Blue Waters Mountain Lodge

From pioneer days gourd receptacles have been in daily use in many a mountain home.  The best example is the proverbial gourd dipper. Out here in Graham County and elsewhere in the hills where there are folks who still get their water supply straight from sparkling...

Autumn is in high gear here in the Smoky Mountains and it is still raining black walnuts.  It appears that it is a bumper crop this year. Walnuts are the first tree to lose their leaves in fall and one of the last to leaf out in spring. Black Walnut is a native tree...

In the long, long ago, before the Cherokee came from their homeland of great snakes and water monsters to the mountains of blue smoke and sparkling streams, so said the Old Men, there lived in these beautiful hills and glades a race of men who were not Cherokee. ...

Joe Pye, an Indian Medicine man who became friendly with the early colonists of Massachusetts and treated their various ills, never came this way.  However the purple flowering weed that bears his name is one of the picturesque plants of autumn here in the hills.  And...

The smell of corn pollen hangs heavy over the land.  It is a fragrance as typical of August as the crunch of tooth on the roastin’ ear.  And for many an old timer it stirs many a memory.  The mainstay of every farmer was his cornfield.  No matter the shape or form –...

Like riddles and fortunes, tongue twisters were another means of whiling away time of a night around a campfire in which the whole family could participate.  And like riddles, they came down by word of mouth along through generation after generation.  Each of the...

Give mountain folks their druthers when it comes to breads and most of them will speak right up for cornbread.  But it has got to be the unadulterated, old fashioned baked-in-a-black-iron-skillet kind.  None of this fancied up, sugar sweetened Yankee stuff.  And it...

The old wagon track running down the branch to the old mill site is clogged with briars and young saplings.  Trees surround the milldam, and laurel and alders hide the channel where a wooden wheel turned and furnished power that ground many a bushel of corn into...

Deep in the Smokies, attractions and beauty are plentiful, but it is the time of year when one of the most spectacular shows comes to town.  Every year in mid-June, a truly beautiful natural phenomenon occurs; a natural wonder that charms it guests and baffles...