A Love Letter to Highlanders

Written By: Luke Osteen | Issue: March 2025 | Photograph By: Susan Renfro

We’re going to be talking about Highlands’ 150th Birthday throughout the year, but I wanted to chime in on the start of this celebration.

My first impulse was to write about the natural beauty of this corner of the Southern Appalachians, and the sudden appearance of the transcendent in the most unexpected places – the hushed emerald cathedral at the western edge of Highlands Botanical Gardens, or the sense that Lewis Carrol is your hiking companion as you stroll through The Bascom’s Horst Winkler Sculpture Garden, or the sight of Carolyn McCall’s thoroughbreds trotting through their pasture in Horse Cove, beneath Black Rock, for no other reason than that must be the singular delight of being a horse.

But with a minute’s reflection, I knew that the heart of this story, the heart of this magazine’s year-long valentine to my town, could only be a love note to the people who animate Highlands.

I’m grateful to everyone here – the men and women, the old codgers and the kids – who have added so much joy to my soul, starting with my arrival in 1988.

In a way, it’s always been a welcoming place.

The Cherokee who settled here – who called themselves Tsalagi, “Mountain People” – welcomed the first English settlers in the 18th century and taught them the intricacies of living, and farming and hunting in this harsh terrain.

Though their American neighbors would pay the Cherokee for their hospitality with the Trail of Tears, something of that gracious spirit survived on the Plateau.

When they established their agricultural/commercial powerhouse of Highlands, Messrs. Kelsey and Hutchinson answered one of the primary questions put forth by prospective settlers: “Will people from the North be well-received?

“We are often asked the above question, and would say in reply, ‘It depends entirely upon yourself, what you come for and how you behave after you get here…But people coming here to engage in any honest, respectful pursuit, for pleasure or profit, it matters not what their opinion or previous condition, or where they are from North or South, Europe, Asia, or Africa – if they behave themselves as good citizens should in any country, they will be as well-received, as kindly-treated, and as safe from harm as in any spot in the wide world.’”

OK, so they were way off on us becoming a hub of business – K and H were as clear as the Cullasaja with their promise of overflowing hospitality. And it can’t be a coincidence that our first businesses – still thriving today – were The Highlands Inn and The Old Edwards Inn.

And at the price of leaving out a standard US Army battalion of people who’ve endeavored to make this town a tiny slice of Paradise for me and my family and all of us here, let me mention simply a few, in no particular order.

Geri Crowe and Richard Betz – the wise and bright incarnation of Town Hall, who explained things to me that no Chamber of Commerce brochure could ever reveal. Even now, years after they left town service – they know things.

The good people of Highlands United Methodist Church who, when our six-year-old son Alex became gravely ill, filled our fridge with casseroles and desserts and looked after our pets and asked questions and listened and walked beside us as we made our way through that dark time. And we weren’t even members of the church at the time!

Dr. Patti Wheeler, who in the midst of that crisis made an after-work house call to patiently answer that frightened little boy’s questions and comfort his parents.

Robert Woodruff and his Coca-Cola Posse, who determined that Highlands would make a dandy escape from the pressures of the Outer World, securing our status as a vacation/second-home destination and making life a bit easier for those of us who are here year-round.

The deep-pocketed men and women who followed Woodruff’s example and pitched in to enrich the town’s environmental preservation efforts and the cultural landscape that has won us acclaim not only in the region, but around the world.

We can’t forget the efforts of Dr. Mary Lapham, who recognized the purity of Highlands’ water and climate and who pioneered the humane treatment of tuberculosis patients, a notion that resonated in subsequent treatments and therapies built upon compassion and insight.

My friend Larry Holt, who rumbles through the town in his big truck and keeps an eye on our neighborhoods and notes the health and well-being of the friends he encounters. Larry’s a pretty good gauge of what’s right and wrong with the town on any given day. Wave to him as you pass.

The men and women of Fibber’s Closet, who cheerfully display their treasures and surprises with unceasing enthusiasm, and who make life a bit easier for those of us not blessed with deep pockets. Plus, they return all of their proceeds to the community!

(See, this is why a wiser editor would have cut the previous paragraph – because I sure don’t want to neglect the efforts of the Cullasaja Women’s Outreach, or Highlands Motoring Festival, or Highlands Emergency Council, or Highlands Food & Wine, or, or, or. Please, if I’ve omitted your organization or effort, let me make it up to you in a future issue!)
Highlands Fire & Rescue Chief Jimmy Lowe and Highlands Fireman Lenny Metrick, who managed to make their way all the way down into Whiteside Cove in the wake of the catastrophic Blizzard of ’93 to check on my family and our neighbors the Spurlocks. Miraculous!

A quartet of local women who taught my son Alex lessons that I wouldn’t have thought to impart: “Miss Pat” Hedden at Highlands Child Development Center, who taught four-year-old Alex that a rainy, gloomy day is actually full of fun possibilities (a vital lesson if you’re growing up in a temperate rainforest, and even now, if you end up in the perpetually damp Pacific Northwest); Highlands Preschool’s Wilma Gordon, who taught him the proper response when someone calls you a “hot dog head;” Sarah Harkins, who taught Alex a reverence for the natural bounty that’s every Highlander’s birthright; and Elizabeth Woods, who opened up the mysterious kingdom of higher mathematics, a realm which he happily inhabits every day of his working life.

The Highlands Town Crew, who ensure that we can keep the lights on and the faucets flowing in whatever disastrous event we’re weathering through. That’s a level of service that can only be built upon a love of neighbor.

OK, I’ve gone as far as the Laws of 21st Century Publishing allow. If I’ve left you out, please know that I’ve automatically realized it, the moment this issue arrived on the street. Please be kind when you encounter me around town, allow me to make it up to you, and, always, tell me your part in the story of this marvelous town, a place like no other on the globe.