The Appalachian Voice
NC’s Mountain Bogs Show Amazing Diversity
ftp://avweb:[email protected]:21//appvoices.org/images/voice_uploads/Bog.scientists.gif It’s been a long day in the field, but sitting around a kitchen table strewn with plants, bags of soil and books, N.C. State researcher Brenda Wichmann and Misty Franklin, botanist with the North Carolina Natural Heritage Program, still have a few bags of specimens to work through. This is the end of the…
Read MoreAll in favor of cranberry bogs, please raise your forks
The cranberry sauce on your holiday table is probably from somewhere along the low-lying New England coast, brought to you courtesy of Ocean Spray. Chances are good it was shipped along with millions of other supermarket cans to travel across the nation, to be opened and dumped onto fine china dishes, and to be set…
Read MoreWestern religion is already ‘green’
Two decades after “Dirty Dancing”
Early travelers once believed Virginia’s Mountain Lake was bottomless – or, at least, up to 300 feet deep. In reality, the mountaintop pond extends about 100 feet from the surface. And there’s a hole in it. Water comes into the natural 55-acre basin from a 500-acre watershed, but it escapes at a rate of 600…
Read MoreA Moment of Crisis for the Region’s Forests
images/voice_uploads/Deforestacion_02-.gif I have lived near Blowing Rock (always between Burke and Watauga Counties) since 1979. I, like many of you reading this now, remember Blowing Rock in the eighties with P.B. Scotts, The Farm House, Holley’s, Clyde’s, Antler’s, The Mayview Manor, and Blowing Rock as a different resort town than it is today. I watched,…
Read MoreBlaze Orange and Forest Green
Like just about every other 9-year-old boy in rural America in the 1960s, I received a Crosman BB gun as a Christmas gift. That present sent me down the trail of a lifetime of hunting, although I don’t remember killing a living thing with it. I did fire at a mouse once, while I was…
Read MoreAmerica’s Adopted Fruit
Many newcomers to the Appalachians lament the fact that a person is not defined as a native unless one’s family has lived in the area for generations. In the natural world, the definition is even more stringent. In short, if it wasn’t here when Columbus arrived, it is not native; though numerous Old World plants…
Read MoreThe High Cost of Coal
As this, the fall issue of the Appalachian Voice goes to press, millions of Americans are flocking to the mountains to see the gorgeous vistas of autumn foliage as they can only be seen in the Appalachians, home of the most diverse forests in the nation. According to a mapping project recently completed by Appalachian…
Read MoreStorytelling at Jonesboro
images/voice_uploads/Story.DonaldDavis2.gif David Holt makes a living playing music with the likes of Doc Watson, a legendary blind musician from the mountains of North Carolina’s High Country. But, Holt is also known to thousands as a storyteller. He’s known to spin yarns like a spider spins webs. “I usually either try to include music in the…
Read MoreHandbook Describes Storytelling Traditions
One of the difficulties facing Appalachian Studies has always been the lack of a good, single volume that would examine the multitude of issues and topics that, taken as a whole, would provide a good introduction to Appalachia. Such a book would need to include sections on history, natural resources, and the diverse backgrounds of…
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