildlife Society. His articles and poems have appeared in The Living Wilderness, New Jersey Outdoors, The Christian Science Monitor, Nature Magazine, Writers’ Journal and Mid-Western Review.

Some of Davis’ finest writing has been about the life and literary career of Edwin Way Teale, in my opinion the greatest American nature writer after Henry David Thoreau. He estimates that he “is now probably 80 percent done” with a biography titled Edwin Way Teale, A Musical Call to Nature.

Davis has published two books: The Near Woods (1974) and Natural Pathways of New Jersey (1997). Both are descriptions of distinctive natural areas. The latter is a county-by-county guide with capsule summaries of 100 of “the finest natural places” in that state. The former is a collection of essays that survey the vast woodlands and associated habitats and micro-habitats of eastern North America. In recent correspondence, Davis recalled some of the events behind the chapter titled “Forests of the Smokies: Northern Summits in the Deep South”:

“In 1965 I was with a group of botanists on a visit to the Smokies to view plant communities. We stayed overnight at the home of Dr. Hal DeSelm (a botanist at the University of Tennessee), who led us up even into (dense tangles of shrubs called) balds ... Eventually I wrote up the trip as “Forests of the Smokies” and sent it to Dr. DeSelm. He liked it (and the article) came out in The Living Wilderness. I placed it in The Near Woods. From this trip, I began a lifelong series of visits into the Smokies — staying overnight, sitting by campfires.”

Most describers of American landscapes plod along. Davis’ descriptions are voiced with poetic crispness and vitality: “A dark horizon seems penciled in by the deep greens of spruce and fir trees.” Words spring to life: “the ultraglassiness of rhododendron blossoms,” or that “genetic oddity, the octoploid ‘skunk’ goldenrod.”

I was so struck by this aspect of his writing that I asked Bill, who visited me briefly in Bryson City last fall, if I could include excerpts in volume two (1900-2009) of an anthology of nature writing from Western North Carolina titled High Vistas, which will be published this spring by The History Press. He agreed. Here are some samples:

“The forests of the far north begin where the first scattered trees break the low flat wilderness of tundra. From there a thin lichen-woodland of small trees and lichen-covered ground spreads southward and gradually rises into a towering escarpment, sweeping toward the sky on dark green boughs. Trees of the few species of this boreal forest, this American taiga, may become so densely interwoven to the east that forest animals are born and buried in a perpetually gloomy winter.

“If the aspect of the coniferous forest is peculiar to itself, however, some of the species are not. And a number of them survive as remnants of the ice age in forests that extend far south to the Great Smoky Mountains of Tennessee and North Carolina ....

“Mountain terrain affects the flow of the seasons as though they were strung on strings. Autumn and winter come earlier, spring and summer later, to the higher altitudes. Yet when the hour has arrived in the Smokies, spring rushes through the highest forests and grassy balds like a crackling fire ....

“On the waistline of ridge after ridge, a pink blur appears and gradually spreads across the mountain range in spring. Late one May I stood with a half-dozen friends enshrouded in a few hundred of the millions of soft blossoms that compose this hazy sash. The knees of my pants were slimy with mud, and my cheeks felt inflamed from tiny cuts. Then I bulldozed my way upward once more, emerging finally fifty yards higher up the mountain. Standing to my full height for the first time in perhaps twenty minutes, I looked down over the tangle I had escaped. For nearly 150 yards down the mountain ridge pink rhododendron flowers slid gently among each other ... To me no flower matches the ultraglassiness of the rhododendron blossoms. The pink cups allow a softer light to pass into the shadowed tangle beneath the canopy ....

“As we scrambled down the ridge flank, aiming free-hand style toward the road along the next ridge, a friend and I followed a corner of the slick. The ground fell away before us until suddenly the bushes ended at a ten-foot overhang. We dangled like parachutists over the bounding waters of a twisting mountain stream. Wading across it a few minutes later, we could see up and down stream only a few hundred feet. But we knew that upstream, several miles beyond the first crisp turn, lay the beech-filled cover of a vastly different environment. We were following one of the routes of the southern junco, which trace their migration routes up and down the mountainsides. For every four hundred feet of altitude they fly, they accomplish an equivalent of about four days’ travel northward or southward ....

“In one Lilliputian clearing the yellow bloom of boreal clintonia bobbed in the May breezes. With the sun’s rays falling directly below it, the plant might have been a lantern illuminating a leafy park. Among the plumes of shield fern we found a genetic oddity, the octoploid “skunk” goldenrod (Solidago glomerata)....

“It is the coves that give these ancient mountains their graceful slanting contours. To the observer five or more miles away, their flanks seem to flow across each other.”

George Ellison wrote the biographical introductions for the reissues of two Appalachian classics: Horace Kephart’s Our Southern Highlanders and James Mooney’s History, Myths, and Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees. In June 2005, a selection of his Back Then columns was published by The History Press in Charleston as Mountain Passages: Natural and Cultural History of Western North Carolina and the Great Smoky Mountains. Readers can contact him at P.O. Box 1262, Bryson City, N.C., 28713, or at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

One of my favorite accounts of this region’s varied history is provided by John Preston Arthur, who published his 659-page volume titled Western North Carolina: A History (From 1730 to 1913) in 1914.

Originally published by The Edward Buncombe Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution of Asheville, the volume was reissued in 1996 by The Overmountain Press, by Kessinger Publishing (quick print), and by The University of Michigan Library (quick print) in 2009. (Note that “quick print” editions are generally inferior in regard to print quality and binding but are, perhaps, better than nothing.) And the text is also available online via any search engine.

I like Arthur’s book because it is generally accurate and is written with a distinctive personal style; furthermore, it not only covers the big picture (Cherokee history and culture, early white settlers, timbering, railroads, mining, etc.) but gives equal attention to important matters like “Manners and Customs,” “Humorous and Romantic” incidents, and “Physical Pecularities.”

The dust-wrapper for The Overmountain Press reissue provides information regarding Arthur’s life culled from a “biography” by O. Lester Brown published in the Watauga Democrat (Boone, North Carolina) in March 1976. Arthur was born in 1851 in Columbia, South Carolina, and died in Boone in 1916. He received a law degree from the University of South Carolina in 1872 and practiced in that state and New York City until 1887, when he moved to Asheville, where he also practiced law in addition to serving as manager and superintendent of the Street Railway Company. About 1912 Arthur moved to Boone, where he lived in the Blair Hotel for the rest of his life. He wrote a history of Watauga County then published his history of WNC shortly before his death.

According to the dust-wrapper account, Arthur’s last years were not all that sunny. He earned little from his historical writings, which probably wasn’t a surprise. But he also had few legal cases come his way, so that “his financial condition was acute.” He was reduced to working “for fifty cents a day, digging potatoes and gathering apples, and even applied for a job as a helper at a livery stable. Broken-spirited, he soon took to his bed and died ‘homeless, penniless and heartbroken.’”

Local and regional historians don’t generally live high on the hog, but Arthur’s last years were especially grim. Nevertheless, his work displays an interior outlook that belies the apparent bleakness of his everyday life. “Western North Carolina” is chock full of humor and delight in the everyday events and episodes of mountain life. It’s my hope that O. Lester Brown misread his subject somewhat, not fully realizing that old JPA was having a grand time while scribbling away in his hotel room. By way of support for that position, here are some mostly random excerpts:

JPA on mountain women: “But it was the women who were the true heroines of this section. The hardships and constant toil to which they were generally subjected were blighting and exacting in the extreme. If their lord and master could find time to hunt and fish, go to the Big Musters, spend Saturdays loafing or drinking in the settlement — or about the country ‘stores,’ as the shops were and still are called, their wives could scarcely, if ever, find a moment they could call their own. Long before the ‘palid dawn’ came sifting in through chink and window they were up and about. As there were no matches in those days, the housewife ‘unkivered’ — the coals which had been smothered in ashes the night before to be kept ‘alive’ till morning, and with ‘kindling’ in one hand and a live coal held on the tines of a steel fork or between iron tongs in the other, she blew and blew and blew till the splinters caught fire. Then the fire was started and the water brought from the spring, poured into the ‘kittle,’ and while it was heating the chickens were fed, the cows milked, the children dressed, the bread made, the bacon fried and then coffee was made and breakfast was ready. That over and the dishes washed and put away, the spinning wheel, the loom or the reel were the next to have attention, meanwhile keeping a sharp look out for the children, hawks, keeping the chickens out of the garden, sweeping the floor, making the beds, churning, sewing, darning, washing, ironing, taking up the ashes, and making lye, watching for the bees to swarm, keeping the cat out of the milk pans, dosing the sick children, tying up the hurt fingers and toes, kissing the sore places well again, making soap, robbing the bee hives, stringing beans, for winter use, working the garden, planting and tending a few hardy flowers in the front yard, such as princess feather, pansies, sweet-Williams, dahlias, morning glories; getting dinner, darning patching, mending, milking again, reading the Bible, prayers, and so on from morning till night, and then all over again the next day. It could never have been said of them that they had ‘but fed on roses and lain in the lilies of life.’”

JPA on mountain dialect and language: “Writers who think they know, have said that our people have been sequestered in these mountains so long that they speak the language of Shakespeare and of Chaucer. It is certain that we sometimes say ‘hit’ for it and ‘taken’ for took; that we also say ‘plague’ for tease, and when we are willing, we say we are ‘consentable’ .... We also say ‘haint’ for ‘am not,’ ‘are not,’ and ‘have not,’ and we invite you to ‘light’ if you are riding or driving. We ‘pack’ our loads in ‘pokes,’ and ‘reckon we can’t’ if invited ‘to go a piece’ with a passerby, when both he and we know perfectly well that we can if we will. Chaucer and Shakespeare may have used these expressions we do not know .... We may “mend,” not improve; and who shall say that our “mend” is not a simpler, sweeter and more significant word than “improve”? But we do mispronounce many words, among which is ‘gardeen’ for guardian, ‘colume’ for column, and ‘pint’ for point. The late Sam Lovin of Graham was told that it was improper to say Rocky ‘Pint,’ as its true name is ‘Point.’ When next he went to Asheville he asked for a ‘point’ of whiskey ... ‘mashed, mummicked and hawged up,’ means worlds to most of us. Finally, most of us are of the opinion of the late Andrew Jackson who thought that one who could spell a word in only way was a ‘mighty po’ excuse for a full grown man.’”

Locate a copy of Arthur’s history of WNC and see for yourself. You’ll perhaps sense, as do I, that JPA’s last years probably weren’t irremediably wretched. After all, anyone who maintains a passionate interest in the history, lore, and humor of his or her chosen region won’t ever be totally impoverished.

George Ellison wrote the biographical introductions for the reissues of two Appalachian classics: Horace Kephart’s Our Southern Highlanders and James Mooney’s History, Myths, and Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees. In June 2005, a selection of his Back Then columns was published by The History Press in Charleston as Mountain Passages: Natural and Cultural History of Western North Carolina and the Great Smoky Mountains. Readers can contact him at P.O. Box 1262, Bryson City, N.C., 28713, or at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

The New Year has arrived and the great horned owls have commenced their annual “singing” along the dark ridges. These birds don’t sing, of course, in the manner of true songbirds like warblers and orioles — but the quick cadence of four or five hoots (“hoo, hoo-oo, hoo, hoo”) given by the male, or the lower-pitched six to eight hoots (“hoo, hoo-hoo-hoo, hoo-oo, hoo-oo”) of the female serve the same purpose.

For most living things, winter in these mountains is a time of simple survival. But if you walk the ridges just after dusk, there’s a chance you’ll hear the territorial and mating calls of the so-called “hoot owl,” which, as part of its survival strategy, breeds and lays eggs in the depth of winter.

Aptly known as “The Tiger of the Night,” a great horned owl can stand more than two feet tall with a wingspan of four and a half feet. Its eyes are 35 times more sensitive than those of a human being. The feathered tufts (“horns”) on its head look like ears but aren’t. The real ears are slits hidden among the feathers on the side of the owl’s head. Placed asymmetrically, these admit slightly different frequencies to each of the eardrums so that the bird can differentiate and pinpoint the origin of faint sounds. Specialized wing feathers, downy-fringed like a butterfly’s, enable this predator to move silently in flight. No sound of rushing wings warns the victim of the devastating strike that will be delivered by talons so powerful they can rip through a fencing mask.

The ancient Cherokees were astute observers of the natural world within which they existed. The mountain landscape and all of its plants and animals were a part of their spiritual cosmos. Their system divided the world into three levels: the Upper World of light, goodness, and the everlasting hereafter; the Under World of darkness, evil, and eternal death; and the mundane Middle World within which humans reside. By balancing these realms the Cherokees sought to bring peace and harmony into their daily lives.

There is a great deal of serpent imagery in Cherokee lore, especially that having to do with the Uktena, a giant, mythic snake that haunted their imaginations. But the main portion of their animal imagery was devoted to birds. They were our first ornithologists. For them, as for us, birds were magical. They are beautiful. They often sing. And they can do something that humans can only dream about ... they can fly.

Most Cherokee bird lore is concerned with species they saw all the time: cardinals, chickadees, tufted titmice, etc. Their bird stories are usually rather lighthearted; at times, however, they associated birds with the negative aspects of the Under World. The most logical candidates for this distinction were the owls, those woeful denizens of darkness, especially the great horned owl, which they knew as “tsgili.”

Anthropologist James Mooney, who lived with the Cherokees on the Qualla Boundary (present day Cherokee) during the late 1880s, observed that, “Owls and other night-crying birds are believed to be the embodied ghosts or disguised witches, and their cry is dreaded as a sound of evil omen.” Of the three owls named in Cherokee lore, the great-horned was by far the most dreaded; so much so, that the designation “tsgili” was expanded in meaning so as to also signify “witch.” The great-horned owls and the Cherokee witches were the masters of the night.

I have always been struck by the sacred formulas (chants or incantations) that the Cherokee medicine men used to create good luck in hunting or warfare, in healing, or in affairs of the heart. The evil medicine men or “witches” employed the formulas to accomplish their own nefarious ends. These have been categorized as those used “To Lower One’s Soul.” Alan Kilpatrick, a member of the Cherokee Nation in Oklahoma, noted in The Night Has a Naked Soul (Syracuse University Press, 1997) that the sacred formulas which fall into this category “represent instruments whose express purpose is to destroy human life. Because of their grave and irreversible consequences, life-threatening spells . . . were traditionally the last incantations to be taught an apprentice.”

Here is a formula of this type that I rendered from one of Kilpatrick’s rough paraphrases. No reader will be surprised to see which bird is invoked:

To My Enemy

Your name is night.

I am the black owl

that hunts the darkness

for your heart and soul.

Your name is the night.

I am the black owl

hunting your soul.

George Ellison wrote the biographical introductions for the reissues of two Appalachian classics: Horace Kephart’s Our Southern Highlanders and James Mooney’s History, Myths, and Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees. In June 2005, a selection of his Back Then columns was published by The History Press in Charleston as Mountain Passages: Natural and Cultural History of Western North Carolina and the Great Smoky Mountains. Readers can contact him at P.O. Box 1262, Bryson City, N.C., 28713, or at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

This marks my tenth year of writing a weekly Back Then column for The Smoky Mountain News. In all that time I have belabored neither editors nor readers with my poetry. Brace yourselves. The time has come. It is winter and it is cold and this is when I read and write poems. Herewith are several winter poems, dating back to 1977. Some day, if I get around to it, they might appear with others in a collection of personal essays and poems as well as line drawings by my wife titled “Permanent Camp.” These will depict random aspects of life in a somewhat remote cove situated a few miles west of Bryson City.

Han Shan

That old reprobate told his friends:

“Don’t come in winter!”

But he’d grin his toothless grin

and clap his hands and dance in the snow

way up there in the swirling mists

when anyone came to see him.

Well, we like friends, too.

And we’ll drink your wine with glee.

But what we will look for here in the lamplight

is the sparkle in your eyes.

Season of Light

Windowpanes gleam in winter.

Dark branches and twigs stand uplifted

crosshatched against the blue sky.

Snow-covered mountains emerge from the

swirling mists and move closer,

seemingly within reach.

Forgotten patterns and textures emerge.

Now is the time for seeing.

Do Not Neglect the Winter Months

Solitude is surer then.

The body of the land is laid bare.

Gray boulders await with somber intensity.

Each trail has an entity best realized in winter.

Sitting here at the kitchen table writing this for you

I think of Deeplow Gap . . . a notch in Thomas Divide.

Not far. I go there often, walking or in my fancy.

Oh, I could tell you all about it, how I see it.

But for you it will be different.

Essence arises from the manner of coming and going.

Go light. Don’t walk fast. Savor the cold.

Even in Winter

Stones in the creekbed

will speak to you quite clearly

in praise of water.

Sleepless

The creek is frozen.

All this clothing and still I shiver.

The goat rattles loose boarding behind the shack.

A decayed tree on the ridge gives way under ice.

Peering into the mirror by lamplight

I see the mole splotch spreading on my right cheek

and the gray hairs spurting from my nostrils.

There is no occasion for talk.

Woodstove

At 10 below there is a silence that is not solitude.

Frost flowers etch darkened window glass.

The woodstove leaks the light of a million poems.

But you are beyond all words

transported by the cold.

And what a fine thing

to kneel and blow the coals

just to see the embers glow,

when suddenly the kettle boils.

January 1977

After the long cold siege it warmed today.

Sun in a haze. The surface of the ice slurred

at noon but solidified by 3:00. I spent my day

in the yard, gathering scattered piles

of horseshit into one large pile. At first

I tried shoveling, but the frozen balls rolled

frustratingly away, here and there.

So I scooped them up with my bare hands.

They looked like ... like frozen horseshit.

And that’s the way I feel.

George Ellison wrote the biographical introductions for the reissues of two Appalachian classics: Horace Kephart’s Our Southern Highlanders and James Mooney’s History, Myths, and Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees. In June 2005, a selection of his Back Then columns was published by The History Press in Charleston as Mountain Passages: Natural and Cultural History of Western North Carolina and the Great Smoky Mountains. Readers can contact him at P.O. Box 1262, Bryson City, N.C., 28713, or at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

Some readers might recall that three weeks ago — in a column about relocating my long lost inscribed copy of James Still’s “Hounds on the Mountain” — I mentioned in passing that the book had reappeared as I was in the process of reorganizing my home library while snowbound. I was iced into the cove the following weekend; so, having nothing better to do, I proceeded with the project and finally finished up this past weekend, sort of.

By this time next year, I will have despaired of the present arrangement and have to start all over again. Un-shelving and reorganizing and re-shelving books is a tricky business, with multiple options that can be endlessly fascinating, frustrating and time consuming. I like it. It’s an innocent species of self-therapy.

One of, my favorite authors is Larry McMurtry. I have a shelf of almost all of his books. He presently operates Booked Up — a vast bookstore of rare and used books comprised of nearly 400,000 volumes housed (according to subject matter) in four or five separate buildings in his hometown of Archer City, Texas, which is located in the middle of nowhere many miles south of Wichita Falls. Getting there isn’t easy or scenic, unless you’re partial to scrub and mesquite, but more than worth the effort.

In addition to well-known novels like Lonesome Dove, McMurtry has written two memoirs about book selling, collecting, reading, and related matters: Walter Benjamin at the Dairy Queen (1999) and Books (2008). Having grown up on a hardscrabble farm outside Archer City, McMurtry thinks of his bookselling and book collecting as “book herding” — as opposed to the actual “cow herding” his father practiced.

(As an almost totally unrelated aside, I will note that Larry McMurtry is the father of accomplished country musician James McMurtry, who co-wrote with Townes Van Zandt the immortal “It’s Snowin’ Over Raton.” That would be the memorably rugged Raton Pass between New Mexico and Colorado, where my wife and I have also been snowbound on several occasions.)

Back to the point. In his Walter Benjamin memoir, McMurtry contemplated the mysteries of book shelving:

“Both in my library at home and in my bookshops I have a hard time hewing to any strict philosophy of shelving. Shelving by chronology (Susan Sontag’s method) doesn’t always work for me. The modest Everyman edition of “The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle” refuses to sit comfortably next to Leonard Baskin’s tall “Beowulf,” and exactly the same problem — incompatibility of size — crops up if one shelves alphabetically. Susan Sontag, on a visit when all of my books were in the old ranch house, found that she couldn’t live even one night with the sloppiness of my shelving. She imposed a hasty chronologizing which held for some years and still holds, in the main.

“Susan’s principles notwithstanding, I make free with chronologies when the books seem to demand it. My Sterne looks happier beside my DeFoe than he looks next to his near contemporary Smollett, so ‘Tristram Shandy’ sits next to ‘Moll Flanders’ rather than ‘Peregrine Pickle.’

“Despite a nearly infinite range of possibilities in the matter of book arrangement, I’ve noticed that most people who really love books find ways of shelving them which respect the books but clearly reflect their own personalities.”

Nevertheless, after several lengthy descriptions of various arrangements he had encountered through the years in distinguished personal libraries, McMurtry allowed in closing that: “I have long been a disciple of the Dusty Miller school of book shelving. Dusty Miller was a much admired London bookseller, who when asked how he arranged his books, replied that if he bought a short fat book he tried to find a short fat hole.”

My “home library” consists, in reality, of various stacked shelves and bookcases scattered at nine strategic locations throughout the house, including the bedroom and the kitchen. I don’t know how many books there are in the house, and I don’t want to know. I would estimate, conservatively, that there are several tons worth. The house shifts, as if situated on a fault line, each time I relocate a bookcase.

My wife fears it’s only a matter of time before a bookcase makes an appearance in the bathroom. That would, in fact, pose an interesting bibliographic proposition. What sort of books should be shelved in one’s bathroom?

My present system has been scientifically formulated. Authors are sorted and shelved according to subject categories. All of a given author’s titles have to go in one place — they can’t be divided up. This can be difficult. Does, for instance, Lawrence Durrell belong with the British travels writers or the British novelists? (As I am not an admirer of Durrell’s novels, he is currently placed among the travel writers, a genre in which he excels.) Pre-1900 books are arranged chronologically. More recently published titles are arranged alphabetically. Never stack books on top of books that have already been properly shelved. Try to avoid shelving books at floor level.

No, I haven’t read all of the books in my home library or the ones in my office in town, which also require reorganization. Why would anyone want to have read all of the books they possess? I feel good knowing they’re there waiting for me to get around to them at the appropriate time.

No, I don’t regret buying a single book I’ve ever purchased. I do regret each and every one that I’ve ever disposed of. And I hold bitter grudges against all those who have never returned books that I loaned them.

I have a horrible memory, getting worse. To this day, however, I can visualize exactly where certain books I desired but couldn’t afford were shelved as long ago as 1965 in remote bookstores scattered throughout the South in places like Nashville, Birmingham, Tupelo, Abbeville, Hodges, Madeira Island, Buxton, and so on. Book collection and reading and shelving and rearranging have been a most enjoyable part of my life. I can trace this inclination with certainty to when I was very young and mother purchased books and read them to me and then let me shelve them in a small green bookcase beside my bed.

George Ellison wrote the biographical introductions for the reissues of two Appalachian classics: Horace Kephart’s Our Southern Highlanders and James Mooney’s History, Myths, and Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees. In June 2005, a selection of his Back Then columns was published by The History Press in Charleston as Mountain Passages: Natural and Cultural History of Western North Carolina and the Great Smoky Mountains. Readers can contact him at P.O. Box 1262, Bryson City, N.C., 28713, or at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

I enjoy using variants on the phrase “lay of the land.” One can “get the lay of the land” in a number of ways. If your hiking partner says that he or she is “going on ahead to get the lay of the land,” that’s one thing; on the other hand, if he or she is your business partner and flies to Dallas to “get the lay of the land” in a business deal, that’s something else. All of us all go through life evaluating “the lay of the land” in order to make it from day to day.

Here in the mountains the phrase is best applied to topography. There’s no other place in the world that surpasses the actual topography of the southern mountains. And there’s no place where the people of the region use a more delightful language in describing the topography of their homeland.

In Smoky Mountain Folks and Their Lore (1960), the well-known folklorist Joseph S. Hall enumerated some of the stories and phrases he had collected in the Smokies during the late 1930s. Some of the language had to do with “getting the lay of the land.”

Hall learned that a “bald” was “a treeless mountain top characteristic of the Smokies, as in Bearwallow Bald.” Botanists recognize a second species of “bald” they call a “heath bald”(i.e., a treeless tangle of rhododendron and other shrubs in the heath family). Hall found that they were known locally by such names as “laurel bed, lettuce bed, rough, slick, wooly (as in wooly head, wooly ridge, wooly top), and laurel hell.” A “bench” is “a level area, sometimes cultivated, on the side of a mountain,” while a “butt” is “the abrupt end of a mountain ridge, as in Mollies Butt, at the end of Mollies Ridge.” A “knob” is “a mountain top,” while a “lead” is “a long ridge, usually extending from a higher ridge, as in Twenty Mile Lead.” I would add that a “spur” is “a lateral branch leading from a ridge or high top that usually terminates abruptly.

Furthermore, a “sag” or “swag” is a low lying area along a ridge that’s not quite low enough to qualify as a “gap.” A “cove” is “a widening out of a mountain valley, or a meadow land between mountains, as in Cades Cove, Emerts Cove.” Coves are closely related to “hollows” (properly pronounced “hollers”) that are small valleys, “as in Pretty Hollow.” I would add that a “bottom” is flat land, usually along a stream. Hall recorded that a “deadening” is “an area where the trees have been killed by girdling (in order to clear the land for farming). Thereby, “bottoms” would often be “deadened” so as to create a “deadening.” Conversely, a “scald” is “a bare hillside” created deliberately or unintentionally by fire, which becomes a “yellow patch” when it has “grown up with thick brush.”

I am fascinated by the terms associated with water. First, there are “seeps” and “springs” or “springheads.” (If a spring is referred to as being “fitified,” this means that it is intermittent or “spasmodic” and thereby unreliable.) Reliable “springs” become “brooks” and then “creeks” and finally “streams” or “rivers.” “Shoals” are shallow, rocky places along waterways that can be treacherous. When a “branch” passes through “a marshy place” or small ravine, it becomes a “run.”

In a little volume by Allen R. Coggins titled Place Names of the Smokies (1999), we discover that the topographic aspects of the mountain landscape have been immortalized in a manner that is at once descriptive, humorous and poetic. Advalorem Branch in Swain County refers to “a tax based on a percentage of assessed value,” and Arbutus Branch in Cades Cove has that trailing wildflower growing in abundance along its banks. Ballhoot Scar Overlook at Smokemont is a place where logs were rolled (“ballhooted”) down the slope creating bare areas (“scars”), and you already know why an area near Gatlinburg is named “Bill Deadening Branch.”

“Blowdow” at Thunderhead Mountain along the state line in the high Smokies is named for an area where a wide swath of tulip trees and other trees were blown down by a storm in 1875. And there are branches, creeks, mountains and ridges known by the designation “Hurricane,” tornadoes or other heavy wind storms ravaged those areas. “Crooked Arm” is a mountain spur in Cades Cove shaped like an elbow that is drained by “Crooked Arm Branch,” which features “Crooked Arm Falls.”

Another place I’d like to visit is on Mt. LeConte. You already know what a “fittified spring” is. The one by that name on Mt. LeConte is said to have been originally created by an earthquake in 1916. It ran like clockwork with a “seven minute on, seven minute off flow pattern” until 1936 when a dynamite blast set off by a CCC trail construction crew disrupted that pattern. Thereafter, it was “fittified.” I’ve been to Miry Ridge at Silers Bald along the state line. As Coggins says, it is “knee-deep in places” with “black muck.” And I’ve been to “Mule Gap” in the same area, where Tom Siler operated a mule lot. Would you seek out Snake Den Mountain at Luftee Knob where, according to local lore, there is a den (nest) of rattlesnakes? I’d enjoy a visit to the “Dry Sluice” on Mt. Guyot. Coggins describes this as being “named for a small hollow or valley called a sluice, which has a spring-fed stream that sinks beneath the surface for several hundred yards before resurfacing. Hence the upper part of the sluice is generally dry.” But the origins of place names can be tricky. Coggins adds that “This name may also be linked to the early logging industry, when logs were sluiced (moved down the mountain) from timber cutting operations.” One could ramble on and on in this regard. Maybe some day soon I’ll run into you up at the Devil’s Courthouse or Hornet Tree Top or Holy Butt or down along the Boogerman Trail or Dog Hobble Branch, “getting the lay of the land.” Let’s just say, “Howdy,” and keep on moving.

George Ellison wrote the biographical introductions for the reissues of two Appalachian classics: Horace Kephart’s Our Southern Highlanders and James Mooney’s History, Myths, and Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees. In June 2005, a selection of his Back Then columns was published by The History Press in Charleston as Mountain Passages: Natural and Cultural History of Western North Carolina and the Great Smoky Mountains. Readers can contact him at P.O. Box 1262, Bryson City, N.C., 28713, or at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

This past weekend was given over to reorganizing the books in my home library. In the process, I relocated a volume of poems I had feared was long lost.

My favorite “Appalachian” poets would be Robert Morgan, Kay Stripling Byer, and James Still. Morgan and Byer are still going strong. Still passed away in 2001.

I never met James Still, but we corresponded in the 1970s with some frequency. Wilma Dykeman and her husband, James Stokely, close friends of Still’s, had suggested I might enjoy his work. They especially recommended Hounds on the Mountain, a collection of poems that had appeared in 1937 when he was generally recognized as “one of the strongest voices to emerge in Appalachian literature.”

Born in 1906 in LaFayette, Alabama, Still was librarian at the Hindman Settlement School in Kentucky during the 1930s. Following a stint in the Air Force during World War II, he became a freelance writer. In 1952, he returned to the Hindman Settlement School, again as the librarian. He stayed on for 10 years or more, but left that post to teach and write.

After I did indeed become enthusiastic about Still, who was somewhat reclusive, Wilma Dykeman said he would like to hear from me. At that time, for various reasons, Still had not, to my knowledge, published a book of any sort for almost 25 years and was pleased to be remembered. He did, of course, resurrect his career in the mid-1970s and go on to publish various poetry collections, novels, and children’s books, so that he is now sometimes referred to as the “Dean of Appalachian Literature.”

I have apparently lost our correspondence, but, sure enough, the volume that reappeared this weekend was Hounds on the Mountain, published by The Viking Press in a “first edition limited to seven hundred fifty numbered copies of which seven hundred are for sale.” My copy is hand-numbered in ink as being “435.” I had mailed it to Still, asking if he’d sign it. It came back inscribed on the front flyleaf: “For / George Ellison / Who has kept my poems / in his heart all ‘these sleeping years,’— / with greetings, and gratitude. / James Still / November 25, 1975.”

From the Mountains, From the Valley (Univ. of Kentucky Press, 2001) collects all of Still’s poems, including those that appeared in Hounds of the Mountain. I reread them this weekend with delight and remembrance of a fine poet. I recommend them to you. Here are some sample stanzas:

From Rain on the Cumberlands

Rain in the beechwood trees. Rain upon the wanderer

Whose breath lies cold upon the mountainside,

Caught up with broken horns within the nettled grass,

With hooves relinquished on the breathing stones

Eaten with rain-strokes.

From Hounds on the Mountain

Hounds on the mountain ....

Grey and swift spinning the quarry shall turn

At the cove’s ending, at the slow day’s breaking,

And lave the violent shadows with her blood.

From Graveyard

There is no town so quiet on any earth,

Nor any house so dark upon the mind.

Only the night is here, and the dead

Under the hard blind eyes of hill and tree.

Here lives sleep. Here the dead are free.

From Horseback in the Rain

To the stone, to the mud

With hoofs busy clattering

In a fog-wrinkled spreading

Of waters? Halt not. Stay not.

Ride the storm with no ending

On a road unarriving.

From Spring on Troublesome Creek

Not all of us were warm, not all of us.

We are winter-lean, our faces are sharp with cold

And there is the smell of wood smoke in our clothes;

Not all of us were warm, though we have hugged the fire

Through the long chilled nights.

From Mountain Dulcimer

The dulcimer sings from fretted throat

Of the doe’s swift poise, the fox’s fleeting step

And the music of hounds upon the outward slope

Stirring the night, drumming the ridge-strewn way.

From Child in the Hills

Where on these hills are tracks a small foot made,

Where rests the echo of his voice calling to the crows

In sprouting corn? Here are tall trees his eyes

Have measured to their tops, here lies fallow earth

Unfurrowed by terracing plows these sleeping years.

George Ellison wrote the biographical introductions for the reissues of two Appalachian classics: Horace Kephart’s Our Southern Highlanders and James Mooney’s History, Myths, and Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees. In June 2005, a selection of his Back Then columns was published by The History Press in Charleston as Mountain Passages: Natural and Cultural History of Western North Carolina and the Great Smoky Mountains. Readers can contact him at P.O. Box 1262, Bryson City, N.C., 28713, or at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

You can almost smell the word “evergreen.” The word is at once one of the most aptly descriptive and highly evocative botanical terms. Simply reading or hearing it conjures up a mix of personal associations with particular landscapes.

Evergreens are with us year-round, of course, but from spring through fall they blend into a landscape comprised of a multitude of herbaceous or broad-leaved deciduous plants. Winter is the evergreen time of the year. It’s the season when the dominant colors of the landscape are the varied green hues of those trees, vines, shrubs, and ferns that do not lose their leaves or needles. For gardeners and outdoor enthusiasts alike, it’s the prime time for paying a closer attention to this particular category of plant life.

The ancient Cherokees were — by necessity and inclination — close observers of plant life. They wondered why some plants lose their leaves while others are evergreen. When anthropologist James Mooney was collecting Cherokee myths and lore during the late 1880s for his monumental Myths of the Cherokees (Bureau of American Ethnology, 1900), the medicine man Swimmer, who lived in the traditional Big Cove community, explained how it had been determined this came about:

“When the animals and plants were first made — we do not know by whom — they were told to watch and keep awake for seven nights. They tried to do this, and nearly all were awake through the first night, but the next night several dropped off to sleep, and the third night others were asleep, and then others, until, on the seventh night, of all the animals only the owl, the panther, and one or two more were awake. To these were given the power to see and to go about in the dark, and to make prey of the birds and animals which must sleep at night. Of the trees only the cedar, the pine, the spruce, the holly, and the laurel were awake to the end, and to them it was given to be always green and to be the greatest medicine, but to the others it was said: Because you have not endured to the end you shall lose your hair every winter.’”

Everyone knows the basic definition of an evergreen as a plant that “holds green leaves, either broadleaf or needle-shaped, over winter.” But an understanding — however rudimentary — of why some plants “choose” to remain evergreen and how they go about doing so will enable us to appreciate them more fully.

All plants in upland or northern environments face the double-edged dilemma of a lack of moisture in winter and a short growing season in summer. Most opt to hunker down in cold weather and then really hustleduring the growing season to do their thing and produce seed.

Evergreens have taken the other path. Instead of shedding leaves or dying completely back in above-ground forms, evergreens have “opted” to tough it out and get a head start on the growing season. For this group of plants, photosynthesis can continue longer in the fall and begin earlier in spring; and, for them, energy that would otherwise be channeled into leaf reproduction is saved for direct reproductive efforts.

Various strategies allow evergreens to weather the drying winds and freezing temperatures of winter. The needle-like leaves of conifers expose less surface to cold drying winds. Their waxy needles, stems, and roots are filled with botanical “antifreeze” in the form of resinous chemicals. Conical shapes minimize buildups of snow or ice.

Other woodland evergreen plants have developed woody stems and thick leaves with waxy coats to cut down on evaporation. These tend to be shrubby or even ground hugging. In order to avoid having leaf cells ruptured by frost, water is channeled to spaces between the cells where expansion does less damage. And finally, the sugar content of the cells is increased to lower freezing points.

Individual evergreen species often have distinctive over-wintering devices. Everyone has observed how rhododendron leaves curl and droop in extreme cold. This posture obviously lessens exposure to wind, while the curling temporarily closes off the air-circulation pores (stomata) on the underside of the leaves. This dormant posture is also assumed during periods of drought.

Here in the Great Smokies region, a considerable body of lore has grown up around the fine art of predicting the weather. The drooping and curling of rhododendron leaves has not gone unnoticed. John Parris, a long-time columnist for the Asheville Citizen-Times now deceased, devoted an entire column titled “Tell Weather by Rhododendron’s Curl” to this topic:

“The thick, leathery leaves of the rhododendron bushes were curled tighter than a homemade twist of tobacco. As mountain weather sharps well know, it’s a sign of winter for a fact when rhododendron leaves, though evergreen, droop and roll inwards ... they make weather prognosticating as easy as falling off a log and a heap sight less certain. To the weather sharps, a rhododendron leaf reacts the same way as mercury in a store-bought thermometer. When the temperature drops, they begin to droop and curl. As the mercury falls lower, the edges begin to curl under. The colder it gets the tighter the curl becomes. When it gets down nearly to zero, the entire leaf is rolled tight and at zero it looks like a green pencil hanging on a bush. From then on as sub-zero sets in, the leaf takes on a sort of hard brittleness and a blue-greenness. To those who have devoted years of constant study to the leaf thermometers, there is a familiarity of the tightening curl that is as easy to read in terms of degrees as the markings on a store-bought thermometer. Chances are a real reader of the rhododendron thermometer won’t be off more than a degree from the mercury register of a store-bought thermometer. Of course, a body doesn’t come by such a knack overnight. Most anybody can read the simple signs. But when it comes to the fine reading, then that calls for more years than a few at studying rhododendron leaves and measuring their curl down to a hair’s-breadth with the eye. Folks who fall into this category are rare and far between these days. They are old-timers, born and raised in the mountains, folks with a pleasure for the old things which they figure still have their use.”

Aside from the conspicuous conifers and other obvious evergreen plants such as American holly, rhododendron, laurel, doghobble, and sand myrtle, there are a number of small woodland evergreens. Trailing arbutus, galax, teaberry, and the dainty little partridge-berry vine are always a delight to encounter nestled among the brown leaf-litter while out on a winter walk. They lift my spirits on a gloomy, slushy day.

My favorite evergreen sub-shrub is galax, which displays spikes composed of tiny white flowers in mid-summer. When the first heavy frosts arrive here in the mountains, the rounded dark green leaves display eye-catching bronze, wine, and crimson colors. Galax was once in peril due to over-collection by mountain families who gathered the plant for sale as a Christmas ornamental. The town of Galax in the Blue Ridge of Virginia is so-named because it was situated in an area where the plant was systematically harvested. Today galax is used mostly in the floral trade. You would be hard pressed to go into a florist’s shop where a wreath is being constructed and not observe galax being incorporated therein.

The most prominent evergreens, of course, are the various conifers. What would the winter landscapes across North America be without the varied and often intermixed green hues of pine, spruce, fir, hemlock, cedar, and cypress? When out bird watching during the winter months, my wife and I always search the conifers. Here in the Smokies region a variety of winter residents — chickadees, kinglets, nuthatches, brown creepers, titmice, crossbills, and others — are attracted to conifers for shelter, protection from predators, and food. The cones provide seeds and the scaly, plate-like bark harbors a variety of insects.

An excellent general guide to evergreen plants — including the hardy ferns and clubmosses — is Donald Stokes’ A Guide to Nature in Winter (Little, Brown & Co., 1976). This volume covers a variety of other topics like winter weeds, insects, birds and their nests, mushrooms, and tracks that will stimulate you to get out the door and poke around during the evergreen time of the year.

George Ellison wrote the biographical introductions for the reissues of two Appalachian classics: Horace Kephart’s Our Southern Highlanders and James Mooney’s History, Myths, and Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees. In June 2005, a selection of his Back Then columns was published by The History Press in Charleston as Mountain Passages: Natural and Cultural History of Western North Carolina and the Great Smoky Mountains. Readers can contact him at P.O. Box 1262, Bryson City, N.C., 28713, or at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

Of late, we’ve been considering books. The feedback (mostly email) from readers to recent columns regarding books in general, book shelving strategies, bookplates, home libraries, favorite books, and so on, has been instructive. Before we move on to this week’s assignment (“How do we go about discovering the next book we’re going to read?”) here’s some of what my bookish correspondents are up to.

As previously mentioned, I heard from a woman who doesn’t require a book shelving strategy because she doesn’t shelve her books, having “given up on that foolishness more than 20 years ago.” Her home in Atlanta is apparently awash in a sea of 2,500 or so volumes, amongst which she and her three cats make their way. Her multiple copies of Gone With the Wind, she advised me most recently, are “very carefully stacked.”

A woman in Lake Junaluska wrote a lovely note about bookplates that I haven’t responded to as yet. But I will.

A well-organized gentleman dispatched (by snail mail) a list (three handwritten, single-spaced yellow pages) that warmed my heart. Therein, he enumerated the subject matter in each of his nine (A-I) bookcases situated, respectively: (1) in the “Living Room,” four bookcases, seven subject areas (novels, books about Indians, music, etc.), 11 sub-categories (edible/medicinal plants, Smoky Mountains, William Bartram, etc.), and two sub-sub-categories; (2) in the “Kitchen,” one bookcase, one subject area (American History) and five subcategories (French and Indian War, War of 1812, etc.); (3) in the “Hallway,” one bookcase, one subject area (music) and five sub-categories (opera, biographies of musicians, etc); (4) in the “Bed Room,” two bookcases and random shelves, with miscellaneous subject areas (sports, mysteries, poetry, transcendentalism, etc.); and (5) in the “Bathroom,” one bookcase, four subject areas (natural history, trail guides, animals, and books about the Appalachian Trail). All’s right with this world when a man’s books are well-organized.

Last week, I picked The Odyssey as the book I’d want if I could have but one book in my home library. Some picks by readers: the Bible (by a landslide), anything by Jane Austen, Walden, a one-volume edition of Shakespeare’s complete works, The Divine Comedy, Don Quixote, Chaucer, and Gene Stratton Porter’s A Girl of the Limberlost.

Now we get to “How do we go about discovering the next book we’re going to read?” — a serious question. When things are going well, it seems there’s no end to the books in hand or on your reading list. But in the blink of an eye, you can go into a slump. You’re not reading well (it’s a skill that fades with disuse) and you don’t know where your next book is coming from. What to do?

Book reviews. At times, when I can keep up with them, I subscribe to as many book review publications on the national and regional levels as I can afford (not more than five). Aside from whatever leads I might pick up, I enjoy reading reviews in and of themselves. They are an art form of sorts, at which the British excel. In this country, Larry McMurtry is skilled at informal overviews and book talk; James Wood, a reviewer for the New Yorker who was raised in England, is more formal, more of a traditional critic. And it must be noted that, when he’s on his game, Gary Carden is as good a book reviewer as there is on any level.

Blurbs. I read them carefully. If the recently-deceased detective fiction author Robert Parker (creator of Spenser and Hawk) wrote a blurb praising another mystery author’s prose style, you could bank on it. James Dickey, you couldn’t trust. If asked, he would have written a blurb praising a chainsaw manual.

Writing blurbs is also an art form of sorts. They are difficult because so much has to be packed into so little space. I can’t write them. Several months ago, Renea Winchester — a Swain County native who lives in Atlanta — asked me to read the typescript of her new book, In the Garden with Billy: Lessons About Life, Love, and Tomatoes, and write a blurb. It’s a terrific book. The best thing I’ve read in quite a while. I got carried away. Renea was understandably bewildered – but still gracious – when she received, as an email attachment, a 1,000-word blurb. What she’s doing with it, I’m afraid to ask.

Word of mouth. The best bet. I won’t have any interest in your politics or problems, but if our paths should ever cross, it won’t be long before I ask, “By the way, what are you reading?” I will listen carefully to what you say and, if something you mention sounds likely, I’ll make a note.

George Ellison wrote the biographical introductions for the reissues of two Appalachian classics: Horace Kephart’s Our Southern Highlanders and James Mooney’s History, Myths, and Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees. In June 2005, a selection of his Back Then columns was published by The History Press in Charleston as Mountain Passages: Natural and Cultural History of Western North Carolina and the Great Smoky Mountains. Readers can contact him at P.O. Box 1262, Bryson City, N.C., 28713, or at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..