As you read this, I’ve just noted the passing of my third anniversary with this 20 year-old newspaper and as such, the retrospectives I was charged to write this week were all on events that took place long before my arrival — except for this one. 

(Editor’s note: This article first appeared in The Smoky Mountain News in June 2004)

The destiny of a given region is largely determined by its geology, topography, flora, and climate. That’s certainly been the instance here in the southern mountains, where logging and mining have been supplanted as the major industries by recreation and ecotourism. A prime example of this transition exists in the southwestern tip of North Carolina.

Horace Kephart has been dead for 88 years, but his name and his story still pull an undercurrent through Western North Carolina. 

Kephart is acclaimed as the father of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, an outdoorsman gifted with an adventurous soul, and the author of such staples of regional literature as Our Southern Highlanders and Camping and Woodcraft. He’s derided, too, as a man with a severe drinking problem, a shirker of family responsibility and an outsider who profited off of sometimes less-than-flattering depictions of the locals. 

Jeff Carpenter knows the woods. 

A native of Otto who’s spent most of his adult life the next county over in Sylva, he learned from his father Earvin Carpenter what it means to be an outdoorsman and a mountain man. He knows how to hunt and track and orienteer. He’s seen more than a few bears, heard more than a few coyotes, spent more than a few nights camped out in the backcountry. 

But over the last 15 years, he’s become convinced that there’s something out there that doesn’t show up in standard field guides. 

From flip-flops to overnights to the quintessential northbound thru-hike, there are many different ways to experience the Appalachian Trail on its route from Georgia to Maine. An overnight along the trail at Roaring Fork Shelter near Max Patch was enough to meet a variety of hikers, all hiking the trail their own way. 

Golf is more than a game in Western North Carolina — the wellbeing of the popular past time can be a major indicator of how the regional economy is doing as far as real estate and tourism growth. 

The golf industry — like many others — took a major hit following the recession in 2008. Many courses went bankrupt and closed down, people couldn’t afford to play the game as often, and home building within the country clubs came to a standstill. Even in 2017, more than 200 golf courses across the nation closed as the supply and demand pendulum continues to swing its way back toward the center following 20 years of unsustainable growth. 

In an era when most environment-related news carries a hue of doom and gloom, the saga of air quality trends in Western North Carolina is a welcome exception. 

In the 1990s, ground-level ozone was high — Asheville teetered on the edge of violating federal standards, and the Great Smoky Mountains National Park actually did exceed them — and white haze emanating from area power plants made visibility so poor that visitors had a hard time seeing the waves of blue mountains for which the region is named. The tourism industry worried that poor air quality would deter travelers from stopping in the Smokies. 

Substance abuse has had a number of unintended consequences on society from mental illness, unemployment, overcrowded jails, a backlogged court system, increased health care costs to homelessness, but one of the most devastating consequences is the separation of families. 

When Chris Slagle’s partner of 26 years died unexpectedly four years ago, he bought a fixer-upper house in Maggie Valley with plans of healing from his heartbreak while pouring everything he had into restoring the old house on Fie Top Road. 

When President Donald Trump signed the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act into law on Dec. 22, 2017, proponents hailed it as the most significant tax reform in three decades. Lost in the hullabaloo over the tiny, temporary tax bracket adjustments — financed by a burgeoning federal deficit — was a new program designed to spur investment in low-income census tracts across the country.