BETA
This is a BETA experience. You may opt-out by clicking here

More From Forbes

Edit Story

It's Not So Hot But Very Cool in Highlands, North Carolina

Following
This article is more than 6 years old.

Half Mile Farm

You know you’re in a small, sleepy North Carolina town when the lead story's headline on the front page of the local paper, The Highlander—in 72 point type—reads, “Town tackles pothole fix.”

Still, while Highlands has only 3,200 year-round residents—up from 924 in the 2010 U.S. Census—come summer the population swells to 18,000, despite its being a almost three-hour drive from Atlanta and two from Greenville. In winter the town tries mightily to attract visitors with events like Root Bound, a celebration of Appalachian food, craft and music culture, which I attended last month in venues spread over 6.2 square miles. Along with The Bascom: Center for Visual Arts, the cross streets of town are lined with galleries, boutiques, restaurants and a first-rate wineshop within the Mountain Fresh Grocery.

One of the town’s principal draws is that it’s not so hot, which I mean climatically: For centuries wealthy North Carolinians escaped the brutal summer heat and humidity of the rest of state by ascending 4,000 feet into the Blue Ridge Mountains, where summer temperatures in Highlands average 76 degrees. And those deep, winding piney mountains are very beautiful, punctuated with hollows and waterfalls, rivers and lakes that filled in for upstate New York in the 1992 movie The Last of the Mohicans, which filmed here at Bridal Veil Falls.

The Root Bound festival, spread over a weekend, had workshops in everything from biscuit making to whiskey tasting and iron cooking workshop, salt tasting to songwriting, and at each night’s dinners top-flight bluegrass bands performed that included the Forlorn Strangers, Nitrograss, the SteelDrivers and the Dixie Bluegrass Boys.

Root Bound festival, Highland, NC

Sadly, the updated Appalachian food served at the luncheons and dinners by young restaurant chefs failed to please many of those Southerners who attended, myself included. The chefs insisted on cooking up grub like souse (headcheese), rabbit liver mush and grits soup that North Carolinians gave up eating as soon as they had money enough to eat higher on the hog. Even one of the great Southern chefs in attendance, Louis Osteen, told me he never grew up eating that kind of food.

Root Bound Festival

One of the best events I attended was a fascinating conversation between Kentucky-born food historian Ronni Lundy, formerly of the Louisville Courier-Journal, and best-selling author Sharyn McCrumb, whose books The Ballad of Tom Dooley and The Unquiet Grave brought to life the reality behind the folklore. McCrumb explained that the enduring tradition of Appalachian people cherishing their own ghost stories goes back to Scottish immigrant folklore brought to the misty hills of North Carolina, with names like “The Story of Boojum and Hootin’ Annie,” “The Moon-Eyed People” and “The Demon Dog of Valle Crucis.” Those hiking the extensive trails of the region make sure they’re back before dark.

Old Edward Inn and Spa

During the festival I stayed at Old Edwards Inn and Spa, whose elegance depends on a décor well adapted from Appalachian and European traditions wed to all the modern amenities. Aside from the well-appointed Spa, one of the most comfortable and comforting places to loaf over well-made cocktails is at the Inn’s Hummingbird Lounge or in the beautifully appointed Library. One of the Inn’s principal virtues is its bucolic quiet, maintained by an enforced policy for a “sleep-friendly environment” and “zero-tolerance noise policy,” with too-loud revelers booted off the property.

Old Edwards Inn, Highland NC

The Inn also has one of the finest restaurants in the South, Madison’s, with a menu that features as much sustainable, local provender as possible from purveyors with regional names like Sunburst Trout Farm, Painted Hills Farm, Anson Mills, Benton's Country Ham and Sequatchie Cove. Executive Chef Chris Huerta uses them all to create the sumptuous menu backed by a first-rate wine list overseen by the ebullient sommelier Philippe Brainos.

Old Edwards Hospitality Group

At breakfast, as the sun dissipated the morning mist outside, I enjoyed hot buttermilk biscuits with pan gravy and housemade sausage. At dinner, I stayed close to the kitchen’s North Carolina roots with a potato-and-ham hock soup with bacon jam, cheddar, a fried egg yolk and green onions; very well-wrought charcuterie; and what is possibly the best rendering of sunburst trout I’ve ever had in the South, with spaghetti squash and andouille cream, roasted beets, baby bok choy and almond-beet pesto.

Old Edwards Inn Hospitality

The Inn also runs a sprawling nearby property called Half-Mile Farm overlooking Apple Lake, offering both contemporary lodgings and several still rustic cabins set close to the woods.

I can’t say that Highlands gets overrun with second homers and tourists in summer, but spring is breaking out just about now, reminding me of the old folk song “Wildwood Flower” as sung by the Carter Family:

I will twine, I will mingle my raven black hair

With the roses so red and the lilies so fair

And the myrtle so bright with it's emerald hue

The pale amanita and the hyssop so blue.