This collection of intertwined essays results from writer George
Ellison's thirty-year fascination with Western North Carolina and
its Blue Ridge and Great Smoky Mountains. Gathered into three broad
sections--Natural History, Cherokees and Mountaineers--these
insightful essays provide a wealth of historic detail and offer a
unique perspective on the rich cultural heritage of this stunning
and oft-misunderstood part of the country. Through a diverse cast
of characters including early explorers and European plant hunters,
a Cherokee shaman or two, weather sharps, a hermit, a moonshiner,
several writers of note, ornithologists and naturalists, we hear
stories in a distinctly Appalachian tone and gain an understanding
of mountain life and lore. We develop a new language fit for
mountain life, speaking of balds, knobs, gaps, seeps, springheads
and shoals, and begin to understand the roots of the names Crooked
Arm, Deeplow Gap and the Boogerman Trail. We see the world through
the eyes of the ancient Cherokees, for whom the Nantahala Gorge,
for example, was a "chasm of horrors" associated with the "uktena,"
a mythic serpent from the dreaded Under World. From his home in a
46-acre cove surrounded on three sides by the Great Smoky Mountains
National Park and from a studio he shares with his watercolorist
wife, Elizabeth, in Bryson City, George Ellison writes and lectures
about the natural and human history of Western North Carolina. His
work appears in the Asheville Citizen-Times, the Smoky Mountain
News, and Chinquapin: The Newsletter of the Southern Appalachian
Botanical Society.
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