Joshua Moore Photo
Reading list
With June here, let’s wander the shelves and pick over some travel books. Whether you are living in Western North Carolina or just visiting, here is a smorgasbord of guidebooks that should enrich your explorations.
First up on the table are two guides to the state as a whole. Travel North Carolina: Going Native in the Old North State (John F. Blair, Publishers, 2012, Fourth Edition, 600 pages, $19.95) remains a favorite of mine.
The reason? The authors, all six of them, have close ties to North Carolina, and Blair Publishing, based in Winston-Salem, is well-known for its regional guidebooks.
Years ago, I had the pleasure of meeting one of the authors of Travel North Carolina, Carolyn Sakowski, now president of Blair. Carolyn is a North Carolina booster, especially regarding the mountains, and ardent in promoting through print the many places to visit here. That enthusiasm shines in the pages of this book.
Sara Pitzer’s North Carolina: Off The Beaten Path (Globe Pequot, 2017, 198 pages, $16.95) is less comprehensive than Travel North Carolina, but readers may enjoy Pitzer’s brevity and her narrower focus. In her pages on Waynesville, for example, she mentions only one restaurant and two inns, but her descriptions are fulsome, well-researched, and written with a personal touch, introducing us to the owners and their families who operate these businesses.
Closer to home is Jim Hargan’s Blue Ridge and Smoky Mountains: An Explorer’s Guide (The Countryman Press, 2012, Fourth Edition, 511 pages, $21.95). Hargan roams the mountains of North Carolina and Tennessee, offering readers car tours, hikes, kayak and canoe trips, visits to attractions ranging from breweries to golf courses, and loads of history. Near the beginning of Blue Ridge and Smoky Mountains are helpful sections titled “Exploration Themes,” which outlines the book’s organization, and “Author’s Favorite Trips,” an itinerary that made me want to hop in my car and hit the road. Like those native New Yorkers who have never set foot in the Statue of Liberty or the Empire State Building, I realized how many places in these mountains I have missed touring, though I have lived here over thirty years.
Jason Frye’s Moon Asheville & The Great Smoky Mountains (Perseus Books, 2016, 183 pages, $14.99) will appeal to many because of its pocket size and its wealth of information regarding accommodations, restaurants, shopping tips, and sightseeing excursions. Frye devotes many pages to Asheville, but travelers will also find here plenty of material regarding the Great Smoky Mountains.
Of special interest are Moon Asheville’s final three chapters: “Background,” “Essentials,” and “Resources.” “Background” surveys a wide range of topics: flora and fauna, a brief history of the Old North State, and a look at its people and the arts. “Essentials” is more helpful to visitors than to natives. In addition to advice on traveling to Western North Carolina by air and by car, tips for seniors, the disabled, and gays and lesbians, and other useful references, Frye devotes a charming page to the manners visitors may find in this part of the South.
He points out, for example, that common courtesy requires holding the door open for others and that “The South was way ahead of the curve in adopting the “Ms.” designation; Southerners have always pronounced both “Mrs.” and “Miss” as “miz.” As some old-timers might remark, his compliments “do our region proud.”
In “Resources,” Frye provides visitors and natives alike with a short list of related websites, histories, and guidebooks.
Recommended in Frey’s “Resources” is Georgann Eubanks Literary Trails of the North Carolina Mountains: A Guidebook (The University of North Carolina Press, 2007, 414 pages, price varies).
Part of a three-book series—also available are volumes for the Piedmont and the Coast—Literary Trails takes both the curious newcomer and the connoisseur of Appalachian literature on a tour linking authors to the places and events of their books. Featuring writers associated with our region—Sequoyah, Thomas Wolfe, F. Scott Fitzgerald, O. Henry, Anne Tyler, Kathryn Stripling Byer, and more than 160 others—Eubanks also shines a light on local libraries, museums, colleges, bookstores, and literary events.
We follow her from Anne Tyler’s childhood home in Celo to the Thomas Wolfe angel in a Hendersonville cemetery, from Sylva’s City Lights Bookstore to Allegheny County and its associations with Tom Wolfe’s I Am Charlotte Simmons.
Eubanks enhances these excursions by including excerpts from the novels, poems, and essays of these authors, thereby inviting travelers to pause and ponder their words in the places connected to their books.
Summer has arrived. Grab one of these guides, pack up a day bag, and enjoy the back roads and beaten paths of Western North Carolina.