The North Carolina Piedmont is rich in natural beauty and wildlife. Home to eleven state parks, three state natural areas, a national wildlife refuge and a national forest, the region offers more than just gently rolling hills. Tour the wild wine vines in Medoc Mountain State Park, marvel at the floodplains of the Haw River and follow the migratory birds in Pee Dee National Wildlife Refuge. Experience the natural history, field research, interviews with park rangers and firsthand experiences of the state's largest physiographic region. Author Adam Morgan joins in a rich tradition of nature writing to paint the majestic beauty and raw power of North Carolina's wild Piedmont.

North Carolina harbors an incredible diversity of habitats that provide food and shelter for more than 440 bird species throughout the year, making the state a destination for birders and nature lovers. The North Carolina Birding Trail is a driving trail linking birders and tourists with great birding sites across the state and the local communities in which they are found. The second of three regional guides, the Piedmont Trail Guide presents 103 premier birding destinations in the North Carolina piedmont, most within an easy drive of the state's urban centers, between Charlotte on the west and Interstate 95 on the east. The spiral-bound volume features maps, detailed site descriptions, and color photographs throughout. Each site description includes directions as well as information on access, focal species and habitats, and on-site visitor amenities. Special "while you're in the area" listings accompany each of fourteen site groupings, so visitors can travel to a cluster of birding destinations and enjoy other local highlights and attractions along the way.

This richly illustrated field guide serves as an introduction to the wildflowers and plant communities of the southern Appalachians and the rolling hills of the adjoining piedmont. Rather than organizing plants, including trees, shrubs, and herbaceous plants, by flower color or family characteristics, as is done in most guidebooks, botanist Tim Spira takes a holistic, ecological approach that enables the reader to identify and learn about plants in their natural communities. This approach, says Spira, better reflects the natural world, as plants, like other organisms, don't live in isolation; they coexist and interact in myriad ways. Full-color photo keys allow the reader to rapidly preview plants found within each of the 21 major plant communities described, and the illustrated species description for each of the 340 featured plants includes fascinating information about the ecology and natural history of each plant in its larger environment. With this new format, readers can see how the mountain and piedmont landscapes form a mosaic of plant communities that harbor particular groups of plants. The volume also includes a glossary, illustrations of plant structures, and descriptions of sites to visit. Whether you're a beginning naturalist or an expert botanist, this guidebook is a useful companion on field excursions and wildflower walks, as well as a valuable reference. Southern Gateways Guide is a registered trademark of the University of North Carolina Press

Looking for adventure and continuing a process of self-discovery, Janisse Ray has repeatedly set out to immerse herself in wildness, to be wild, and to learn what wildness can teach us. From overwintering with monarch butterflies in Mexico to counting birds in Belize, the stories in Wild Spectacle capture her luckiest moments—ones of heart-pounding amazement, discovery of romance, and moving toward living more wisely. In Ray’s worst moments she crosses boundaries to encounter danger and embrace sadness. Anchored firmly in two places Ray has called home—Montana and southern Georgia—the sixteen essays here span a landscape from Alaska to Central America, connecting common elements in the ecosystems of people and place. One of her abiding griefs is that she has missed the sights of explorers like Bartram, Sacagawea, and Carver: flocks of passenger pigeons, routes of wolves, herds of bison. She craves a wilder world and documents encounters that are rare in a time of disappearing habitat, declining biodiversity, and a world too slowly coming to terms with climate change. In an age of increasingly virtual, urban life, Ray embraces the intentionality of trying to be a better person balanced with seeking out natural spectacle, abundance, and less trammeled environments. She questions what it means to travel into the wild as a woman, speculates on the impacts of ecotourism and travel in general, questions assumptions about eating from the land, and appeals to future generations to make substantive change. Wild Spectacle explores our first home, the wild earth, and invites us to question its known and unknown beauties and curiosities.

Foraging edible plants was once limited to specialists, survivalists, and herbalists, but it's become increasingly mainstream. Influenced by the popularity of the locavore movement, many restaurants feature foraged plants on their menus, and a wide variety of local foraged plants are sold at farmers markets across the country. With Edible Wild Plants of the Carolinas, Lytton John Musselman and Peter W. Schafran offer a full-color guide for the everyday forager, featuring: - Profiles of more than 100 edible plants, organized broadly by food type, including seeds, fruits, grains, and shoots - Details about taste and texture, harvesting tips, and preparation instructions - Full-color photos that make it easy to identify edible plants Edible Wild Plants of the Carolinas is designed to help anyone enjoy the many wild plants found in the biodiverse Carolinas.

In 1700, a young man named John Lawson left London and landed in Charleston, South Carolina, hoping to make a name for himself. For reasons unknown, he soon undertook a two-month journey through the still-mysterious Carolina backcountry. His travels yielded A New Voyage to Carolina in 1709, one of the most significant early American travel narratives, rich with observations about the region's environment and Indigenous people. Lawson later helped found North Carolina's first two cities, Bath and New Bern; became the colonial surveyor general; contributed specimens to what is now the British Museum; and was killed as the first casualty of the Tuscarora War. Yet despite his great contributions and remarkable history, Lawson is little remembered, even in the Carolinas he documented. In 2014, Scott Huler made a surprising decision: to leave home and family for his own journey by foot and canoe, faithfully retracing Lawson's route through the Carolinas. This is the chronicle of that unlikely voyage, revealing what it's like to rediscover your own home. Combining a traveler's curiosity, a naturalist's keen observation, and a writer's wit, Huler draws our attention to people and places we might pass regularly but never really see. What he finds are surprising parallels between Lawson's time and our own, with the locals and their world poised along a knife-edge of change between a past they can't forget and a future they can't quite envision.