When fourth graders at Hunter Elementary School in Raleigh started a unit on North Carolina counties last winter, I was lucky enough to be invited to come talk with them about my quest to visit all 100 counties. It’s so heartening to see the energy and curiosity of teachers and students in a well-run public school! And it was funny for all of us to realize that, if I continue at the pace I’m going, these students will have graduated from high school by the time I visit my 100th county.

At the end of our discussion, we held a drawing to select my next destination and the winner was…drum roll…Watauga County! Nestled deep in the mountains of North Carolina, Watauga wouldn’t have been my first pick for a cold weather trip. Since it is the place where my daughter Katherine went to college, she agreed to go with me on a frigid MLK Day to see what adventures awaited us in Watauga County.

The North Carolina mountains are a world apart. For many people the beauty of those mountains is breathtaking and the distinctive culture feels like home. My husband Ron’s roots run deep in these mountains, meaning those traditions are a part of my daughters’ heritage. I myself am more a fan of sunshine and wide, open spaces and cultures that are themselves wide open and embracing. My feelings about western North Carolina are decidedly mixed.

In the picturesque town of Blowing Rock, Katherine and I came upon this historical marker commemorating Stoneman’s Raid. As the Civil War wound to a close, General George Stoneman led several thousand Union soldiers on a raid through the North Carolina mountains and up into Virginia. Katherine’s great-great-great-grandfather, Seth Freeman, a product of these mountains, participated with General Stoneman in this notorious raid so it only seemed right to get her picture next to the marker.

Just as my feelings about western North Carolina are conflicted, so is much of its history. Katherine’s ancestors from the same county fought on different sides in the Civil War and in many ways the battle lines that were drawn then still play out today. There are lots of mountain counties left for me to visit, meaning that I look forward to plenty of chances ahead to sort out the complex emotions that this part of our state evokes in me.
January 20, 2014, County #21 – Watauga