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586 Search Results for "george ellison"
The cuckoo, both elusive and beautiful
Published: 2010-09-02 14:22:27This past weekend marked the 26th annual Great Smokies Birding Expedition, a gathering of onrnithologically-inclined friends. On Saturdays, to get things started, we always walk around Bryson City, tallying the common species that prefer a semi-urban set...
Read MoreUsing music to write history
Published: 2010-09-02 14:10:23Bluegrass recording artist Buddy Melton feels like he owes Jackson County. He had never played an instrument until he started fiddling in his college dorm room in Cullowhee. He had never experienced the roots of mountain music until he found Gene Brownâ€...
Read MoreDo you know where you live?
Published: 2010-09-02 13:35:54One of the handouts I use during natural history workshops is headed “Southern Blue Ridge Province: Geographic Location and Influences.” It is the best “concise” approximation of the situation that I have been able to devise, as yet. I revise it ...
Read MoreA place called home
Published: 2010-09-02 12:35:57One doesn’t tire of certain places. Even though they inevitably change through the years, they become more than friends. The cove we live in has become that sort of place even though, in most ways, it’s just another mountain cove. There are no rare p...
Read MoreA coyote in the yard
Published: 2010-08-31 20:31:38Monday morning … 9:15 or so … suddenly the coyote was there … as if from out of nowhere … a shadow moving in the pasture across the creek. I had glanced out of my workroom window moments before and nothing was there. The next time I looked up he ...
Read MoreSecret poems of the Cherokee
Published: 2010-08-30 15:13:51I have always been struck by the sacred formulas (chants or incantations) that the Cherokee medicine men used to create good luck in hunting or warfare, in healing, or in affairs of the heart. The evil medicine men or “witches” employed the formulas ...
Read MoreBeekeeping in the mountains
Published: 2010-08-30 14:53:02Editor’s note: This column first appeared in The Smoky Mountain News in June 2003. Honey was a primary sweetening agent for the early settlers here in the Smokies region. And to this day there are numerous beekeepers in the region. They trace the origi...
Read MoreAn ongoing preservation
Published: 2010-08-30 13:29:33This past week, we took our 11-year-old granddaughter, Daisy, who is visiting from Colorado, to the Cherokee Indian Village. She had been reading about the Cherokees and wanted to see “real Indians.” The tour was excellent. There were plenty of “re...
Read MoreRediscovering inspiration
Published: 2010-08-27 19:59:59In the mid-1970s my primary writing interest was poetry. I was consumed night and day by poetry for perhaps five years and took part in poetry readings throughout the southern mountains. Some poems were published in little magazines like “Wind,” “T...
Read MoreThe butternut in the creek bend
Published: 2010-08-24 19:56:50Like dimly-lit rhododendron tunnels or ancient sphagnum-layered bogs, creek bends are special places that invariably precipitate beauty. Sitting in the blue-gray shadows of my porch, I watch lower Lands Creek flow by on its way to the Gulf of Mexico. Dow...
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