Issue 3: August 2002

Raising A Wild Child

Ask the typical 10-year-old how to surf the Internet, and he or she will probably be able to show you a few things on the computer. It’s a skill many kids learn at school these days. But ask the…

Tobacco Farmers Go Organic, Join Forces With Enviros

Martin Miles has been farming tobacco in southwest Virginia since he was 6 years old. At 60, he’s trying something new – organic produce. While tobacco allotments — the amount of tobacco a given farm is allowed to grow —…

Wise Use Groups Spread Into Southern Mountains Scaring Rural Residents With Demagoguery, Deceit

Once strictly a Western phenomenon, the Wise Use movement and its agenda of opening up public lands to unrestricted timber, mining, and off-road vehicle development has spread into the East. From North Carolina to Alabama, Wise Use organizers are…

Paddling In The Land Of The Noonday Sun

Have I told you about the time I and 900 of my closest friends went paddling on the Nantahala River? It all began on a sizzling hot August day when I suggested to my buddy Mark Shelley that we go…

The 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…

Tripping Over Toads

I started reading about frogs in early February, when last winter’s strange warmth made me admit, at long last, that there would be no more snow in which to practice my mammal tracking. Now I turned my mind to an…

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,…

Bristol Celebrates Birthplace of Country Music

This summer, country music achieved a major milestone: July 25th through August 3rd 2002 marked the 75th anniversary of the historic 1927 ‘Bristol Sessions,’ literally, the “Big Bang” of country music. Over that 12-day period, the three most important…

Citizens Urge Congressman Boucher To Hold Firm

The recommendations from the Stoney Creek Flooding Advisory Committee could be widely misinterpreted, said Clinch Coalition president Detta Davis in a recent letter to Congressman Boucher. The Stoney Creek Advisory Committee recently concluded and the committee issued a set of…

Holding Back a Firestorm

In this summer’s hubbub to develop government spending bills, Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle quietly slipped into a bill language exempting his home state of South Dakota from environmental regulations and lawsuits, in order to allow logging in an effort…

Training 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…