New Appalachian Moments Blog Post by Scott Ballard History has told us all too little of this young woman who married Daniel Boone in North Carolina. She had been nearly as tall as Daniel and very attractive with black hair and dark blue eyes that made an immediate impression on…
PHOTOGRAPHY © 2019 Walt Hampton *Certainly one of the best ways to remember our Appalachian home is through photography. During the first 20 years of my writing for the outdoor market I used 35mm film cameras, then suddenly the magazines needed digital images. Digital is wonderful; honestly I don’t know…
New Appalachian Moments Blog Post by Scott Ballard When I say the term bushwhacker, it’s not some high powered garden tool…I’m going back to the Civil War and attempting to clear up some confusion…the confusion exists because the term was used to describe both Union and Confederate partisans…it just depended…
MOTHER’S HANDS © 2019 Walt Hampton It would take a few volumes to talk about my mother, her childhood, education and life, and to try to encapsulate her in a column such as this is useless; let me just say that when it comes to mothers, I had a great…
New Appalachian Moments Blog Post by Scott Ballard The cultural awareness of Daniel Boone begins with John Filson’s 1784 publication, The Discovery, Settlement, and Present State of Kentucke (sic), which included, in the first edition, a brief add-on in the appendix entitled the Adventures of Colonel Daniel Boon (sic)…the irony…
FAVORITE PLACES ©2019 Walt Hampton If you have spent much time on this planet eventually you will accumulate a few locations that stick in the memory, places that for some reason or other strike a chord. From my own experience I could regale you with stories of Alaska or Wyoming,…
New Appalachian Moments Blog Post by Scott Ballard Early on, and ironically enough, an abundance of water made Butler, Tennessee a good location to build town. But a series of floods, culminating with the violent killer flood of 1940 that left six dead and many missing led the powerful Tennessee…
PUBLIC LAND © 2019 Walt Hampton Within Appalachia there are several types of public land, whose access and management is controlled by different agencies, both state and federal. Even within those parcels of land that fall under one agency there may be land that is controlled by a separate agency;…
New Appalachian Moments Blog Post by Scott Ballard There are so many wonderful plants, shrubs and trees that grace our mountains…notably ginseng, trillium, rhododendron, laurel and dogwoods…however the plants that don’t get much respect or even recognition might be best represented by lowly but hearty skunk cabbage. Like daffodils, its…
LET’S GO TO THE RIVER! © 2019 Walt Hampton A winding, narrow dirt road beside the river leads to the homeplace. The old house sits on the end of a finger ridge, high and dry above the riverbottom, far enough away to be safe from the seasonal flooding but still…
