The Appalachian Voice
Virginia’s New Birding & Wildlife Trail First In Nation
They say everything is bigger and better in Texas. But Virginia’s about to change all that. The Virginia Birding and Wildlife Trail may be the first state-wide wildlife-watching trail in the United States when it is finished sometime in 2004, says David Whitehurst of the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries. To be fair,…
Read MoreTraining Loggers For Restoration Of The Future Forest
The Southern Forestry Foundation (SFF) held a three-day workshop on “Chain Saw Safety and Precision Felling Techniques” on August 5 – 7 at the campus of Warren Wilson College. The workshop was affiliated with Soren Eriksson’s “Game of Logging” and was designed to improve the skills and capability of working loggers and forestry professionals. The…
Read MoreThe Paradox of Pokeweed: Poison or Peculiar Cure?
As summer begins to fade, pokeweed begins to dominate open areas of the southern Appalachian landscape. The plant is a familiar feature in traditional mountain cookery, and widely used as a folk remedy. Paradoxically, folklore also identifies pokeweed as a lethal poison. Even today, modern medical researchers believe that pokeweed may lead to dramatic medical…
Read MoreThe True Costs of Coal: New Study Adds Them Up
images/voice_uploads/coalplant.gif As the Bush administration touts their Energy Plan and pushes for increases in domestic energy production, conservationists across the Southern Appalachians are today calling their emphasis on coal into question for both economic and environmental reasons. At the heart of the Bush Energy Plan is “clean coal technology,” an oxymoron to most conservationists but…
Read MoreDoe River Gorge(ous)
Hampton, Tennessee, is not known as a beauty spot. It’s a wide place in the road, a rough and tumble mountain intersection near Watauga Lake where U.S. 321 meets U.S. 19E — a place to buy beer and a bag of chips before passing on to more attractive surroundings. Yet barely a mile away, just…
Read MoreThe Musical Mecca Of Floyd Still Drawing Crowds
Scrape, snap, scrape. The steel taps of clogging shoes hit the floor. It sounds like the cocking and firing of a rifle. “Yeah, get it now,” somebody says. Feet pound the floorboards – in sandals and boots and dress shoes, too. But shoulders and hips are eerily still. They sway only slightly, side to side…
Read MoreHow Our Native Strawberry Became World-Famous
One day as 18th-century botanist William Bartram traveled on horseback through the southern mountains, he discovered he had entered a field so thick with strawberry plants that the crushed berries had dyed his horse’s legs deep red. At one point he rode for two miles across an area he described as “strawberry plains.” The scattered…
Read MoreHemlock-Killing Insect Pest Discovered in Smokies
Biologists at Great Smoky Mountains National Park have confirmed the Park’s first-recorded infestation with the Hemlock Woolly Adelgid, a tiny aphid-like insect that attacks and kills hemlock trees. The first outbreak was confirmed last week about 3 miles north of Fontana Dam in the Swain County, NC portion of the Park and a second infestation…
Read MoreWilderness Effort Hits Snag
North Carolina Congressman Cass Ballenger’s office has expressed an interest in reintroducing a bill to designate two wilderness study areas just south of Grandfather Mountain as official wilderness. But in Avery County, where 10,000 of the 13,000 total acres are located, a resolution is before the county commissioners that could deal a severe blow to…
Read MoreAn Interview With Mystery Author Sharyn McCrumb
New York Times best-selling author Sharyn McCrumb says she “grew up in a swirl of tales.” She has put that training to good use, publishing essays, short stories and 16 novels based on the stories she grew up with. Nearly all of her work is set in the Southern Appalachians, the place she still calls…
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