Land Trust’s Winter Book Suggestions

Written By: Lance Hardin - Highlands-Cashiers Land Trust | Issue: Winter 2025

It’s the time of year when colder temperatures and shorter days encourage curling up with a good book – and what better time to learn more about the biodiversity, ecology, and history that makes our area so special? So grab a cup of coffee or mug of tea, feed the birds, and pick up one of these books, all favorites of Highlands-Cashiers Land Trust staff.

If you missed reading Braiding Sweetgrass with HCLT’s summer community book club, it’s well worth grabbing a copy now.

Dr. Robin Kimmerer weaves together scientific knowledge (she has a PhD in plant ecology), her Potawatomi indigenous heritage, and first-person accounts of raising daughters and re-wilding her property to explain the often subtle but oh-so-important interconnections essential to the functioning of the natural world. Never preachy or jargon-laden, her writing approaches poetry. There’s a reason this is a national bestseller.

Likewise, I hope you were able to attend the book release HCLT hosted for authors Janet McCue and Paul Bonesteel for their new work George Masa: A Life Reimagined.

You may be aware that photographer George Masa visited our area in the late 1920s, capturing 100 scenes that remain iconic, but McCue and Bonesteel reveal for the first time the incredible backstory of Masa’s life. Intrigue, adversity, and legacy-creating art – and some of it happened right here!

In The Changing Blue Ridge Mountains: Essays on Journeys Past and Present, Brent Martin of Cowee allows the reader to walk in the footsteps of William Bartram as he traverses Macon County, to appreciate hunting for “the rarest of the Appalachian shrubs, the mountain camellia” or searching for a historic spring that harkens back to the time of our forefathers. The essay format makes this book a treat to pick up and enjoy as time permits.

The natural bounty that defines the Great Smoky Mountains National Park we all enjoy today belies its past, an often-tortured history of industrial logging, depression-era grassroots fundraising, and the lasting impacts of eminent domain. Margaret Brown’s The Wild East: A Biography of the Great Smoky Mountains remains one of the best texts to tell this fascinating tale.

And for a fictionalized tale of how logging transformed the Smokies – and by extension, much of Western North Carolina – there’s none better than Ron Rash’s Serena.

Happy reading, and the Highlands-Cashiers Land Trust looks forward to seeing you at one of our events in 2025! (Oh – and the coffee mug in the photo is by Sweet Dreams Pottery, acquired at the Highlands Arts and Crafts Show. It’s a favorite!)