Holly Kays
On a piece of rocky ground at the base of a steep bank along the mist-shrouded Little River, oil painter Olena Babak sets up her easel. It’s late in the day to be starting a new piece — less than three hours of sunlight remain — and Babak is fresh from an hours-long painting session in the Elkmont area of Great Smoky Mountains National Park. But something about the scene compels her.
“Sometimes it’s like an impulse,” she said. “Sometimes it’s contemplated. Sometimes, a scene sort of drags you in, and you need to figure out why.”
What initially draws my eyes to the tall, stalky plant growing near the Oconaluftee Visitor Center in Great Smoky Mountains National Park is the round, green bulge in a stem near its crown. Called galls, such growths are often caused by insects like wasps and flies, whose larvae use them as safe places to feed and grow. I’m excited to show it to 2025 Steve Kemp writer and illustrator in residence Jim and Leslie Costa, who are leading a Smokies Life Branch Out event exploring the diversity of insects found in the area.
Born from the high, cold springs of Great Smoky Mountains National Park and destined for the Gulf of Mexico, the clear waters of the Oconaluftee River have a long journey ahead. The river flows through the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians’ homeland in Cherokee and joins increasingly voluminous waterways as it travels toward the sea. The Cherokee know this southbound path as the Long Person, yvwi ganvhida — a living being with its head in the mountains and its feet in the sea.
Before they retired, Bob and Nancy Furlow owned and managed apartment buildings for a living. Now, they don’t even own a home — at least, not one without wheels. Since selling their house seven years ago, the couple, both in their late 60s, has resided in a 160-square-foot Boles Aero trailer, which Bob painstakingly rebuilt to feature cedar-paneled walls, a king-sized bed, and a full bathroom and kitchen. Four years into their new life as full-time RVers, they joined the ranks of the five dozen people who serve as campground hosts every year in Great Smoky Mountains National Park.
“This is the way to go when you retire,” said Nancy. “It’s fantastic.”
In 1927, a $5 million donation from the richest man in America — the equivalent of $92 million today — secured the Great Smoky Mountains’ then-tenuous future for protection as a national park. But when John D. Rockefeller Jr. agreed to write the check, he had never so much as glimpsed these ancient peaks. Smokies Life’s former publication director Steve Kemp spent years wondering: why?
When Claire Stovall applied to the Artist-in-Residence program at Great Smoky Mountains National Park, she hoped to use the time to work on the wildlife textile collages she had highlighted in her application. Then she told her family she’d been selected for the program — and that plan spun on a swivel.
Great Smoky Mountains National Park is one of the most biodiverse places in the world, so it’s no surprise that many of the plants and animals chosen as symbols of the two states it straddles — North Carolina and Tennessee — are found within its boundary.
In a shaded clearing near Mingus Mill lies a cemetery. Small, unmarked rocks sit at the head and foot of each plot, adorned with shimmering coins visitors have left as tokens of respect.
The names, life stories, and even the exact number of people occupying Enloe Cemetery in Great Smoky Mountains National Park have long been lost to history, but interest in this plot of ground has increased in recent years as pieces of the story have come to light.
It’s not yet 9 a.m. on a weekday, but Alum Cave Trail is already bustling. With parking scarce, hikers might walk nearly a mile to reach the trailhead along Newfound Gap Road.
“I’ve probably already talked to 20 people,” says Joshua Albritton, supervisory preventative search and rescue ranger for Great Smoky Mountains National Park, joining PSAR Ranger Cutter Wheeler at the trailhead around a quarter after nine.
Somewhere after 2 p.m. on a sunny Wednesday in mid-March, the chaotic wind of a descending helicopter whipped the calm skies above the Appalachian Trail near Icewater Spring Shelter. Four people — two Smoky Mountains Hiking Club volunteers and two Appalachian Trail Conservancy employees — waited at the intersection of the Boulevard and Appalachian trails, watching the bundle of black locust logs suspended below the chopper come to a gentle rest in the small forest opening.
With 360-degree vision, bright-colored bodies that sparkle jewel-like in the sun and acrobatic flight patterns reaching speeds of nearly 35 miles per hour, dragonflies are some of the more glamorous members of the insect world.
By now, the story of Hurricane Helene is a tragically familiar one: the endless rain, the swollen rivers, the angry water indiscriminately destroying lives and homes. The storm killed more than 230 people across five states, including 104 confirmed dead in North Carolina and 18 in Tennessee.
They can eat just about anything and multiply like crazy. They live all over the world, in a variety of environments — wherever you go, they’re likely nearby.
The tangle of trees and vines beyond the playground fence at North Canton Elementary School used to be a no-go zone for students, years of accumulated balls a testament to a long-time school rule against jumping the fence.
A special prosecutor tasked with examining the investigation into a 2022 police shooting that severely injured Jason Harley Kloepfer at his home in Cherokee County has concluded that no criminal charges are warranted against any of the officers involved.
A decades-long debate over paddling rules on the Upper Chattooga River has come to a close after the appearance of a final ruling in November 2023 took some stakeholders by surprise.
A ribbon-cutting ceremony held Friday, Feb. 16, for a building dedicated to preserving the Cherokee language was a celebration of the culture and language that has formed the Cherokee people for countless generations.
George Mitchell Littlejohn, a commissioner on the Tribal Alcoholic Beverage Control Commission, is facing 11 charges in tribal court following a Feb. 16 arrest for allegedly charging more than $1,800 to a TABCC credit card for a variety of unauthorized purchases.
With my eyes closed, I can’t see the patchwork of brown leaves and fallen twigs covering the forest floor before me, the pale green lattice of lichen peppering the trunks of upward-reaching trees, or the waters of Fisher Creek rushing over a bed of weathered rocks.
A man who was severely injured in a 2022 police shooting at his home in Cherokee County won’t see a resolution to his civil suit until August 2025 at the earliest, according to a recent filing in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of North Carolina.
A pair of new environmental violations issued this month brings the total for Canton’s shuttered paper mill up to seven since it closed last June and 22 since May 2021 — an average of 1.3 violations every two months.
The Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians will ask the federal government to take 38.2 acres in Graham and Swain counties into federal trust following unanimous votes from Tribal Council Thursday, Feb. 1.
Despite being closed for months, the Evergreen Packaging paper mill in Canton continues to rack up environmental violations, with two recently issued violations for exceeding fecal coliform limits bringing its total number of violation notices since May 2021 up to 22.
Starting in the fall, North Carolina students whose families make less than $80,000 a year will receive a guaranteed scholarship toward attending any of the state’s public colleges and universities.
The Cherokee Indian Police Department has determined the identity of the person whose remains were found in an open field Tuesday, Jan. 2, but it’s not disclosing any information about the individual beyond that the person was male.
Severe drought is gone from North Carolina and moderate drought barely holding on after an extraordinarily rainy first half of January.
Diversity within the Western Carolina University workforce has been inching up, with the latest report showing that the last year’s worth of staffing changes held steady the proportion of racial and ethnic minorities on the university’s payroll while strengthening the existing majority of female WCU employees and resulting in a sharp increase in the percentage of employees with a disability.
In a unanimous vote, the Cherokee Tribal Council has approved an ordinance change aimed at protecting victims of elder abuse while their alleged abuser’s legal process plays out.
More than 100 people came to a public hearing Thursday, Jan. 11, at Haywood Community College in Clyde, that took input on what would be the first changes to black bear hunting season dates since the 1970s — and opinions were mixed.
In 2023, visitation to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park grew 2.2% to reach its second-highest number ever — but the number of visits starting in the North Carolina side of the park fell 5.1% compared to 2022.
Heavy rains last week banished all but a spot of severe drought from the mountain region, with more relief likely to be reflected in next week’s drought map from the N.C. Drought Management Advisory Council.
After months of stalemate, the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians appears ready to advance its cannabis enterprise.
As 23-year-old David Crockett opened his eyes to day two of sub-freezing temperatures in the snow-covered Shining Rock Wilderness, he had no idea that, seven years later, he’d be telling his story on film.
While mountain residents were busy preparing for Christmas, the Pactiv Evergreen paper mill in Canton that until May 2023 employed more than 1,000 of them was racking up a pair of new environmental violations.
Tribal Council members stood to show their unanimous support Thursday, Jan. 4, for a resolution they hope will result in a name change for Clingmans Dome, the highest point in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.
A former Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians official and cannabis board member accused of soliciting favors from a contractor that was negotiating a contract with the tribe’s cannabis enterprise will pay a fine and face a ban on future appointments to tribal positions, Tribal Council decided in a vote Thursday, Jan. 4.
The Cherokee Supreme Court has vacated the conviction of a man who was prosecuted for his alleged role in a cyberattack that crippled the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians’ computer network in December 2019.
Western Carolina University is gearing up to take its first bite out of an estimated $130 million in needed upgrades to its athletic facilities, with the Board of Trustees recently hiring a construction manager to oversee the first chunk of projects, worth at least $30 million.
Boyce Deitz’s influence on Swain County athletics was rich and storied, but the program to which he dedicated two decades of his life summarized the news of his passing in just four words.
Declared to be the Year of the Trail more than a year before it even began, 2023 had a lot to live up to.
At least one Cherokee teenager is believed to have died as the result of a local teen suicide pact under investigation by the Cherokee Indian Police Department. Investigators believe one attempted suicide was also a result of the pact.
In a 65-page answer to an extensive lawsuit filed in response to the December 2022 police shooting of Jason Harley Kloepfer in Cherokee County, the Cherokee County Sheriff’s Office emphasized that it was officers with the Cherokee Indian Police Department, not CCSO deputies, who fired the shots, and denied allegations that its deputies and supervisors mishandled the case from the beginning.
After more than two months of operating under a continuing resolution, Tribal Council has approved a new budget for the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians.
The Harrah’s Cherokee Valley River Casino and Hotel in Murphy is abuzz these days as 200 on-site construction workers hustle to finish a $275 million expansion project expected to open in 2024.
The court has made its decision in the Cherokee County Sheriff’s Office’s request to dismiss many of the complaints in a lawsuit stemming from the 2022 shooting of Jason Harley Kloepfer at his home near Murphy.
An ordinance seeking to change the makeup of the Cherokee One Feather’s editorial board made it back in front of Tribal Council on Thursday, Dec. 7, following a lengthy work session held Nov. 21.
Monday mornings have a bad reputation, but for dogs at Sarge’s Animal Rescue Foundation in Waynesville, they’ve become the best part of the week. Since the Adventure Tails program launched Nov. 1, these mornings have been set aside for hiking — and the dogs are all about it.
