I'm finishing up a new book called Hiking North Carolina's Blue Ridge Heritage. It's a hiking guide which spans the triangle from Pilot Mountain State Park to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park (west) and down to Highlands (south) on the Georgia border. With each hike or group of hikes, I relate the history and heritage of the area I'm hiking. 

 As I cross Basin Creek (pictured above) yet one more time on my way to Caudill Cabin, I carefully place my left foot and then my right between rocks and wonder where the drought is now that I could use it. It’s a warm mid-summer day and I’m in one of the most isolated areas I’ve been in.

Well, not that isolated. The Parkway is only a few miles above me but here at the back of Doughton Park, there’s nobody. I pass the remains of a chimney, a grinding wheel, and rock foundations – this was a busy place before the 1916 flood wiped out the community. When I get to the cabin surrounded by pasture land, my first reaction is “These folks didn’t get out very much.” This dark one-room cabin without windows housed a family with fourteen children. Two books are nailed to the wall and I pull out my flashlight to read the Caudill family genealogy and sign my name. The person above me came three weeks ago.

Not all hikes in Hiking North Carolina’s Blue Ridge Heritage are in such isolated places. In 2007 and 2008, I drove over 10,000 miles between book events for Hiking the Carolina Mountains and to write this book.

On the way to Winston-Salem, I detoured to Pilot Mountain State Park and was enthralled with its wedding cake cone rising out of the Piedmont valley. Hiking Stone Mountain State Park, I met a local hiker who told me about Stone Mountain’s moonshine past. He took me to a field of barrels, jerrycans, and rubber hoses a few feet from the trail. The Park Superintendent pulled out a map and showed me more sites.

I went to Decoration Day at Proctor Cemetery after the North Shore Road decision. It was an emotional time for all those who attended. Though there were several hikers who supported the financial settlement and not the road building, there was mutual respect and friendliness between the groups.