New ravine at the entrance to my former farm in the North Carolina Mountains

Photo Above of Blackberry Inn Road in the Reems Creek Valley

north of Asheville, NC by “Agentmanofleisure” on Instagram

On the left, you can see the stone wall that I built in 1978, while clearing the front section of an abandoned farm for a pasture. The wall is partially intact, but has dropped about eight feet (2.4 m) to the new level of Reems Creek. The wood fence and most of the shrubbery were washed in from somewhere else.

During Hurricane Helene, Reems Creek jumped its channel and began running down the mountain valley in what was left of the road bed, after the nearby Woodfin Reservoir Dam failed. Residents of Blackberry Inn Road must still walk down the valley to obtain food, fuel and water from FEMA at the Beech Community Center.

by Richard L. Thornton, Architect & City Planner

The years have passed so quickly. Forty years ago, in November 1984, Senior Photographer and Archaeologist George Stuart, took this photo of me on that stone wall for an article on the generation of educated young folks, who came to the Appalachians to become farmsteaders. Instead of being anonymous “drug heads” like the previous hippie generation, the farmsteaders’ innovations in agriculture, architecture, music, wood stove design and solar energy were now garnering national attention.

The business card that George handed me, only stated that he was Senior Photographer for the National Geographic Society. Ironically, on display in my living room amidst my Mesoamerican artifacts was the famous issue of National Geo Magazine in which George introduced the Maya civilization to the world. You see . . . he also held a PhD in Anthropology and had spent many seasons at Maya city sites with his anthropologist wife, Gene. Gene’s interest in archaeology began, while she was a school teacher in Cartersville, GA and lived in walking distance of Etowah Mounds.

Tis strange, but while eating lunch in my farmhouse, he did not mention even a hint that he was an archaeologist. He did not inquire about the artifacts and only asked me questions about farming and cheese-making.

The Stuarts owned a vacation home over the mountain from my farm. We quickly became friends, but still they seemed to be only interested in learning farming skills.

It was only two years later, when we cooked barbecue and drank freshly squeezed apple cider in my front yard that they mentioned being archaeologists. That was in regard to their son winning a MacArthur Fellowship to study the Maya writing system with Linda Schele. George mentioned in happenstance that he had first met Linda at Palenque in August 1970, when she was just an art student, and touring Maya cities with her architect-husband, David.

Wo! I was touring Palenque with Linda and David. We met a friendly young archaeologist in the courtyard of the Palace at Palenque. He merely said that he was an archaeologist from South Carolina. “George, was that you?”

Yep! I explained to them that I was on fellowship to study all the indigenous civilizations in Mexico. George only remembered me as being an architecture student from Georgia. He, of course, had not remembered that student’s name, when he came to photograph the farm.

That started them asking question about my educational background. They had no clue that I was a professional architect and city planner with eight years of college, who designed the now-famous plazas and urban innovations in Downtown Asheville. They had always kept the conversations at “down home” level that dwelled on the activities of farmsteaders and pioneers.

It had never dawned on George Stuart that the Southeastern and Mesoamerican artifacts on display in my living room were real. He assumed that they were well-crafted reproductions.

George and Gene apologized profusely for always “talking down” to me. They had assumed that I maybe had a two year degree in architectural drafting or something. They had avoided talking about archaeology, thinking that I would be intimidated by intellectual talk. LOL

George and Gene urged my former wife and I to move to Northern Virginia, where there was a much more intellectual environment. That we did in 1987.

I saw very little of George once we moved to Virginia, but Gene arranged for the U. S. Department of State to sponsor our creamery’s grand opening, plus introduced me to her friends in the Washington Area, who needed an architect to restore historic houses and farms. She then set up cheese tastings at parties held by Washington’s intelligentsia. That is why I was invited to the Smithsonian Executive’s Christmas Party in 1990.

Life Is Stranger Than Fiction