Appalachia

 Winding roads swung through the hilly back woods of the American South, taking me closer and closer to a land I'd dreamed about for years. North Georgia sits at the southern end of the Appalachian Mountains, a range often sneered at by westerners for being hills rather than mountains... and maybe that's true, but these old hills sure are special. And you can still get lost here, whether you want to or not. At this moment I was trying to get lost, temporarily, in a drainage that held fish species that I'd never caught before, black bass and shiners isolated from even relatively nearby drainages long enough to evolve into something distinguishably different. Because the Appalachian Mountains effectively divide many watersheds, draining in almost all directions, the region has incredible diversity of freshwater fishes. From various redhorse, to a broad variety of darters, to minnows, to the redeye bass complex, it seems the deeper you dive into Appalachia the more interesting it gets. The diversity goes beyond fish of course. From Georgia to New York, the variety of salamanders, dragonflies, mushrooms, and trees is striking. From the small and slim Southern zigzag salamander of the south to the robust and vibrant Northern red salamander, it's remarkable what critters have evolved here. And the diversity of peoples reflects here too. Isolation has meant that odd little cultural pockets exist in Appalachia. The dialect of Southern Appalachia is distinct enough to be the source of mythology, some claiming it to be a relic of Elizabethan English. You can certainly hear odd twangs of Scottish here and there, though plenty of other dialectic influences have played into what you'd hear today. The seemingly quirky way Appalachians speak is, unfortunately, often pegged as uneducated or crude, ignoring the history of language in favor of looking at the often subsistence living and poor population of the region as backwards hillbillies. But when an Aussie uses "reckon", do we think them a backwards moron? Of course, some place names don't help... who the hell named the Left Fork Right Fork Little Kanawha River? The people that live in these hills aren't stupid though, you can't carve out an existence here and be dumb. They may be left behind though, of no fault of their own. 

Dropping into the valley carved by the Chattooga River, the natural border between Georgia and South Carolina, I said goodbye to cellular service and pulled into an empty parking lot to rig up and get ready to catch fish I'd never seen before. The water was both familiar and not. Once you've seen enough freestone rivers you get how they work- hydrology changes very little. The bedrock here was from a formation I'd never tread on, and it wasn't recognizable stone to me. But it broke and tumbled and formed the shape of the land much in the same way as plenty of rock I had seen, so reading it was no struggle. I fished my way though boulder strewn pools picking off small Bartram's bass and warpaint shiners. The bass were a little bit like creek smallmouth bass, but not quite. They held in similar water, and were aggressive, but very much one hit wonders. I think they fought harder than smallmouth of the same size. The warpaint shiners were a little bit like spottail shiners, but not quite.  They held in small schools, though in somewhat different water, and they ate small flies with impunity just like spottail do. 

Though those were new species to me, both one's I'd wanted to catch for years, what struck me most was a species I'd caught plenty of in other states. In fact I've caught redbreast sunfish everywhere from Maine to Virginia. But the redbreast in the Chatooga River? In my unprofessional opinion, that's a different fish. And it's a prettier fish too, I think. The coloration on each redbreast I caught, with vibrant deep red bellies crackling harshly into a turquois blue, was just astonishing. 

I didn't expect to find that, those redbreast sunfish were a very pleasant surprise. After having my fill of gorgeous redbreast sunfish, fiery Bartram's bass, and elegant warpaint shiners, I packed it in to meander through parts unknown to me. My time in southern Appalachia has been limited, and I'd never yet been to Tennessee. I decided to meander through North Carolina toward Johnson City. 

A funny thing happened as I went. The winding, steep roads and their hairpin curves were drawing me out of the country I'd idealized and wanted to see. Small plot farmsteads, tight communities perched on the edges of hollers, and robust mature forest began to give way to huge homes scattered across hillsides, wider roads, golf courses, and progressively more and more traffic. The infrastructure was new and shiny and unfitting. No Trespassing signs pocked with bullet holes began to be replaced by large "For Sale" signs. A clear, tumbling spring paralleling the road gave way to a muddy ditch running silt out of a cul-de-sac still under construction. 

For a short time a couple years ago, the internet seemed insistent on advertising real estate in North Carolina to me. I don't know what algorithmically made any sense about that, but it got worse, because at least for a little while I engaged with it out of curiosity and a not insignificant degree of disgust. It was all about horridly ugly McMansions on large land plots, many a significant commute out away from the larger population hubs. The selling points were a mild climate, mountain views, and a quiet setting. My disgust came from a place of knowing what that land was, or in some cases still was, as the advertising was for whole tracts to be subdivided, and just how insanely and unnecessarily impactful this development was. Instead of leaving these lower hills intact and biodiverse and building convenient, architecturally sound multi-family homes closer to where both work and necessities exist, these developments were sprawling out into what was some quite wild land not that long ago. Disdain is the appropriate description for how I looked at all that real estate advertising, the people profiting from that land development, those who were moving into it, and the powers that be that fail to prevent land waste from occurring.  All of that advertising had made me aware that this sort of rural gentrification was happening, but seeing it in person was brutal. I clenched the steering wheel and gritted my teeth more and more as I continued Northeastward toward Asheville. 

Asheville itself is a small city, sitting at a population of 95,056 in 2023. The whole metropolitan area totals over 410,000 people  It's growth has been more or less steady and has been predicted to continue. Asheville has seen a few booms and busts through its history. Tucked up into the hills at the broadest part of the Appalachian chain, the town was a perfect outpost location. The first real boom that pushed Asheville toward being the city we see now occurred in the 1880's as rail travel made it accessible and it became a safe and beautiful escape and started to attract exceptional wealth. George W. Vanderbilt's famed Biltmore Estate occupies a 120,00 acre piece of land in Asheville. In the image of the huge estates in England, Biltmore is a striking piece of architecture. In  1916, Asheville thrived off of its textile production and other industry until the Great Depression, which hit it like a ton of bricks. The town stagnated into the 1980's, with the lovely side effect of much of the historic architecture remaining. That history, the tolerable climate, and a reputation for being quirky and weird in a wonderful way have lead to the cities revival and economic improvement in the time since. 

On Friday, September 27th, 2024 around 6:00pm EDT, the French Broad River in Asheville peaked at 24.67 feet according to USGS. The previous record from the same gauge was 23.1 feet. Around the time rivers throughout Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, and Tennessee were breaching their banks and sweeping away roads, bridges, homes and business. Rain from the dissipating Hurricane Helene, all moisture picked up by the monster storm in the Gulf of Mexico, was pounding the landscape mercilessly. It completely overwhelmed standing infrastructure, blowing out culverts and embankments that were never constructed to handle such volume. In the more developed area like Asheville, improved surfaces exacerbated runoff rates, and land that had once been mature forest turned into sheet-flow, worsening what would have been a dire situation anyway. Roads- everything from major highways to dirt tracks -electrical infrastructure, and water mains crumbled, cutting off some small communities. Hundreds would die. Those left in the wake of the floods stand in towns forever changed. Some of them had lost everything to the turbid waters. As we stand now, time estimates on vital infrastructure repairs, even including major highway bridges, extend out a decade. 

This devastation was in stark contrast to years of Asheville and some other similarly situated towns being dubbed "climate havens"- places immune to devastating severe weather and harsh seasonal temperatures. The media push to label such places certainly didn't discourage their growth, and many areas have seen population and development booms in turn. Nowhere is really immune though. I'm not here to suggest that Helene and a major Appalachian flood event couldn't happen without human-caused climate change- it certainly could, the gulf of Mexico has been spinning up violent hurricanes forever. Asheville experienced a similar but slightly less impactful flood in 1916 from the remnants of another dissipating tropical cyclone. But the idea that any place is a haven from dangerous weather? All it takes is one storm, and the more people and their dwellings, businesses and infrastructure are distributed about an area, the worse the toll will be. Failing to take into account possible extremes is human nature. We build in ways we shouldn't in places we shouldn't... like covering an entire slope of a mountainside with huge mansions, long paved driveways, and barren, open grass lawns. The land can't take this, and neither can we.

 As I curved back west out of the pre-Helene, busy and prosperous Asheville and the landscape slowly lost signs of recent development, I began to relax again. Crossing the border into Tennessee, the landscape was breathtaking. 

There's a haunting beauty about the wooded East, in more ways than one. The history stretches back plenty far to build up centuries of lore, much of it steeped in fear. From serial killers stashing bodies back in the hills, tales of UFOs and aliens, ghosts with malicious intent, perhaps the most wonderful regional name for sasquatch (wood boogers), and a number unsolved disappearances and solved but gruesome murders, there is a lot to capitalize on in the weird and disturbing realm when it comes to Appalachia. And ragging on how spooky and even dangerous the region is has become quite popular among the click bait riddled realms of modern social media. Throw some clips of foggy woodlands, run down shacks, and sepia tone AI generated images of moonshiners together with foreboding music and you're sure to please the masses. Just days ago I heard some creator's narration "we all know how dangerous Appalachia is" at the start of some TikTok video while my partner was scrolling. It makes me chuckle a little with its absurdity. Dangerous compared to what? We seem so keen to make everything scary. Crime is up in the cities! Move out to the country, where a hillbilly will dismember you and feed you to his pig while he's talking to the demon that lives in his well. Everywhere is dangerous, really. There are indeed be some back hollers in West Virginia where the locals are none too thrilled at the idea of outsiders showing up. But can you blame them? A lot of that demonization revolves around poorness, as it so often does, and nobody likes to feel looked down upon. People, no matter where they live, are neither a novelty nor something to be treated as inferior. It seems to me much of the media revolving around Appalachia doesn't take that to heart at all. 

In the wake of Helene, the residents of Appalachia are picking up the pieces. They're resilient people and community oriented, but it can't be easy. Places they've known and loved don't look the same and may never again. They've lost family and friends. The scope of the damage in both severity and area, as well as the rugged and remote nature of some of the mountainous southeast have made recovery and response an exceptional challenge. And on top of that, in a brutally contentious election cycle, they've been used as political pawns as conspiracies spiral over FEMA funding and weather control. None of it helps put back the pieces. If you'd like to actually be a good participant in the community and can spare a dollar, look to donate at local charities, the closer to the endpoint the better. Here are a couple region-wide relief funds to consider: East Tennessee Foundation, North Carolina Disaster Relief Fund. Another good move is just patronizing businesses throughout the region that were impacted. Recovery efforts are at a point now that many areas are re-opening, and visitors aren't so much in the way. Don't go to gawk at the damage and people's misfortune, go to appreciate one of the most beautiful parts of this country, it's history and culture, and some of the incredible fishing that exists there. Book a trip with a guide in Western NC, Eastern TN, or Southwestern Virginia. You can also search the hashtag "fliesforappalachia" to find some tiers auctioning off flies and donating the proceeds. Kudos to Ryan Waldrep for getting the community involved. 

We can do better. We need to do better.

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