But if you leave the video before it is completed, you will miss some awesome people being interviewed and a chance to learn so much about the people of the Blue Ridge Mountains. This spring of 2026, we interviewed individuals whose families have lived in these mountains for generations; along with people who recently retired here to escape the frustrations of urban life.
Hover your cursor over one of the stars in the photo of the high country and preview some of our interviews. Subscribe to their YouTube channel and become one of their ride-about partners. Being a ride-about partner is like riding in their back seat, and if a question pops into your mind, all you have to do is drop it in the comment box.
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If you ever find yourself wandering through Avery County, North Carolina on a lazy Sunday afternoon, do yourself a favor: pull over at the historic Pineola Inn. Follow the rich, flying notes of a fiddle, and you will find Alan Johnson sawing away on his fiddle for a captivated crowd.
Travis Proctor has been leading the life of a pioneer. Pull off the Blue Ridge Parkway, turn down a winding gravel road, and you will step straight into a time capsule. Nestled deep in the Appalachian wilderness sits a hand-built log cabin. If you woke up on its front porch, you would swear you had been transported back to the year 1750. This is the home of Travis Proctor, a modern-day mountain man who has spent forty years mastering the art of self-sufficiency.
Travis lives on eleven serene acres tucked tightly between the parkway and a protected national forest. It is a place of absolute peace where neighbors will never encroach. Here, Travis has created a blueprint for sustainable living that bridges history with the modern world.
Jesse Smith Blind Musician holding guitar at a microphone
The Crossnore Jam is in Crossnore Communities for Children (North Carolina), coming from a prominent local family with deep medical and educational roots in the mountain community.
Despite being legally blind from Retinitis Pigmentosa, he is a dedicated community leader, former town mayor, musician, and outdoor enthusiast.
Alton & Jason's Culture of the High Country Interviews Travis Proctor is a very cool woodworker with his Wood Shop; featuring chicken egg farming, potato &, apple farming, raspberry picking, bee keeping and other skills that allow Travis to live off the land.
If all the bees disappeared, mankind would have just four years to live. While many people attribute this ominous quote to Albert Einstein, its true origin remains a mystery. Fact or fiction, one thing is certain: our survival is deeply intertwined with these tiny pollinators.
If you grew up in Western North Carolina, you know our barbecue rules are sacred. You also know that anyone born north of the Mason-Dixon line trying to cook a pig is usually a recipe for disaster.
Enter Kenny Lindahl: Allentown, Pennsylvania native, motorcycle enthusiast, and the undisputed barbecue hero of the High Country. You can see this absolute madman and his legendary rig in action right here on Kenny's YouTube Video.
When Ken Walters suggested that Jason and I document the work of Jerry Moody and his staff at the Avery County Cooperative Extension Office, my mind immediately flashed back to my failed tomato crops. (Though, to be fair, calling two lonely tomato plants a "crop" is a stretch).
Every great road trip starts with a friendly argument. For Jason and me, it was a genuine dispute about quilt history. Having spent years in the antique business selling vintage textiles, I know good and well which quilt pattern folks ask for the most. But, of course, Jason didn’t believe me.
Storyteller Brian does things just like his uncle, his great-uncle, and his dad did. In fact, Brian is well schooled in the art of peddling; his school bus dropped him off at his uncle’s roadside stand for advanced experience in peddling produce. Today, Brian farms and operates a produce market inside this brick building at the base of Hump Mountain located above Elk Park, NC itself. Since the year 2011, Brian has been making a comfortable living giving below-market prices to his customers.
At the edge of the town of Crossnore, North Carolina, tucked into one of those tight mountain curves that scares the heebie-jeebies out of the outlanders, sits Jennifer Pinter's specialty dessert shop.
"When we opened the shop twenty years ago, all the locals laughed at us," Jennifer recalls with a smile. "Nothing had ever made a go of it in this curve, but I think that curve was a blessing for this place."