Putting the truck into park, my girlfriend, Sarah, and I finally returned to our quaint apartment in downtown Waynesville Monday evening. After a long journey from the North Carolina coast back to Haywood County this weekend, it’s been a whirlwind of emotions.  

In a book written in a first-person, vulnerable and intimately entertaining narrative oral storytelling voice, Ken Smith takes us through his entire life — of youthful globe-trotting adventure and hardship, to an eventual life of self-sufficiency and spiritual awareness in Scotland.

Most people don’t realize that some accidental opioid overdoses are reversible with the quick administration of an opioid antagonist called naloxone, commonly found as a nasal spray and sold under the brand name of Narcan. 

Learn how to stay safe in the woods with a course 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Thursday, Aug. 17, at Standing Rock Overlook on the Blue Ridge Parkway.

Learn how to stay found with a land navigation course offered 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Thursday, July 20, at Allens Creek Park in Waynesville.  

Will White can prepare you to survive just about any situation.

GATLINBURG — It started with an ember. 

One single ember, falling from the sky into Michael Luciano’s front yard in Chalet Village in Gatlinburg. 

GATLINBURG — Coaches and team jerseys were absent from Rocky Top Sports World Friday morning, but the sports-complex-turned-Red-Cross-shelter surged with activity as Dec. 2 began.

Scott McCleskey didn’t really know what he was saying yes to when he boarded the plane to Alaska, pack of gear in hand, to take his place on the National Geographic Channel show “Ultimate Survival Alaska.”

All he knew was that he’d done a Skype interview for the slot, later fielded a call telling him to keep his hair long and eventually been given the nod to compete on the show — provided he could be up north within two weeks.

Fire, smoke, and efforts to make more of both fill the event pavilion at Haywood County Fair Grounds on a chilly May morning that feels more like early March. The Dutch oven class gathers around a fire in the right corner of the open-walled building, the blacksmiths get ready for their afternoon class in the far end and a cotton ball flames placidly atop the green metal case that Doug Knight is using to hold flint rocks for his fire-starting class. Class is in full swing, but nobody is paying the burning cotton any mind. They’re all too busy trying to ignite nests of frayed rope and char cloth with hard-won sparks from flint and steel.

It’s harder than it looks.