The need for a new magazine

The Toe River Valley, years after the exodus of furniture and textile mills and other lynchpins of an earlier economy, is re-inventing itself. The new face of recovery for the region is more likely reflected in the renaissance of small towns, a revitalized tourism, imaginative entrepreneurial ideas and small businesses, creative developments for first and second homes, unmoored web-based workers finding solutions on backporches, the re-discovery of wild waters and wilderness areas, artists and tradespeople who love the high mountains and bring that energy into their work.

It’s a region that’s shaking off its cove and fence mentality, coming together and deciding how to best merge growth and preservation in one of the most precious geographies in the East. There is simply no town like Bakersville, no mountains like Roan or Mitchell, no craft school like Penland, no community college like Mayland, no small college like Lees McCrae, no high apple meadow like Altapass, no rhododendron festival or Wooly Worm race or Toe River crafts trail or theatre quite like Burnsville’s anywhere else in the world. And in DT’s Restaurant in Spruce Pine, the conversation is about fiber optics, linking libraries and campuses and sharing ideas that will reposition the Valley as a great destination and as a rebounding economy.

There’s work to be done, for sure. Per capita income in the three counties is roughly three-quarters of the North Carolina average. Unemployment exceeds 10 percent. There are less than 1,500 non-farm establishments with paid employees across the region.

But the potential for coming together is real and the cross-fertilization of ideas in hospitality, manufacturing, high craft, agriculture, retail, recreation and healthcare is bringing about a new sense of history, place, and possibility.

For second home buyers, real estate can be stunningly beautiful, relatively affordable and part of a comfortable and safe community—all within an easy drive of metropolitan areas like Charlotte. Building a home in the mountains—and bringing a family home to the mountains—creates jobs in construction, in the building trades, in schools and in service industries. It fuels a new economy.

Taking the wide view, timing is excellent for a deeper interpretation of the region in the form of a magazine edited for those who want to get away, get outside, visit often, live here, write their own story, take part in creating a new landscape of appreciation and change.

No other publication or news source serves the Toe River Valley in that way or has that particular intention. So the need is here. And the best role emerges as one of collaboration, creativity and imagination.

First glimpse: Early sketches for a new magazine serving the Toe River Valley

Life and times of Tryon's Daily Bulletin

Thanks to Jeff Byrd, publisher, for his support of our work for him, and Ron Zisman, my long-time design partner.

Along the banks of the Arno, 2006

Early sketch: Some initial thinking about a trades directory for Mitchell County

Something intimate and lasting.

(A fictional introduction to following pages.)

For Page McKinney, bark siding brings something both intimate and lasting to the idea of forest living. For Wade Saunders, stacked-stone border walls are a matter of shape, color and intuition. For landscaper Betsy Winters, it’s not simply what looks good together; it’s what creates a world of comfort and beauty ten years from now.

These entrepreneurs, and many others who work in construction, landscaping and décor in Mitchell County influence the look, comfort and “big joy” of living in these mountains. They know the land, they hand pick the materials they use, they treat every client like a neighbor (which is exactly what many of their clients are).

So when you have an artful, important project you want to imagine or create from a simple idea, ask a Mitchell County landscaper, builder or artisan to take a look at it. Chances are nobody will care more, bring more to the job, or create something more essential, useful or beautiful.

The Building Trades of Mitchell County.
Creating a legacy of beauty and function.

For a Directory of Services: Telephone • Website Address

Dreamscapes from down under: The imagination of healing

Scribbles for Heidi Hayes, surrealist artist.

Beaver Lake in the ice age

Happenings thirty years ago recede now, not only into another time but into another era, an era that’s “back there,” on the other side of the frontal edge of a warming earth.

In 1978, Beaver Lake froze over, not a light freeze, but a freeze so long and robust that people in Volkswagons drove out onto the surface and spun around in 360’s. Neighbors, especially people from northern states, rummaged their dark cedar closets for ice skates and, overnight, whole hockey courts appeared, defined by branches, shoes and soda cans. At night, you could hear conversations on the ice that would ricochet around, between old houses and ancient border trees.

One night the police showed up in dark uniforms and shouted out to a group of boys, “Get off the ice. Stop foolin’ around. Get off the ice.” The boys yelled back, “Come out here and get us,” and they yelled and screamed with laughter, full of night air and the clearness of stars over a frozen lake well south of the Mason-Dixon line.

Beaver Lake will probably never freeze solid again in my lifetime, in the lifetime of my girls or in the lifetimes of their children. The very notion of it is a phenomenon to be captured, in these days of evaporating ice caps, only by memory.