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586 Search Results for "george ellison"
The unique ways of the kingfisher
Published: 2009-06-03 18:54:00Belted kingfishers are one of my favorite birds. A pair fishes along the small creek on our property during the breeding season. In winter they move downstream to the Tuckasegee River, although the male will make infrequent appearances from mid-November ...
Read MoreCreation of the park was marked by triumph and tragedy
Published: 2009-06-03 18:43:00The creation of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park 75 years ago was nothing short of a miracle. The pitfalls were enormous and often narrowly skirted. The battle for a park came close to defeat many times, yet park boosters fought and clawed their w...
Read MoreThe alluring calls of song birds
Published: 2009-05-27 17:40:00In the opaque early-morning light outside our bedroom windows, the birds that reside in our woods — or do we reside in their woods? — commence warming up for the day with tentative calls and whistles. The male cardinal seems to take the lead most mor...
Read MoreHiking and heritage converge in new trail guide
Published: 2009-05-27 17:35:00A new hiking book on Western North Carolina puts the regions trails in a new perspective. It weaves together the classic nuts-and-bolts trail instructions with history, stories and anecdotes of the trail and its surrounds. Hiking North Carolina’s Blue ...
Read MoreYaupon and the ‘Black Drink’
Published: 2009-05-20 17:17:00For some years now — when walking the woodlands around ancient Cherokee settlements — I have been on the lookout for an evergreen holly species that’s not native to Western North Carolina or the southern mountains. I haven’t yet encountered this ...
Read MoreThe story of the fiddlehead
Published: 2009-05-13 16:30:00Fiddleheads are emerging from the leaf litter in our forests. Almost everyone, even those not especially interested in plants, has heard of fiddleheads and knows that they’re supposedly edible. Whenever I teach a plant identification workshop for the S...
Read MoreA haven of nectar and beauty
Published: 2009-05-06 16:26:00The irises my wife, Elizabeth, cultivates in our yard are coming into full bloom as I write this. Their shapes and colors and fragrances are almost too intricate to describe. The name iris, meaning rainbow, was given to the group of flowers so-called bec...
Read MoreKephart proved to be a key figure in shepherding idea of a national park
Published: 2009-05-06 16:24:00With massive logging operations running full tilt in the Smokies in the 1920s, the sanctity of what once seemed like a vast and untouchable forest was being rapidly reduced to a desert of stumps. While most locals welcomed the money brought in by timber ...
Read MoreEllison came to WNC as a ‘Kephart pilgrim’
Published: 2009-05-06 16:18:00While George and Elizabeth Ellison are fixtures in Bryson City today — Elizabeth as a renowned artist and George as a writer and naturalist — their journey to the region 30 years ago was little more than happenstance. The Ellisons rode in on the back...
Read MoreJudging Kephart: Legacy of author, outdoorsman still debated
Published: 2009-04-29 17:11:00George Ellison never knows when a Horace Kephart pilgrim will come calling. But invariably, they will come — creaking up the wooden stairs that have smooth depressions worn into the treads from years of use — to Ellison’s second floor office where ...
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