Piedmont
Longleaf, far as the eye can see
In Looking for Longleaf: The Fall and Rise of an American Forest, Lawrence Earley traced the changes in society and technology that reduced a swath of forest once covering 92 million acres to isolated pockets totaling less than 3 million acres today. In telling the story of the longleaf, the former editor of Wildlife in […]
Concord and Davidson Main Streets named ‘Great Places’ in state competition
Two of the region’s main streets have won this year’s Great Places in North Carolina competition. Union Street in Concord and Main Street in Davidson were recognized among the state’s top downtowns in the competition sponsored by the N.C. chapter of the American Planning Association (APA-NC). Concord’s Union Street competed with more widely recognized main […]
Armchair birding
Birds flock to Mama’s feeders this time of year. She has several seed and suet feeders hanging from the maple outside her living room window. At times, upwards of a hundred birds – maybe a dozen species – joust for perches, flit among the branches, scoot up and down and around the trunk, and scratch […]
Discovering Charlotte’s past on Potter Road
Some well-known intersections in the city hide the remnants of a now forgotten, but once major highway through the Carolinas. It was known as Potter Road and its name referred to the one-time pottery industry in western Lincoln County. Today, after neighbors pushed the city to save a piece of the old road’s route, an […]
Niche habitats in the uplands
Hiking the ridgelines and hillsides of the Uwharries, you pass through forests dominated by hickory, oak and sourwood. There are large patches of knee-high blueberry bushes, and the herbaceous layer is sparse. On occasion, an attentive and adventurous outdoor enthusiast might also run across natural areas that change abruptly and appear remarkably different from this […]
Piedmont prairies offer glimpses of region’s distant past
If you could travel back in time to the Carolinas Piedmont before European settlement, some of the landscape might look a bit like this clearing in northwestern Mecklenburg County, tucked under swooping Duke Energy power lines. Here, a spring breeze whispers through slim brown stalks of last season’s little bluestem and Indian grass. Wild quinine […]