Our State

At dusk, Linville Gorge opens wide beneath Wiseman’s View, its cliffs beginning to disappear into darkening shadows. Strands of white mist cling to the slopes as the evening light lingers along the higher ridges. Table Rock stands directly in front of us, blunt against an overcast sky. Hawksbill Mountain rises to its left, and Brown Mountain lies just beyond them, a long ridge layered among several others. C.W. Smith knows which ridge is which, and exactly where to look.

A small group sits in a semicircle around Meg Chamberlain in her cozy Asheville shop. Facing them, she holds a quart jar filled with chopped apples, carrots, turmeric, and a sea-salt brine, one hand dyed yellow from mixing the produce with the spice. With the lid on loosely, she taps the bottom of the jar with her wrist. “You have to burp your baby,” she says. Fermentation, Chamberlain goes on to explain, works best out of direct sunlight, which can affect the jar’s temperature.

You could easily miss Jon G’s Barbecue, tucked beside U.S. Route 74 in a rural stretch of northern Anson County. But people don’t. Jon G’s is only open on Saturdays, and barbecue mavens come from everywhere. Some arrive Friday night to sleep by the front door or camp out in their cars in the nearby parking lot. They want to be first in line because many just like them will make the same pilgrimage. More than a few will roll in at sunrise. Who knew? Garren and Kelly Kirkman didn’t. Still don’t.

Capturing images of the night sky depends on light. Hours and hours of repeated, short exposures are needed to collect enough light from distant nebulae and stars for photos to turn out. And that requires darkness. That’s why amateur astrophotographer and astronomy enthusiast Steven Davis started going to the area outside of Burnsville that would later become Mayland Community College’s Earth to Sky Park: He was seeking darkness.

The sun shines bright in a brilliant blue sky, not a cloud in sight across the wide vista that unfolds from Cowee Mountain Overlook on the Blue Ridge Parkway. It’s a perfect October day — in other words, a terrible day for landscape photography. “This is what we call a high-contrast scene,” says Tommy White, a photography instructor based in Boone, gesturing to the red-and-gold-dappled ridges beyond the overlook. “You’ve got hard shadows and harsh light falling on the landscape.

The brook trout rose in the shade of low-hanging rhododendrons, where dappled sunlight danced on the water’s surface. I wouldn’t have seen the fish at all if a single caddisfly — a mothlike, buttery gold insect the size of a baby butter bean — hadn’t caught my eye. And it caught my eye only because it flittered and shimmied into a shaft of sunlight that shot through the deep shade and ignited the bug with an incandescent glow.

I honestly thought it would be a bit of a harder sell, getting my very 2020s teenage boys interested in a roadside attraction. Shall I explain to you, gentlemen, the pre-interstate world? Could I interest you in a Hardy Boys mystery, some network television, a TV dinner? But the universe leaned toward me from the jump. “Gravity’s weird there,” I said, and they both looked up from their phones. “How do you mean?” they said. Well, no. They did not say that. They probably said, “Huh?” Or just grunted.

Two-mile loop Difficulty: ● ● ○ ○ ○ For the deepest shadows, look for the tallest trees. Joyce Kilmer Memorial Forest, near Robbinsville in western North Carolina, protects some of the state’s largest old-growth trees. Tulip poplars rise more than 100 feet, with trunks measuring more than 20 feet around. Old-growth sycamores, oaks, and other hardwoods share the forest. The Lower and Upper trails loop together in a figure eight through the memorial forest.

No matter the season, North Carolina’s mountains are a spectacle of light and shadow. At day’s end, the setting sun casts peaks and ridges in a golden glow while darkness settles into the valleys and hollows. Even at high noon, pinpricks of sunlight penetrate a rhododendron thicket along a bouldery brook. That interplay is what landscape painters seek: contrast, depth, and intrigue on the canvas.

Tim Crotts stands near Robby’s Sales, a sporting goods store and Mount Airy institution, watching droves of Autumn Leaves Festival visitors parade up and down North Main Street. Some of them stop at every booth, looking for a painting or a piece of handmade jewelry they can’t live without.