Come See Our Knob

Yosef the Mountaineer is the big guy enjoying the view.

 From Maine to Mississippi, more than two thousand mountains are known as knobs, based on an old German word for a prominent hill. These include the highest point in West Virginia, Spruce Knob, and six of the South's 20 highest peaks, Blackstock Knob, Waterrock Knob, Celo Knob, Black Balsam Knob, Roan High Knob, and Luftee Knob. It's not just an Appalachian expression, as there are dozens of "knobs" in Colorado and California.
 The ones that keep me busy, Elk Knob and Howard Knob, are more pedestrian. Elk Knob is the 52nd highest mountain in North Carolina, and I've made the four-mile round-trip hike 325 times, as of July 15. Howard Knob ranks among the 300 highest, and I've frequently driven to the top.

The massive 1979 windmill

 Howard Knob became famous as the site of an experimental NASA windmill, 1979-83, and as a backdrop for football games at Appalachian State University.
 The mountain is commonly called Howard's Knob, but the U.S. Board on Geographic Names eschews the apostrophe-s. The knob is named for Benjamin Howard, the grandfather of Boone. His daughter Sallie married Jordan Council, the father of Boone. Howard was a neghbor of Daniel Boone's family in Wilkes County, and Daniel stayed in Howard's hunting cabin during his western explorations.
 Since the windmill days, the mountaintop has been accessible by car. Watauga County put a park on the summit, and this year it's become a destination. The new park sign lists the summit as 4,396 feet above sea level, which is shorter than the 4,420 shown on topographic maps. I'm not sure of the source for this number, as the Watauga County GIS site shows a 4,415-foot contour. The USGS contour maps can be problematic, as Elk Knob is shown as 5,520 feet on maps and signs, yet it is 5,557 on the newest surveys.
 The new horseshoe-shaped skybridge offers a panoramic view of the High County, including the university campus and peeks into the stadiums at ASU (home of the national champions in 2005, 2006, and 2007), and Watauga High School (state champions 2025). On the ridge behind the ASU stadium stand three windmills that are heirs to the project that once stood on Howard Knob. The Blue Ridge Parkway follows the blue horizon past Grandfather Mountain.
 It's well worth the drive up the hill, less than 10 minutes from King Street in downtown Boone, staring on Cherry Street. You'll be able to park within 100 feet of the overlook.

From below, the bridge resembles a pop-top on the summit.

ASU's football stadium and windmills are on the western end of this panorama.

Boone United Methodist Church has built the Boone United Trail, which climbs halfway to Howard Knob, and may complete its route now that the right-of-way has been cleared. Watauga High School is in the background.

Before the Skybridge, this was the Howard Knob overlook.

 

 

In the Beauty of the Lilies

2025 Gray's Lily did not reappear in 2026.

 It's been a hard summer for the lilies on my favorite mountain.
 I always look forward to blooms of Gray's lilies in mid-June and Turks Cap Lilies in early July, but this was as sparse a season as I've seen. The Gray's Lily is found on only a few mile-high summits in the corner of North Carolina, Virginia, and Tennessee.
 For several years, I've been taking a census of Gray's Lilies on Elk Knob. These perennials are already considered rare, and I'm concerned that the population in 2026 seems to be in retreat. I found only four in 2026, compared to 33 flowers in 2025, 18 in 2024, 17 in 2023, and 12 in 2022.
 One patch that produced nine lilies in 2025 showed only one in 2026. Two prolific stalks that produced five and seven flowers did not sprout this year.
 This also was a lean year for flame azalea, which turn the mountaintop orange each June. The Turk's Cap lilies have certainly moved downhill, and we even had one bloom in the parking lot. I counted more than 50 blossoms along the trail, but there were none in the usual thicket past the 1.5-mile marker.
 My census is not scientific, and I generally count flowers visible from the trail. Except for a few patches, I don't bushwhack to find them. I don't want to trample them, and this year the state park put up fences and signs to protect endangered plants.
 On the Sunday after July 4, my church sang The Battle Hymn of the Republic, which I was surprised to learn was still in the Methodist Hymnal. I thought it had been exiled by pacificists, along with Onward Christian Soldiers.
 Our pastor, a former soldier himself, told how he once included that hymn in a worship service in Alabama, and one of the ladies of the church walked out in protest. "I'm not singing a Yankee song," she said.
 Indeed, The Battle Hymn of the Republic echoes John Brown's Body, a favorite tune of Union soldiers. Julia Ward Howe wrote the lyrics in 1861, four weeks after the bombardment of Fort Sumter. It also evokes the University of Georgia fight song, Glory, Glory to the Bulldogs, which might offend my pastor, an Auburn man.

Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord,
He is tramping out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored. 
He has loosed the fateful lightning of his terrible swift sword,
His truth is marching on.

 The fourth stanza evokes the Song of Solomon and the Sermon on the Mount: 

In the beauty of the lilies, Christ was born across the sea,
with a glory in his bosom that transfigures you and me. 
As he died to make men holy, let us die to make men free,
while God is marching on.

 The "Father of Botany," Asa Gray, discovered a red lily in 1840 on Roan Mountain, and his students named it for him. A colleague of Charles Darwin, Gray understood evolution as being guided by God's hand.

 In a wonderful coincidence, Gray and Julia Ward Howe, the lyricist for the Battle Hymn, now are pushing up daisies in the same graveyard, Mount Auburn Cemetery near Boston.

 Gray's Lily (lilium grayi), Turk's Cap Lily (lilium superbum), and Michigan Lily (lilium michiganense) bloom in June and July on Elk Knob. ln the spring, we are also blessed with yellow Trout Lilies (erythronium americanum), which Dr. Gray would tell us are not true lilies. 

 Elk Knob and the Roan are among the few places that Gray's lily can be found. They seem to prefer mile-high balds, and Elk Knob is in the process of going bald. 

 

Turk's Cap Lily

Two lilies that bloomed in a new location this year were "harvested"—I'm not sure if they were eaten by deer or picked for a dear. 

This Gray's Lily never bloomed, probably because of drought.

Skeletons of the Beech forest on the summit.

 

  Elk Knob is crowned by a beech forest, and many of the trees have been killed by a blight. As a result, the undergrowth is unusually thick, including a new generation of beech trees. I fear that this is choking out the lilies and the azaleas, which seemed to be retreating away from the summit. If you're looking for a science project, please come study the evolution of Elk Knob and apply Dr. Gray's understanding of theistic evolution. 

The Kneverest Hall of Fame

Elk Knob beckons from my bedroom window (I need to call the tree-trimmers).

 I've had my eyes on Elk Knob since we built our mountainside house in Boone in 2005. On Thursday, March 26th, 2026, I celebrated my 300th hike up the mountain.
 In 2007, I answered a call for volunteers to help build a hiking trail to the summit. My first climb followed a steep old Jeep trail where realtors once tried to sell mile-high views. Thankfully, the lots were never developed, and the state of North Carolina acquired the land in 2003 to become Elk Knob State Park.
 The original superintendent, Larry Trivette, envisioned a walkable trail to the top, and we agreed to build it by hand, rather than scarring the mountainside with a bulldozer or backhoe. I was among the volunteers who came every Saturday to carve out the trail. Each year, we completed about a half mile of trail. On fall Saturdays, I brought a radio and we worked to the tune of Armanti Edwards as hacked stumps, leveraged boulders, and poured gravel on the muddy spots. After quitting time, if I wasn't too sore or exhausted, I trudged up the old jeep road to reward myself with the hundred-mile view.
 We completed the trail on Sept. 4, 2011, which was my 29th ascent. I reached No. 100 in 2019, No. 200 in 2023, and No. 300 in 2026. Could I reach 400 this year? Why not, now that I'm retired? Why not do two a day? I know of a Holocaust survivor in Phoenix named Sam Wagman, who climbed Camelback Mountain three times a day, six days a week, for 37 years, setting a world record with 34,000 climbs. His record is safe with me. 

I had the honor of dumping the last load of gravel on the Elk Knob trail in 2011.

 "Groundhog Day" is celebrated at Gobblers Knob, and Elk Knob has become my personal #GroundhogDay. Wake up and do it again. With a few excuses, I've missed only four months for the past 10 years. My streaks reached 48 consecutive months before the park was closed in 2020 because of the COVID pandemic, then another 54 months before we were gutted by Hurricane Helene. Until that seven-week shutdown, I was on pace to tally 70 hikes in my 70th year.
 Why, you ask? That's what they asked George Mallory in 1924 before his ill-fated climb of Mount Everest. "Because it's there," he declared.
 Why do I come back, month after month? Elk Knob is not Everest, but it's high enough—one of the 52 highest peaks in North Carolina. The view is always nice. Hiking is healthy and seems to keep my diabetes at bay. (If you want to impress your cardiologist, send him a summit photo five days after he put stents in your heart.) I like to stay acquainted with the wildflowers. I feel a sense of ownership in the park and trail. I confess to being obsessive. 

The elevation is actually 5,558.

 And I'm over halfway to a Hall of Fame. The International Poly-Baggers Hall of Fame recognizes peak-baggers who have climbed the same mountain 500 times. This is an online club based in Wales. When and if I get there, maybe they'll let me rename the club into something that fits in an obituary. My favorite so far is the "Neverest" Hall of Fame. Or in the case of Elk Knob, we could borrow the silent K and call it Kneverest.
 Elk Knob is a 4-mile round trip with 1,000 feet of elevation gain from the parking lot. By mountain-climbing standards, it's a humble ascent. My usual round trip takes a little over two hours. Some people can run a marathon faster than that. My fastest climb was 52 minutes at age 57. I've walked over 1,200 miles on "my" trail.
 Do I have the record for Elk Knob climbs? Maybe. There is another man who hikes as often as I do, but he does not keep count. Others have done more on other peaks, like Mount Le Conte. 
 If hikes were stackable, like shoeboxes, my 300 would rise 300,000 feet, which would approach the Kármán Line, the brink of outer space, over 10 times higher than Everest and a quarter of the way to the international space station. 

Laundry's last hurrah

 

 It's hard for me to watch college sports anymore.
 I used to enjoy following Clemson, because that's where I grew up, cheering for the likes of Buddy Gore and Butch Zetazelo, in the days before the Tiger Paw was invented. As a teenager, I could ride my Schwinn 10-speed on the backroads from Anderson to Clemson and treat myself to peach ice cream at the Ag Center.

 Friends who associate me with Clemson are sometimes surprised to learn I only attended classes there for the spring semester of 1976, to get the credits I needed to transfer from Anderson College into journalism school. When Chapel Hill waitlisted me, newspaper friends persuaded me to pursue Mizzou.
 So I never got a student pass to a Clemson game. As a kid, I got in free because my uncle had IPTAY passes and my mom's cousin was a Coke vendor who needed help unloading the steel soda cannisters. In 1970, I watched the South Carolina game from a tree in the southeast corner of the stadium..
 In my 40s, I covered Clemson sports for The Greenville News, and I suppressed some old-fashioned affection for the place. There was no cheering in Bob Bradley's press box, but there was little to cheer about in the Tommy West era.
 After I left Greenville and the newspaper business, I still enjoyed following Clemson football. I liked what Tommy Bowden and Dabo Swinney stood for. When the Tigers conquered Alabama for national championships in 2017 and 2019, I had the perspective of remembering the year after I enrolled at Clemson, the Red Elephants beat the Red Parkers 56-0. How far "we" had come!
 Up here in Boone, I rarely miss a Clemson football game on TV. We even splurged on the ACC Network. My boss at Samaritan's Purse is an Auburn man, so we treated each other to road trips when "our" teams played in 2016 (snap infraction!) and 2017.
 But when Clemson played Penn State in the Pinstripe Bowl after Christmas, I opted out, went hiking, and missed the first quarter.
 It's hard to feel invested in players who have no investment in the place that once meant so much to me. Several players skipped the bowl game because they didn't think it would help improve their NFL career. I'm glad that Dabo can brag about his graduation rate, but I wish he could recruit players who bleed orange and sweat loyalty. 
 Living in Boone, I started following Appalachian State. I missed the Michigan game in 2005, but I was at Penn State in 2018 when the Mountaineers nearly upset Micah Parson's team. Now, dozens of App players have "entered the transfer portal," giving Boone the cold shoulder after much prayer and delusion. (And what does it say about Clemson, that Appalachian gave Penn State the better game?)
 The heartache here is not about the demise of Clemson or Appalachian football. It's that so many players don't stay long enough to learn the alma mater or savor the ice cream. If they don't care, why should I?
 In the times we live in, I don't have an answer. Money ruined the game as soon as coaches started making millions. We should not be surprised that players became mercenaries. Conferences like the ACC have sold their soul to the likes of ESPN. They have no boundaries, geographical nor ethical. Clemson once benefitted from that in 2015, when the ACC had a vested interest in protecting the Tigers in the ACC championship game.
 So who am I cheering for anymore? Empty shirts? Jerry Seinfeld offered some wisdom on that: "We're cheering for the laundry."
 Pliny the Younger foreshadowed Seinfeld by 2,100 years when he covered Roman chariot races: “I am the more astonished that so many thousands of grown men should be possessed…with a childish passion to look at galloping horses and men standing upright in their chariots. If…they were attracted by the swiftness of the horses or the skill of the men, one could account for this enthusiasm. But it is the color of the tunic they favor. And if during the running the racers were to exchange colors, their partisans would change sides and instantly forsake the very drivers and horses whom they were just before clamorously cheering by name.”

'Laundry money'

 In my sportswriting days, "laundry money" was a euphemism for an NCAA misdemeanor. In those seemingly innocent times, a college team could be punished for a financial gift from a coach to a student-athlete. The stereotypical excuse was that the student couldn't afford to wash his clothes, so a sympathetic coach gave him a roll of quarters for "laundry money." Or the coach could get a wrist-slap for giving a kid a jersey or other laundry.

 If $10 could bribe a player back then, then college football is our worst example of inflation.

 I was reminded of "laundry money" when Trinidad Chambliss sued the NCAA, saying he will lose millions of dollars if the NCAA "makes him turn pro."

 Chambliss seems like a fine young man and an excellent college quarterback for the University of Mississippi, which likes to be called "Ole Miss." He might have been playing in Monday's national championship game against Indiana, except for an official who swallowed his whistle on a dramatic last-second play that might have been a Mississippi touchdown if not for the interference of a Miami defender. (We wouldn't be raving about Indiana so much if Carson Beck had been as clutch as Chambliss on their final collegiate plays.

 College football fans got to know Chambliss on an AT&T commercial, where he's on a couch with family and friends as he answers a phone call: "I'd like to transfer to AT&T." Then he turns to a friend and wisecracks: "What did you think I was talking about?"

 We thought you were transferring colleges, not carriers. We thought you had just sold out. (I'm disappointed in my sportswriting heirs who have failed to document how much he earned for that spot).

 The gag pokes fun at the "transfer portal," where a player goes to restart his college career elsewhere. Chambliss, 23, has been there through the portal previously, and he might have gone there again this year, if not his eligibility questions. This is his fifth year in college, and he is not happy that the NCAA has denied his appeal to play a sixth year. College athletes are term-limited to four seasons, though the NCAA has made exceptions for COVID-era players, and there is at least one vagabond quarterback who has been approved for a seventh season (at a seventh different school).

 Chambliss started his career at a Division II school in Michigan, Ferris State, where he won a national championship before transferring to Ole Miss. He was unable to play his first two seasons because of tonsillitis, so he is appealing for what would be his fourth season of competition.

 For those who are wondering if Chambliss is more of a student-athlete than Carson Beck, he claims to be an A student on track to graduate in May. 

 Despite Chambliss' success on Saturdays the past two seasons, NFL scouts doubt that he's ready to compete on Sundays. College quarterbacks of his caliber earn $5 million or more. As an NFL rookie, he'd probably make only $2 million. 

 As they chant at Ole Miss: "Hotty Toddy!"