Blue Ridge Wild

No animal in the southern Appalachian Mountains can match the panther for legend, drama, and persistent modern-day sightings despite official consensus that the cat was eradicated in the East over a century ago. An older generation of mountaineers grew up hearing tales from their grandparents of panthers stalking people, panthers stealing livestock, horrifying panther screams in the night, and epic fights between panthers and bears.

(A shorter version of this article was published in High Country Magazine August 2022.)

In this article I examine the lives of wolves in the context of their former presence in western North Carolina. Their existence quickly became intertwined with early white settlers, much to the wolves’ detriment. Their story from then until today is a sad natural history, but yet we can imagine a time when they wandered free and unmolested through these hills.

(A much abbreviated version of this article was originally published in the Fort Defiance Chronicle February 2023.)

The shad (Alosa sapidissima) and eel (Anguilla rostrata) are aquatic equivalents of migrating neotropical birds; connecting the Appalachians to parts of the planet totally unlike our mountains.

In the past, the yearly shad spawning run reached deep into the continent, in the south as far as the Blue Ridge where they simply ran out of water. It influenced the location of Indian villages and, after European settlement, provided the culinary basis for annual riverside feasts in many communities.

Indigenous grasses- big bluestem, Indiangrass, Eastern gamagrass, & others- make a comeback in the East.

In 1752 a group of American settlers entered a territory yet unreached by Europeans, which their chronicler described as “a large plain” containing “more meadowland than one could make use of”. He observed that “a man could make several hundred loads of hay of the wild grass. For stock raising, it is also incomparable; pasture in abundance.”

In recent years, I have gotten to know the habits and behaviors of red-tailed hawks from a couple that have taken up residence on my farm.

Click here to hear the call of an adult red-tailed hawk.

Click here to hear the call of a juvenile red-tailed hawk that I recorded on my farm.

The story of the American chestnut (Castanea dentata) is an almost unbelievable saga of an almost perfect tree that met a tragic end.