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Every breath sings mountains
Published: 2011-09-07 14:14:27Friday, Sept. 23, is the autumn solstice. The solstice is about balance and harmony — the day and night are equal. Here in the Smokies, we wave goodbye to summer as Joe-pye and goldenrod fade, apples and pumpkins brighten and leaves begin to turn. We t...
Read MoreScreech owls don’t really screech
Published: 2011-08-31 13:26:20The Eastern Screech Owl has the broadest ecological niche of any owl in its range. It occurs east of the Rocky Mountains, where it is a permanent resident of both rural and urban habitats from south of the Canadian boreal forest to near the Tropic of Can...
Read MoreOliver deserves more credit for his writing skills
Published: 2011-08-24 12:40:02I started to write this column about Duane Oliver before I discovered that he has just published what he tells me is his “last cookbook.” We’ll see. This one is titled The North Shore Cookbook. It is a follow-up to Cooking on Hazel Creek and Cookin...
Read MoreOur unique geography leads to unusual names
Published: 2011-08-17 14:22:48About a year and a half ago I wrote a column titled “Mountain Topography and Language Lend Themselves to Colorful Names” that sparked a number of e-mails and letters. Obviously there are other folks out there who enjoy thinking about “the lay of th...
Read MoreLate summer is an awesome time to botanize
Published: 2011-08-10 14:03:47Spring is the appointed time for the various wildflower pilgrimages and outings that attract thousands of visitors to the mountains of Western North Carolina each year. In April and May, it’s a piece of cake to locate spring beauty, hepatica, trailing ...
Read MoreAdd acreage to your spiritual landscape
Published: 2011-08-03 13:45:55Lots of folks like to study those molded relief maps of the region, the ones that show the upraised contours of the mountain ranges. Some have even pieced together the maps for the Southern Blue Ridge Province from Southwestern Virginia to North Georgia ...
Read MoreThe Naturalist's Corner
Published: 2011-07-28 16:18:40Snowbirds are here No, I’m not talking about your Uncle Bernie and Aunt Esther from New York City. I’m talking about our feathered friends. The snowbirds that have returned en masse to feeders all across the country are dark-eyed juncos. These little...
Read MoreWinter wear
Published: 2011-07-28 16:17:43(Note: A version of this essay will appear in an upcoming issue of “Chinquapin: The Newsletter of the Southern Appalachian Botanical Society,” for which George Ellison writes a quarterly Botanical Excursions column.) Several weeks ago, the nighttime ...
Read MoreTaking a likin’ to the lichen
Published: 2011-07-28 15:06:51On a winter walk you will encounter numerous evergreen plants. None is more mysterious or delightful to behold than the lowly lichen. Except for pollution, nothing much disturbs lichens. They grow ever so slowly, as little as one millimeter a year. There...
Read MoreMy birding through the warbler
Published: 2011-07-28 13:23:33It wasn’t until the late 1970s that my wife, Elizabeth, and I first started birding in a systematic fashion. That is, we began learning to distinguish species by their calls and songs as well as by their distinctive markings. For a while, it seemed to ...
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