In rural North Carolina, you can get lots of great advice about how to clean and quarter a deer carcass, but we didn't really have anyone to ask for video advice, so we just kept learning through trial and error.

I love my State, because her people have been good and kind to me, and because her sky is above my home, as it will be above my grave.

....mountains. They stand at every view, like a mother offering a blanket in which to wrap everyday life and shelter it from useless. dreads. In june they are walls of white rhodendron blossom. In autumn the forests set themselves afflame with color. Even winter has its icy charms.

Barbecue is the third rail of North Carolina politics.

I grew up in a university town in eastern North Carolina - what's called Tobacco Road. It was very rural.

North Carolina was where you could have Thanksgiving and feel like it was Thanksgiving.