Beautiful Structure

Our corner of North Carolina backs up against the steep ragged edge of Fontana and the Nantahala, wild country that has long rejected the encroachment of human habitation. Those who did settle in these deeper folds of Southern Appalachia were typically retreating from something, Tsali and the Cherokee from the violent push of white settlers into the riverlands, Scots-Irish from persecution in their homeland, and much later, my parents from the rat race of urban life. More than forty years ago, my folks left Atlanta, bought one hundred and sixty-eight acres of mountain, creek, and watershed, and built a home in one of the high south-facing hollers overlooking the Little Tennessee River Valley. That’s where my story starts, being born on that land.

The idea to build my own house came from my parents having done that, and when I moved to New York and was living in the city in my twenties I realized there was something I craved: that connection to land,