Blue Ridge Country July/August 2022 - 50

More than 100 years after the
Great Flood, mountain folk are
once again recreating in the
French Broad.
Then, in the mid-1980s,
a collective took shape in
Asheville. Led by Karen Cragnolin,
the nonprofit group
called itself RiverLink and
aimed to revive the economic
and environmental vitality
of the French Broad River
and its watershed.
In the years since, RiverLink
has pulled literal tons
of abandoned tires, derelict
mattresses, dented beer cans
and other debris from the waterway. They
have also built greenways and parks where
families can experience the river firsthand.
Their efforts, combined with that of other
local groups, have reimagined the French
Broad into something unrecognizable,
even from my childhood.
Today, I still live in that loose elbow
of the French Broad. But I now see a community
that's really trying to love the
river, even if loving this ol' gal isn't easy.
Estimated to be 325 million years old,
the French Broad was here before Africa
collided with North America. She was
even here before dinosaurs walked the
earth. This is her world and she doesn't
let us forget that.
Just like when I was a kid, farmers still
stand in the gas station parking lot, spitting
chaw and lamenting how that whitecapped
witch washed their soybeans away.
Singlewides in the swampy bottomlands
still get flooded. And novice kayakers still
get sucked downstream, past the one-lane
bridge near the Methodist church and the
farm with the tawny milk cows. They surface,
breathless and cold, somewhere near
Asheville. And when their buddies hear
the news-a life taken too soon-they hit
the water because it's the only way they
know how to grieve.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that
mountain folk have finally accepted the
French Broad for who she is: a beautiful
yet indomitable force. I see this accep50
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tance-this love-each day.
Last week, I walked the double-yellow
from my house down to the Horse Shoe
boat slip. From the shore, I watched kids
in banana-yellow life jackets bob around
in canoes. Their guide, a bearded 20-something
from an outfitter upriver, explained
that the headwaters weren't far from here.
That they spill from Courthouse Falls in
Transylvania County, tumbling over ancient
granite, before uniting with other
tributaries to form a 219-mile-long waterway
that actually flows north-not
south. The kids shared wide-eyed looks
and then squealed with delight when
a great blue heron erupted out of the
bramble beside them.
Below the kids, deep in the greenhued
waters, I have been told that there
are Appalachian elktoe-a freshwater
mussel that has been on the endangered
species list since 1994, but that's finally
returning to the French Broad. Biologists
have found the copper-tinged mollusk in
the river between Long Shoals Road and
Amboy Road. This is good news, reports
say. Since mussels are very sensitive to
water pollution, this is a sign of progress.
But more indicative of progress is the collective
attitude shift toward the river. In
Horse Shoe, people have been volunteering
to help build the Ecusta Trail, a rail
trail that will be loosely contiguous to the
French Broad. My neighbor, a man in his
late '60s, is excited about maybe getting
to see a kingfisher while listening to the
lulling lap of the French dame.
" This is our river, " he tells me.
And then there are the artists, who
paint al fresco on the banks studded with
trumpet creeper and swamp pink. And
the brewers, who use water from the
French Broad to make hoppy porters.
And the historians, who say hog drovers
from Tennessee once ushered swine
along the river to South Carolina. And
the Cherokee, who call the waterway
the Long Man and its tributaries Chattering
Children. And the educators, who
believe a day out on the water is just as
important as a day in the classroom.
These people are all loving the river in
the best way they know how. As for me,
I'm loving by forgiving. My daddy's kin
goes back several hundred years in Henderson
County. And though I have no records
to prove it, I reckon that the French
Broad took something from my family in
1916. If not property or brethren, then
peace of mind-the ability to sleep without
dreaming of a watery demise.
But the river has since apologized. I've
stepped into her cool, slow-moving waters
and she has embraced me like a doeeyed
mother. She has caressed my head
and nipped at my cheeks, and made me
understand that nothing was ever out of
malice-that she was just yearning to be
seen and heard.
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Blue Ridge Country July/August 2022

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