When Drake Fowler returned to the North Carolina Arboretum after Hurricane Helene, the extent of the damage broke his heart. 

“We lost 10,000 trees over 80 acres,” he said.

However, as the initial shock of grief subsided, Fowler, the arboretum’s executive director, considered how to find opportunity amid destruction.

Mountaineer Little League Baseball has been around since the 1970s, but like everything else, once Hurricane Helene hit, its immediate future was uncertain. 

The fallout immediately following the disaster wrought by Hurricane Helene was tragic and traumatizing, but as time has gone on and debris piles slowly disappear, certain secondary woes are being fully realized. 

The North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) Flood Resiliency Blueprint is working with the North Carolina Land and Water Fund (NCLWF) to implement flood reduction and floodplain protection projects. DEQ is allocating over $9 million to 15 NCLWF projects that will provide an estimated 465 acre-feet of flood water retention, or 152 million gallons, during flood events.  

Meandering up Fie Top Road in Maggie Valley, just as your vehicle’s engine is pushed to the limit and it seems you may eventually drive off the edge of the earth, you emerge atop a mountain ridge, a large rustic lodge appearing in the distance — the Cataloochee Ranch. 

Friends of Panthertown was recently awarded an Environmental Enhancement Grant by the North Carolina Department of Justice for a remediation and restoration project. 

The Town of Sylva is embarking on a five-year plan to revitalize Mill Street with updated façades as part of the design pillar of the Main Street Sylva Association. 

More than two years after flooding along the Pigeon River and its tributaries killed half a dozen people and destroyed businesses, cars and homes from its headwaters near the Blue Ridge Parkway on down through the towns of Canton and Clyde, contractors are set to begin some of the most intensive debris removal operations in Haywood County since the floods of 2004. 

Gary Wade grew up in Pittman Center, Tennessee, just 7 miles from the Great Smoky Mountains National Park trailhead leading to Mt. Cammerer. But despite being a lifelong hiker, he didn’t reach the storied fire tower  at the summit until 1993, when he was in his mid 40s. 

Rex Mann’s father was the kind of storyteller whose voice would make everyone in the room stop what they were doing, come and listen.