Mountain Strong

I'm an avid reader. I practically inhale books. That being said, I'm not a big magazine reader, never have been. Yet I do subscribe to one magazine that I devour rather than inhale. It's the Our State Magazine, and unfailingly it has the most fantastic articles relating to North Carolina. I enjoy reading about places I've been. I also get ideas for new places to go and things to do. The day it arrives in the mail, I hurry through it, flipping to see what is new and exciting and enticing enough to bring me back for a long read over a cup of hot tea.

When October's issue arrived last week, I began the usual page flipping. I soon found that this issue was different. At the top of the cover is the statement, "Special Issue: Healing After Helene" and below the subtitle, "Celebrating North Carolina," in large bold print, are the words MOUNTAIN STRONG. This photo taken by my friend and co-adventurer, Sara, and reinforces how much being strong meant to recovery.

I didn't make it far into the pages before I began mentally dog-earing pages to return to and read later, but when I got to page 174, I stopped dead in my tracks. Sara's photograph was taken at the same place as the location of an article in the magazine. The title drew me in first, "River Reclaimed," and then I saw the pictures. We had been on the very same river back in July and I even blogged about it a few weeks ago. If you didn't get a chance to read it, click on the link and check it out before you read any further so you'll see why I'm so excited to share with you now.

This mountain-strong story featured one of the characters (chapter 39) in my newest book, Southern Fly Tyers. Her name is Kelly McCoy, aka Rivergirl. In my book, she wrote her own biography, and it is dripping with love of river and fly fishing and all things nature. In the magazine article, author Katie Reynolds interviewed her and masterfully captured Kelly's love of river and fly fishing and all things nature. 

Back in July my friend Sara and I went tubing on the New River through Rivergirl Fishing Company, Kelly's company. Sara took this picture of the Rivergirl main building.

See the canoe on the front porch? There's a story behind that canoe as recorded in the article. Here, look at it more closely:

This is a page from the magazine with the canoe's picture taken by staff photographer, David Uttley. I took the other picture of the front of the business the day we were there.

See the heart on the canoe? Kelly painted it there after Hurricane Helene, after she rescued the canoe from the tree that caught it in the flood. It's a reminder that's visible to her every day. Stay strong. Stay safe. You can overcome.

Just like our state!

Catch of the day,

Gretchen

Picture This

An author drives down a country lane and delights in finding a connection to one of her books. That would be me, one day not long ago, on State Road #268, Happy Valley, North Carolina. I was passing by the campus and just had to stop and take a photograph of this sign.  

Cap Wiese was the headmaster at the Patterson School for a number of years in the mid-twentieth century. As a disciplinarian, he used fly fishing as a method of calming hyperactive boys and in the process changing their lives. In his honor, a room has been designated as the Cap Wiese Flyfishing Center. 

I first heard of him when I was compiling information with Ron Beane for our Fly Fishermen of Caldwell County: Life Stories that came out in 2015. Cap's daughter wrote his chapter and titled it "Dean of Fly Fishermen." Much has happened since that book came out, including the creation of this center at Patterson School. He appears again in my newest book, this one with Alen Baker, Southern Fly Tyers: Life Stories of Those Who Tie Flies. He's in Chapter 4 and also in the appendix, page 211.

I took this photograph at the Red Awning Gallery in Hudson where my books are surrounded by the beautiful art of local artisans. This newest book is about art of its own kind. Designing a fly to fool a fish is a skill that should be celebrated. It will be. 

Alen and I are presenting a program about the history of fly tying to the Caldwell County Historical Society on November 6, open to the public. If you think you'll pass on this because you couldn't care less about tying flies, please reconsider. These flies are painstakingly created using everything under the sun, from a rooster feather to the underbelly fur from a dead possum on the side of the road or to styrofoam packaging beads. Talk about creativity! Alen will display containers showing replicas of ancient flies the Cherokee once used here in our Appalachians. 

I have never fly fished in my life. The very idea does not appeal to me at all because these fishers have told me one too many horror stories of being surrounded by forest critters - think bears - or stepping into knee-deep water filled with snakes. I've been a part of five books about fly fishing now, and I've become a true sideline enthusiast, which is where I'll remain for now. I have met the most wonderful group of men and women who care as deeply for the environment as they do the sport. Our world needs them to tell their stories. Join us to hear their stories on that November Thursday evening at the Caldwell Heritage Museum in Lenoir. See you then!

Catch of the day,

Gretchen

Travelogue

In response to my many Facebook posts of places I've been lately, a friend of mine asked if I were writing a travelogue. Short answer - no. But...sounds like something I should do. Actually it's something I've been doing all year, going somewhere and then writing about it. I'm always eager to share places and available experiences from here in my neck of the woods.

In the midst of one such experience, I hollered "What were we thinking?" at my co-adventurer. This one was beyond my usual sitting in an easy chair at a local winery, even beyond the tame hikes to mountain peaks. Indeed, what was I thinking!

This time, the adventure was tubing. Rivergirl tubing, to be exact, on the New River, Todd, North Carolina. What a kick in the butt that was! Wait, that sounds negative and this was positive, all three downstream miles of it. The energy kick was from the cold water tickling my low-hanging butt! What a way to spend a hot July day!

Because I was paranoid about dropping my precious cell phone into the murky waters and floating away from it, never to see it again, I purchased a waterproof disposable camera. So did my friend Sara. 

It's a little blurry, our photography skills lacked a lot, but I still wanted to share this image of us preparing to launch. My kind of launch is usually a calm event being surrounded by books and refreshments and well-wishers, not an actual get-in-the-water-and-launch-this-baby-off launch. 

What a delightful, relaxing way to cool off, although it took me a while to get the hang of things. The two of us tried linking together with the hooks they provided, but we found it much smoother to go our own ways and enjoy the moment without dragging each other down...literally.

Two and a half hours later, we docked, if you call it a dock. It was more a slippery slope of mud, sliding two steps down for every one up. But once we both found our land legs, we laughed our way to the top and ventured on to the nearest winery.

Exploring in western North Carolina is so much fun. Give it a try someday.

Catch of the day,

Gretchen

How to Have a Successful Book Launch

It's a done deal, this new book of mine. We launched it last Friday and now it's into the world. The online link to purchase will be coming soon, so hang tight. Or drop by the Red Awning Gallery in Hudson. Speaking of which, that's number one on my list of "How to Have a Successful Book Launch," pick a spot. 

This book is about tying the flies that attract fish, an art of its own, and the stories we've included prove it. So if that's true, what better place to hold a launch than an art gallery! Imagine that!

I was fortunate enough to saturate the room with beautiful creations by the artist members of the Western North Carolina Society of Artisans. If you study the picture above, you'll see artwork somehow connected to fishing in the great outdoors. There's a gentle one of a fisherman on a stream by Zan Thompson. There are bold drawings of bugs, lots of bugs, by Carole Childers. Look closely and you'll even see a trout on a guitar, by Rozzy Smith.

Step two: Send out invitations. We invited the men and women who wrote their chapters. We also included invitations to men and women who were in the previous books about fly fishing. And they came! Not all, but many. And these people drove through heavy rains on Friday evening!

Step three: Advertise. I did that, thanks to the HUB staff, who not only placed ads on their various websites, but also set up the room according to our suggestions.

Step four: Speaking of room arrangement: Decorate. In addition to the artwork, we added something unique. We had planned ahead for people to bring displays of their flies, and as it turned out, that offered plenty of discussion opportunities. Thank you to those who brought a case or two, as in this case from co-compiler, Alen Baker. A friend of his from the West Coast designed this display of original flies dating back to Native American traditions through the nineteenth century. Wow!

Step five: Food. Offer food and hey, they will come! 

Step six: Nametags. When I launched the first of my fly fishing books, Fly Fishers of Caldwell County, I had this bright idea to label each fisher who contributed to the book by having them wear their name, chapter, and page number. That was so successful that I decided to do it again. That way, everyone could open their copies to the correct page to be autographed. That worked! The otherwise shy and modest people were almost forced out of their shells to participate. What fun!

 

Step seven: Speech. Yes, it's a must. You must thank them for coming and in this case for sharing their life stories in the book. 

Step eight: Enjoy the evening. Hard work deserves celebration. 

Step nine: Bask in the afterglow! And when that glow subsides, take time to recover

Step ten: Go back to what comes next. For me that's two nearly finished projects. More on that later.

This launch was accomplished with a great deal of planning and help from others. The artists who created their beautiful works. The HUB staff who had the perfect space and set up for us. Those who brought food for the bountiful table. My friend and critique group member, Sandra Warren, who snapped these photographs that evening. Members of Foothills Writers who supported me through the process of publishing and showed up at the launch. Thank you to everyone. 

Books remain for sale at the Red Awning Gallery or you can order online by clicking the title here: Southern Fly Tyers: Life Stories of Those Who Tie Flies. Or, you can purchase directly from Alen Baker or me. We humbly thank you.

Being an author can be a solitary endeavor, for sure. Sitting in front of the computer for hours. Researching. Revising. Sitting. Typing. Persevering.

But in the end, the final product is a group effort. How wonderful is that!

Catch of the day,

Gretchen

Launching a New Book!

Introducing!!! Now available for your enjoyment...

 Southern Fly Tyers: Life Stories of Those Who Tie Flies

There's a story about the cover. It was suggested by one of the tyers who appears in the book, David Anders. It shows the tying desk that is on display at the Fly Fishing Museum of the Southern Appalachians in Bryson City, North Carolina. It's on the cover twice, featured front and center, and then again, faded in the background to wrap around to the back cover. The spot a tyer chooses to work magic is almost sacred, as in don't touch my precious stuff. Maybe the chosen spot is the kitchen table, or a bench in the garage, or a desk in a room all its own. Maybe it's on a tossed-aside rickety table in a man cave or a she shed. Wherever the spot, a special place is one key to successful tying, and that's why we chose to feature the spot from the very beginning. 

And yes, that's a rooster! Read the book, and you'll get why it is on display in a fly fishing museum. 

I helped Alen Baker compile our new book. (We've done three together.) He worked for several years to collect these life stories that we present to you. As I was working on them, I was amazed, awed even. Oh, the stories I've read. Oh, the stories you've read! Tying flies is a passion. Tying flies is an art. Tying flies is scientific. The idea is to base the fly on the bug that is hatching at the moment in order to fool the fish.

 

The second blurb on my back cover says it best: 

Anthony Hipps, paying tribute to Jeff Wilkins: Sometimes I feel like the mad scientist in the lab trying to cook up something (the intent here is to sound like the ‘evil’ laugh in a horror movie). And to think that a fish can be duped into thinking some crazy concoction of plastic, metal, glue, fur, hair, feathers and more is something to eat is just pretty incredible when you think about it.  

Today, August 1, we're launching this book into the world with a well-deserved party. Some of these "mad scientists" will be showing flies they've created. We'll be at the HUB here in downtown Hudson, North Carolina. Starts at 5:30. This celebration is sponsored by the Western North Carolina Society of Artisans. You read that right. Artisans, as in artists, as in creative minds. As in fly tyers! How perfect is that!

The walls and halls of the society's Red Awning Gallery are covered with the beauty of members' creations. You might even spot a few fish in the pictures they've painted...a few bugs, too!  Take a book home. (Books make great presents, you know.) Take a work of art home. Or just come and be a part of a pleasant gathering.

Please join us today. 5:30 to 7:30 at the Hudson Uptown Building, 145 Cedar Valley Road, Hudson, NC 28638

We'll have plenty to celebrate. There will be FOOD involved! Do drop in.

Catch of the Day,

Gretchen

The Joys of Research

No one ever told me research was fun. I had to find that out on my own. During my academic years, any research I did involved hours and hours in the library reference section. (I predate computers, by the way.) 

Once my writing career took off, and once I learned that research involved more than diving into written words, I latched onto a whole new aspect of research - field work...and in my latest venture, literally field work.

I snapped this picture when I hiked last week at the Moses Cone Memorial Park on the Blue Ridge Parkway, with Sara, a dear friend from Florida. Most people stop at this National Heritage Park to tour the "guilded age" mansion built at the turn of the twentieth century by this textile tsar or just to stand on its front veranda and enjoy the spectacular view of the valley below. Or maybe to sit there in a rocking chair and watch horseback riders slowly wend their way along the many trails crisscrossing before them. 

Not me. I was on a mission. A research mission. I was heading to the Cone Graveyard, which, according to the sign, was a mere 0.9 mile journey. I had my walking stick. I was ready.

We went through an underpass with cars clattering on the parkway above us. We passed fields. We followed other hikers into the deep woods until we came out into the largest field of all, one with a sign pointing us to the graveyard, and pointing the others to the lookout tower another mile along the trail. 

I wasn't there to pay homage to those buried souls, although I felt as if I should, and I did. I thought about the significant contributions made by those buried on that hill so long ago. I must admit, however, I thought more about my mission. I was there to take a picture of the gravemarker before me, that of Moses Herman Cone, industrialist and benefactor of numerous worthwhile causes. 

That photograph will appear in the newest book I'm writing. I have seen the proof, and I wasn't quite satisfied with the current version of this picture, so I was there to see it for myself and make the picture more to what I needed. 

What I needed was to showcase the granite monument, and therein lies the story I'm about to tell.

Moses Cone died in 1912, and Widow Bertha wanted to honor him with the largest granite marker she could find. The granite was shipped by train to the station here in Lenoir. This was 1914, and shipping was at the mercy of what was available at the time. Ox cart. The task of how to get this multi-ton hunk of rock up the mountain to its final resting place landed on the shoulders of the grandfather of my book's co-author. He had teams of oxen. He was a teamster, after all. He could do this. He scrounged around for more oxen and ended up with twelve teams. Compute that in your mind. Twenty-four oxen. 

Imagine the issues of a line of oxen going two by two around the many hairpin curves between here and there. In the end, more than half of them were yoked to thick poles behind the wagon, pushing, with the others ahead of the wagon, pulling.

Four days it took them. Sara and I drove the same distance in twenty minutes. 

One detail I've not uncovered as yet, where was the granite quarried? My co-author has spent hours and hours on dead-end phone calls to no avail, but we're still hoping. The thing about research, all it takes is that one final number to call, or that one final person to track down, or that one final website to click on, and then boom! There it is!

Just like I felt when I stood before this monument.

Catch of the day,

Gretchen

First in Freedom

There are not many days I wish I were back teaching in the fourth grade, but today is one of those days. I would make sure we had a big, BIG celebration. For today, you see, is MecDec Day! I should call my fourth graders from the past to join me around the flagpole and revel in the joy of having Founding Fathers who cared about freedom. We could toast the concept as only a classroom of history-loving children should. I'd make sure every one of them had a noise maker of sorts. If it weren't illegal, I'd set off big fireworks.

Today is so important to the state and to the nation that it is even on our flag, the one that hung in the front of the room opposite Old Glory herself. 

Isn't it beautiful! Oops, I wanted to show the reason today is MecDec Day, and the image caught the wave at the wrong time. Yesterday morning, I took a picture of the flag at our town's museum. It was still wrapped in plastic when I spread it out on a table, but here it is, in its own kind of glory, wrinkles and all...our own America250 reason to celebrate today, two hundred and fifty years later.

Back when Charlotte was a Hornet's nest of stinging questions about what the British monarchy meant to the citizens of the colony of North Carolina, there was a group of men who gathered to take action against the unfairness of it all. They wrote what has been labeled the Mecklenburg Resolves after Mecklenburg County, where this major step against the crown took place. This was a full year before the more famous and more revered Declaration of Independence of July 4, 1776. In fact, David Fleming's recent book Who's Your Founding Father? about his "quest to uncover the first, true Declaration of Independence," dives deep into the story behind the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence and the controversy surrounding it. If you think a book about history is a dry, boring read, think again. This book was a hoot, a page-turner hoot! Take a look at my copy in front of the state flags on my desktop screen. Didn't I stage it perfectly!

Our declaration was first (despite what naysayers have to say). Once upon a time, not so long ago, we even bragged about it on our car license tags. 

And you best believe that in all the years I taught fourth grade social studies, come every May 20th, we would study the flag and talk about how people can peacefully protest unfair rules. Best of all, you don't have to be a student in a classroom to celebrate. We have the freedom to do so. The Founding Fathers saw to that!

Catch of the day,

Gretchen