The Appalachian Voice
Kayford Crack-Up
By Harvard Ayers Blaine Meador’s wife has heard Kayford Mountain talk, and she doesn’t like what it’s saying. Looming above Dorothy, West Virginia, a giant crack has opened out of coal-mined Kayford Mountain that she and everyone else in town worries may break off a chunk of the mountain, a chunk large enough to slide…
Read MoreTennessee Road Project Unearths Miocene Relicts
images/voice_uploads/archaelogy.gif In life, all roads lead somewhere, be they of the asphalt variety or the figurative kind that meander through our lives each and every day. For Dr. Steven C. Wallace, an assistant professor and vertebrate paleontologist at East Tennessee State University, an ordinary road project in Gray opened up a new route of investigation…
Read MoreMuskie Mania!
Most people go fishing with the expectation, or at least the prospect, of catching a fish or two. Muskie fisherman, however, are a different breed altogether. Anglers who pursue the mighty muskellunge — a toothy member of the pike family that grow locally up to 35 pounds and reach lengths of 50 inches — come…
Read MoreNC’s First Wildlife Refuge Was in Black Mountains
images/voice_uploads/silverbook.gif Early in the summer of 1927 four men walked into the Black Mountain Hardware Company and bought five sticks of dynamite and 15 feet of fuse. Telling a suspicious clerk that they planned to blow up some stumps, the men climbed into a green sedan and drove up the Swannanoa’s North Fork to the…
Read MoreCarolinas & Georgia Ahead in Identifying Important Bird Areas
On spring mornings, Georgia’s Chattahoochee National Forest teems with bird life. Tanagers, vireos, orioles and warblers heading for their summer breeding grounds search for caterpillars and other insect life to fuel their journey north. On an upland ridgetop where a hurricane knocked down trees a few years ago, Cerulean warblers seek nesting sites. High above…
Read MoreAmbassadors For the Species at Bay Mountain
images/voice_uploads/alphababe.gif In 1997 Clarissa Pinkola Estes wrote a book titled, Women Who Run With the Wolves. But Sue Everett Shanks can top that – she has raised wolves. In the summer of 1995, Shanks coordinated the raising and integration of three gray wolf puppies into an existing pack of adult gray wolves at Bays Mountain…
Read MoreWeighing Windpower
images/voice_uploads/orangeturbine.gif Could wind energy be a viable source of electricity in North Carolina? Could it help improve our air quality? How much electricity could we produce and could we do it without negatively affecting the economy or the environment? These are questions that the U.S. Department of Energy, N.C. State Energy Office, researchers at Appalachian…
Read MoreVirginia TNC Preserve Protects Rare Pine Barrens
Nestled among the craggy peaks and rolling valleys of the Alleghany Highlands of western Virginia, Bath County has long retained its rural and rustic character, even as other Appalachian mountain communities fall victim to the pressures of increasing development and population explosions. Though it has been home to the famed Homestead resort for more than…
Read MoreAmerican Beech: Thin Skin, Shallow Roots, Long Life
In a wooded area near my house stands a large, impressive American beech (Fagus grandifolia). Curious about its age, I measure the tree’s girth and consult a simple table developed to estimate the age of beech trees. This method is not entirely reliable, but useful nevertheless for determining a broad age range. From the formula,…
Read MorePrimitive Fish Species Live On In Appalachians
“I can’t figure out what in the world this thing is. It looks like a shark, but has this Pinocchio-looking nose.” That’s what West Virginia fisheries biologist Scott Morrison hears virtually every time someone catches a paddlefish in his district. Anglers rarely hook a paddlefish, but when they do, they call Morrison. By the 1950s,…
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