Two local trail organizations will join together to celebrate National Trails Day on June 1. The Nantahala Hiking Club and Bartram Trail Society have announced a hike for that day.

Hikers will begin at Wayah Bald at ten o’clock and follow the trail to Wine Springs Bald. This section of trails is shared by the Appalachian Trail and Bartram Trail and is three miles round trip.

Dr. Dan Pittillo, a botanist and a founder of the Bartram Trail will lead the hike.

A special feature will be a “Kids Hike,” led by Mary Bennett, Appalachian Trail Community Ambassador with the Nantahala Hiking Club. Ms. Bennett will discuss tips for planning hikes with families. Included in the Kids Hike will be such activities as a “Nature in Living Color Search,” writing a group Place Poem, and “A Fistful of Sounds.”

Hikers may continue a few miles farther to either Sawmill Gap (on the Bartram Trail) or Wayah Crest (on the Appalachian Trail).

The Bartram Trail Society has for the last 35 years built and maintained the Bartram Trail across almost 80 miles of mountains between the Georgia line and Cheoah Bald. The Nantahala Hiking Club, the Franklin based Appalachian Trail maintaining club, maintains sixty miles of the Appalachian Trail across Macon County, sponsors hikes every weekend, provides hiking support to local schools, and supports Franklin, NC as a designated Appalachian Trail Community.

National Trails Day, sponsored by the American Hiking Society annually brings together outdoor enthusiasts across the country. The celebration encourages all Americans to connect with local outdoor clubs, businesses, community groups, and parks and recreation departments as well as federal land managing agencies to experience, appreciate, and share the natural places they cherish.

More than 2,000 nationwide events will take place.

“Twenty years ago, American Hiking built National Trails Day around the idea that for one day each year we should come together outdoors and give back to our favorite trails. Since then, people from all walks of life have been coming out in increasing numbers on NTD to celebrate our trails and the great outdoors,” said Gregory Miller, American Hiking Society president.

The event is open to the public. Hikers are urged to bring their lunches and water and to wear good hiking shoes. The trail is moderate to easy in difficulty.

For more information, contact Jim Kautz of the Bartram Trail Society (jrkautz [at] frontier.com, 828-524-6593) or Bill Van Horn of the Nantahala Hiking Club (828-369-1983).

Wayah Bald Tower

Hike with members of both the Bartram Trail Society and the Nantahala Hiking Club to celebrate National Trails Day.

The BTS is partnering with the Nantahala Hiking Club to sponsor a hike on National Trails Day, June 1, 2013.

We will meet at Wayah Bald at 10:00 a.m. and hike to Wine Spring Bald for lunch. The route is about two miles long and descends less than a thousand feet before climbing a thousand feet to Wine Spring Bald. Those who want a longer hike may proceed another two miles (downhill) to Sawmill Gap.

This event is the first organized collaboration between the two clubs in recent years. The Nantahala Hiking Club maintains the Appalachian Trail in southwestern North Carolina and conducts numerous hikes each year. The trail from Wayah Bald to Wine Springs Bald is part of the only route shared by both the Appalachian Trail and the Bartram Trail.

Wayah Bald two of three prominent peaks in the Nantahala that scholars think may be the place that William Bartram described as “the most elevated peak; from whence I beheld with rapture and astonishment, a sublimely awful scene of power and magnificence, a world of mountains piled upon mountains.” The third candidate for Bartram’s “most elevated peak” is Burningtown Bald.

The American Hiking Society has sponsored National Trails Day on the first Saturday in June each year since 1993. For more information, see http://www.americanhiking.org/ntd/info/.

Directions:  From Franklin NC
From intersection of U.S. Hwy-64 W and U.S. Hwy-23/441 North in Franklin take Hwy-64 W towards Murphy, NC for 3.8 miles to “Old Murphy Rd.(SR 1448) on your right (see Wayah Bald Sign).
After you take the exit, continue down the hill for just under 0.2 miles to Wayah Road (SR 1310) on your left (“Loafers Glory” gas station will be at the intersection of Old Murphy Rd. and Wayah Rd, so you’ll know where to turn).
Continue on Wayah Rd. for 9.1 miles where you’ll find yourself at FR (Forest Road) #69 on the right, at Wayah Gap. Take this gravel road for another 4.4 miles to the Wayah Bald Area and Lookout Tower..

North Carolina’s Mountains-to-Sea Trail may lead travelers through Macon County.

Conservation and trail group representatives and citizens met Monday to investigate a possible alternate route of the State’s Mountains-to-Sea Trail that would pass through the Needmore Game Lands bordering Macon and Swain counties.

[...]Representatives from The Wilderness Society, the NC Bartram Trail Society and FMST joined the Monday hike that traversed a five-mile stretch of the proposed route through Needmore from Sawmill Creek to Brush Creek in Swain County.

[...]The proposed route through Macon County could continue along existing trails and old roadbeds through the 4,500-acre Needmore Tract which winds along the Little Tennessee River (North Carolina purchased Needmore in 2004 to protect it as state game lands).

Read the full article at The Franklin Press website.

Dr. Dan Pittillo, Professor Emeritus, Western Carolina University

Dr. Dan Pittillo, Professor Emeritus in botany at Western Carolina University, will help the North Carolina Bartram Trail Society celebrate its 35th anniversary with an illustrated presentation on “The Natural History of the Southern Appalachians” on September 29 at the Macon County Library. Members of the society invite all interested persons to join them in this community celebration.

Dan has been involved in the planning, building, and maintenance of the trail since its beginning in 1977; he is the only remaining member of the original Board and the only one surviving who participated in the creation of the Trail.

The meeting starts at 10 a.m. After Dr. Pittillo’s presentation and lunch, participants will travel across the Little Tennessee River to visit the Cowee Mound, site of the Cherokee town that William Bartram visited for several days in 1775.

Attendees may bring their own lunches or may reserve a box lunch for $6.00 by using the reservation form below or by calling Meg Petty at 828-371-0633.

We hope you can make plans to attend.

The evening’s lecture will be preceded by a brief business meeting for Board elections, light refreshments and an opportunity to share updates of the year’s events on the NC BT.

At 7 pm, noted author Janisse Ray will present the annual lecture entitled “Walking Forward, Looking Backward.”

Click here to download the full announcement!

Click here to purchase from our online store!

More photos (click to enlarge):

Please click below to view two video segments from the Heartland Series: The Flower Hunter & Bartram’s Journey.

The NCBTS would like to thank Bill Landry, the Heartland Series and Knoxville TV station WBIR for providing us with this video and allowing us to share it with you.

Thank you so much!

Lately, several folks have suggested a outdoors quote from the late Edward Abbey, so I’ll share it with you:
“One final paragraph of advice: do not burn yourselves out. Be as I am – a reluctant enthusiast…. a part-time crusader, a half-hearted fanatic.
Save the other half of yourselves and your lives for pleasure and adventure. It is not enough to fight for the land; it is even more important to enjoy it.
While you can. While it’s still here. So get out there and hunt and fish and mess around with your friends, ramble out yonder and explore the forests, climb the mountains, bag the peaks, run the rivers, breathe deep of that yet sweet and lucid air, sit quietly for a while and contemplate the precious stillness, the lovely, mysterious, and awesome space. Enjoy yourselves, keep your brain in your head and your head firmly attached to the body, the body active and alive, and I promise you this much;
I promise you this one sweet victory over our enemies, over those desk-bound men and women with their hearts in a safe deposit box, and their eyes hypnotized by desk calculators.
I promise you this: you will outlive the bastards.” ~ Edward Abbey

We hope 2011 provides multiple opportunities to hike and/or camp on the Bartram Trail and that your year is filled with good health, good times and peace.
- Ina Warren, BTS Newsletter Editor

Please click here to download our 2010 Annual Report and Newsletter

Thursday, 14 October 2010 at 7 p.m. at the Macon County Library in Franklin, NC

Illustrated presentation: “What I Learned Following William Bartram Across the South ” by Jim Kautz sponsored by the NC Bartram Trail Society.

Footprints Across the South: Bartram’s Trail Revisited

A walk, drive, or canoe trip along the routes taken by William Bartram, America’s first native-born naturalist, provides a unique view of what has happened in the southland since the nation was founded. Jim Kautz took such a journey.

Bartram explored little-known areas from North Carolina to Florida and from Georgia to Louisiana just prior to the American Revolution. His eloquent descriptions, particularly his book Travels, described the frontier of the American southland at the moment of the nation’s birth. He wrote in such detail that we may compare our world with the landscape of the infant nation.

Jim Kautz sought out historical, environmental, and cultural occurrences along Bartram’s pathway. In the course of five years, he traveled 15,000 miles across seven states. He tramped trails, paddled and motored rivers and streams, and interviewed dozens of residents, scientists, and community leaders in revisiting Bartram’s trail.

In Footprints Across the South: Bartram’s Trail Revisited, Kautz shares the results of his quest. “Bartram’s writings give us a benchmark,” he says. “I found a few spots that have changed little in 230 years. A modern traveler can easily imagine the Cherokee town of Cowee in quiet pastureland and rows of corn beside the Little Tennessee River. Cypress swamps are returning to their former grandeur in Florida and Alabama; Bartram’s word picture of Georgia’s Falling Creek Falls could describe the scene today.”

“On the other hand, plantations of slash pines have replaced forests of oaks and flotillas of invasive water hyacinths choke waters he sailed. Environmentalists struggle to restore the health of lands and streams that Bartram found lush and thriving.”

Reviewers of the book have said:

“. . . delightful tour of the South, connecting the past and the present . . .”

. . . a fascinating book that puts a historical character in context for the modern reader.”

“ . . . this book takes a new approach, looking at the changes that have occurred in the places familiar to (William Bartram).”

“ . . . more than a travelogue, more than a biography, more than a history. It puts the past alongside the present, showing how America has changed since Bartram’s travels and how so many of us have lost touch with the history of the land and the people who once lived there.”

Born in Washington, D.C., Jim Kautz has lived in the south for more than forty years while teaching at three colleges and working in five states. He had conducted archaeological explorations in the Middle East and America when William Bartram’s Travels caught his attention. He is past editor of The Traveller, the newsletter of the Bartram Trail Conference and a member of the Board of Directors of the North Carolina Bartram Trail Society.

Footprints Across the South: Bartram’s Trail Revisited is published by the Kennesaw State University Press.

When Tim Warren hikes the 80-mile-long Bartram Trail, hidden in Nantahala National Forest of Macon and Swain counties, he sees a sweeping resource, rich in history, biological diversity and scenic splendor. He sees a mighty trail, worthy of seven maps. But who wants to carry seven hiking maps?

For the past two decades, though, anyone hiking the entire trail had to have one map for each of the seven sections of the trail that starts on the North Carolina-Georgia border south of Highlands, snaking through woods, over peaks and across streams, ending at Cheoah Bald.

But now, the N.C. Bartram Trail Society has created one giant map. The Interpretive Hiking Map of North Carolina’s Bartram Trail is a full-color, 28-by-36-inch, two-sided map available for sale after July 1.

[READ FULL ARTICLE HERE]