Mountain Passages: Natural and Cultural History of Western North Carolina and the Great Smoky Mountains

Marc Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. [153]-156). Publisher Marketing: This collection of intertwined essays results from writer George Ellison's thirty-year fascination with Western North Carolina and its Blue Ridge and Great Smoky Mountains. Gathered into three broad sections--Natural History, Cherokees and Mountaineers--these insightful essays provide a wealth of historic detail and offer a unique perspective on the rich cultural heritage of this stunning and oft-misunderstood part of the country. Through a diverse cast of characters including early explorers and European plant hunters, a Cherokee shaman or two, weather sharps, a hermit, a moonshiner, several writers of note, ornithologists and naturalists, we hear stories in a distinctly Appalachian tone and gain an understanding of mountain life and lore. We develop a new language fit for mountain life, speaking of balds, knobs, gaps, seeps, springheads and shoals, and begin to understand the roots of the names Crooked Arm, Deeplow Gap and the Boogerman Trail. We see the world through the eyes of the ancient Cherokees, for whom the Nantahala Gorge, for example, was a "chasm of horrors" associated with the "uktena," a mythic serpent from the dreaded Under World. From his home in a 46-acre cove surrounded on three sides by the Great Smoky Mountains National Park and from a studio he shares with his watercolorist wife, Elizabeth, in Bryson City, George Ellison writes and lectures about the natural and human history of Western North Carolina. His work appears in the Asheville Citizen-Times, the Smoky Mountain News, and Chinquapin: The Newsletter of the Southern Appalachian Botanical Society. Contributor Bio:  Ellison, George GEORGE ELLISON is Professor of Public Health and Director of the Institute of Primary Care and Public Health at South Bank University, London.