An installment in our Appalachian Foodways series It’s native. It’s sweet. It grows along half the rivers in Appalachia. And still, most folks in pawpaw country have never tasted one. Maybe you’ve passed it a hundred times: growing low along a creek, hidden beneath the canopy. Or maybe you’ve caught a whiff in late September:…
An installment in our Folklore & Legends series The banks of Chestnut Creek have a way of rearranging themselves when no one’s looking. One year, the bed is gravel. Next, it’s mud and willow roots. Paths vanish. Stones shift. Try to mark a spot on the map, and nature will soon erase it. Maybe that’s…
An installment in our Appalachian History and Culture series You could hear the shop before you saw it. A steady rhythm of clinks and taps echoed from the open door—tin snips biting into metal, hammers flattening seams, the soft hiss of solder melting into a joint. Inside, the tinsmith bent over a worn bench lit…
An installment in our Appalachian History and Culture series You can still hear them sometimes—those old voices. They live in stories passed across porches, handed from generation to generation, without being written down. Before people thought to call themselves storytellers, they just told. And someone else remembered. Back in Gaelic lands, those voices had a…
An installment in our Appalachian Foodways series Chef Jacques Pépin said that our food reflects our history. Around here, that’s not theory—it’s fact. Southern cooking isn’t just something passed down. It’s something that kept folks alive. It remembers what people went through, and it doesn’t let much go to waste. If you want to know…
An installment in our Appalachian History and Culture series My friend Vanessa Cole writes a history newsletter which graces my inbox regularly. Recently, she wrote a series of articles about how Southern families “made do” during the Civil War. It was so entertaining and informative, I asked her if I could reprint it here, and…
An installment in our Appalachian History and Culture series In the mountains of Virginia during the Revolution, justice didn’t always wait for courtrooms. Sometimes, it showed up with a rope and a warning. That’s how the phrase “lynch law” got started—right here in Southwest Virginia. The lead mines near what’s now Wytheville were essential to…
An installment in our Appalachian History and Culture series The British called it a gentleman’s war. That might’ve been true in the drawing rooms of Philadelphia or London. But out here—in the rolling hills of Botetourt (pronounced “baa-tuh-taat”) County, Virginia—it was anything but. That’s where you’d find John Wyatt, bending over hoop iron with his…
An installment in our Blue Ridge Travel series. A Valley with a Funny Name While America was toasting its new transcontinental railroad in Utah on May 10, 1869, Roanoke, VA, was just a mountain crossroads called Big Lick. Named for the large natural salt deposit, this lick attracted wildlife in droves: buffalo, deer, and elk,…
An installment in our Blue Ridge Travel series. It’s a quiet morning in Fries, Virginia, and the New River is doing what it’s always done—slipping past the banks with ageless calm. The cotton mill that gave the town its name and purpose is long gone, but you’d swear you can still hear the echoes. Not…
An installment in our Appalachian History and Culture series When most people think of African Americans in the 19th century, two images dominate: Southern slaves or Northern abolitionists. But tucked deep in the hills and hollows of the mountain South, there lived thousands of men and women who didn’t fit either category. They were Freemen…
An installment in our Blue Ridge Travel series. We all say the same thing the first time we see the Blue Ridge Parkway: “The view is incredible.” The Blue Ridge Parkway, with its winding curves and postcard overlooks, offers some of the most stunning scenery in the eastern U.S. It’s the kind of road that…