The Appalachian Voice
Wapiti Wonderland
images/voice_uploads/bullelk.gif It was a glittery, chilly mid-May morning, the sky brilliant blue, the trees fully leafed out in the electric green of early spring. A northwest wind herded puffy white clouds eastward as I crested the Cataloochee Divide to begin the serpentine crawl into Cataloochee Valley. I was on my way to visit Jennifer Murrow,…
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 MoreUncrowded Fishing Fit for a Duke
Any trout fisherman who’s spent time on the water in the Southern Appalachians knows that our sport is skyrocketing in popularity. Ironically, the very qualities that draw anglers to mountain streams in record numbers — natural beauty, healthy fish populations, and the opportunity for solitude — are becoming harder to come by with every new…
Read MoreWVa. National Wildlife Refuge Losing Its Core Habitat
There just aren’t as many islands on the Ohio River as there used to be, U.S. Fish and Wildlife officials say. That’s one of the reasons the USFWS founded the Ohio River Islands National Wildlife Refuge in 1990, to preserve floodplain habitat for many species of animals and plants, several species of which are endangered…
Read MoreUplift, Erosion, Uplift, Erosion: A Compressed History Of Appalachia
images/voice_uploads/smallshendoah.gif Most Appalachian residents will tell you their mountains are unique, but most probably don’t understand just how special they really are. It isn’t the highest mountain range in the world, by any means, but it once was. What is most remarkable about the chain is its incredible age, about 300 million years. It’s possibly…
Read MoreClimate Change Will Put Heat On Mountain Habitats
Two new scientific reports on global climate change paint a disturbing picture of the future for aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems in the Southern Appalachians. The reports — “Aquatic Ecosystems and Global Climate Change” from the Pew Center on Global Climate Change, and “Habitats At Risk: Global Warming and Species Loss in Terrestrial Ecosystems” from the…
Read MoreMaple Sugar Production Here Rivaled New England’s
Sugar Mountain. Sugar Grove. Sugar Hollow. Sugar Knob. The word “sugar” appears on maps of almost every region within the southern mountains. A bit of our pioneer past is evoked every time these place-names are spoken, and the names themselves reveal the natural history of those particular locations. “Sugar” refers to the sweetener made from…
Read MoreBig Timber Influenced USDA Southern Forest Study
As the official public comment period closed last week for the Southern Forest Resource Assessment, new information obtained under the Freedom of Information Act documents that timber industry representatives had inside influence as official peer reviewers of the study prior to its public release. Several of these timber giants harvest trees in Virginia, including Westvaco,…
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