After more than twenty years at Flat Rock Playhouse, Dale “Bird” Bartlett was beginning to contemplate life beyond the theater. His partner, Damian “Duke” Domingue, meanwhile, was navigating a period marked by both personal loss and professional reflection. He increasingly found himself thinking seriously about what the next chapter might hold.

Amid those transitions, he kept returning to a simple piece of advice his father had offered near the end of his life: "Press on."  So, he did. In 2012, Duke enrolled in auctioneer school. That decision ultimately led both Duke and Bird into a remarkable chapter of their life together.

As I made my way up the mountain, memories flooded over my thoughts. Not in any particular order and not because I was intentionally taking inventory of my life. They simply arrived, one after another, as naturally as the sunlight slipping through the trees.

And somewhere between the parking lot and the summit, I realized I was not simply climbing a mountain. I was walking back through seventy years of blessings, mistakes, losses, friendships, and love.

Georgia Bonesteel has created an extraordinary career woven from a life filled with resilience, determination, and a teacher’s passion to share her experience and knowledge. Given these qualities, it’s no surprise that this Flat Rock resident has fashioned a career as a television personality, prolific author, and been accorded the title of “Grande Dame of American Quilting.”

Long before formal roads existed in western North Carolina, Native American tribes established trails through the mountains that later became the foundation for many of the region’s transportation corridors. These routes generally followed river valleys, lightly forested ridgelines, shallow crossings, and mountain gaps that provided the most practical passage through rugged terrain.

Sandy Hunter Jones was born with a needle and thread in her hand. At just three years old, her mother discovered her carefully mending Elfie, a beloved stuffed elephant.

No one knew where she had found a needle and thread, but it was clear she already understood how to use them.

Long before walkers enjoyed the trails at The Park at Flat Rock and before golfers strolled rolling fairways, the land was something altogether different. Until the late 1700s, it was a broad mountain wetland shaped by the slow movement of water through bogs, creeks, and marshy lowlands at the edge of what we now know as King Creek. Dye Creek, sometimes called Dye Branch, wandered naturally through the soggy landscape, feeding a rich ecosystem that existed centuries before the first settlers arrived in Flat Rock.

At Flat Rock Playhouse, a season is more than a schedule. It is a composition, with each production setting the tone for what follows. With Pride and Prejudice, that opening note is clear, lively, inviting, and full of life. It reflects what FRP does best, creating theatre that welcomes you in, surrounds you with story, and reminds you from the very first moment why live performance still matters.

When Melanie and Daniel Hopkins opened Studio 116 on April 4, 2025, they weren’t simply launching an art gallery. The enterprising couple who arrived in East Flat Rock from California six years ago were continuing the long, evolving story of a historic East Flat Rock building.

Housed in the iconic Stepp-Walker building, a structure with more than a century of changing identities, Studio 116 represents both preservation and reinvention. After extensive renovations, the Hopkins transformed part of the lower level of the 10,00 square foot building into a working gallery space that one that now hums with creativity, conversation, and community connection.

At the Local History Fair hosted by the BRCC Library earlier this week, visitors moved from one display to the next, picking up brochures, asking questions, and swapping stories. It quickly became clear this was more than a gathering of organizations. It was a room full of people deeply invested in preserving the history of Western North Carolina.

Driving east on Interstate 26 past Saluda, the road suddenly drops rapidly, beginning a steep descent “off the mountain.” The same sensation comes on U.S. 25 heading south toward Greenville - a long, winding descent that signals a transition from the higher Blue Ridge to the lower Piedmont.

This dramatic shift in elevation and landscape raises a straightforward question: What is this edge? What Is the Blue Ridge Escarpment?

Several times a week, on my way to work at a local nonprofit, I pass a small, easy-to-miss sign at the corner of Shepherd Street and Brooklyn Avenue near the campus of Blue Ridge Community College. It simply reads: “WNC Air Museum.” For seven years, I’ve driven past it without a second thought.

Until this week. What I discovered iwas something far beyond anything I had imagined.

Twenty-seven years ago, Linda and Jack Grup delivered a daughter to her freshman year of college in Ann Arbor, packed up their life in Michigan, and headed for the mountains of Western North Carolina in pursuit of a dream. Today, that dream is a reality, and the Village of Flat Rock has been the primary beneficiary of their vision, professionalism, and commitment to creating excellence.

If you’ve spent any time at Ruby de Noche in Flat Rock over the past couple of years, you know it wasn’t just a place to eat. The cozy restaurant tucked away in the back of Flat Rock Square was a place to gather, linger, and feel at home.

Which is exactly why the news of its transition from a full-service, dine-in restaurant to a more flexible mix of meal delivery, catering, and community events might feel a little bittersweet.

Nestled at the foot of Glassy Mountain, hidden beyond a rhododendron-flanked drive and shaded by towering pines, stands Rhododendron—a gracious, weathered summer house that has been the heart of the Rhodes and Simpson families for 75 years. Owned today by five grandchildren of May Bond Screven Simpson Rhodes, the home has remained largely unchanged since she purchased it at auction in 1950. To step inside is to be transported to another era, another pace of life, and another definition of home.

On quiet mornings in East Flat Rock, the light settles softly over Mine Gap and Roper Roads. If you did not know better, you might pass the small white church on the corner without realizing that it holds within its walls nearly 160 years of history and memory.

When John Quinley volunteered to be a docent at the Carl Sandburg Home Historic Site in 2019, he never imagined that he would author the book Discovering Carl Sandburg three years later. He certainly had no plans to write anything more. As it turned out, that was only the beginning. 

For more than a century, the Lowndes House has stood at the intersection of two defining chapters of the village. First, the story of the Lowndes family, who helped shape Flat Rock into a Low Country summer refuge. And nearly one hundred years later, a second story of a young immigrant from Liverpool  -  Robert William Smith, whom we now know as Robroy Farquhar - whose theatrical vision transformed the Rock into the cultural heart of the region.

The Green River lies 130 feet beneath the old High Bridge on US 176 between Flat Rock and Saluda. The view down to the river is dizzying, and it is not hard to understand why, when the bridge opened in 1927, it was acclaimed as the highest bridge of its kind east of the Mississippi River.

But the High Bridge is more than tall. It is elegant. The bridge stands with a quiet dignity, and even now, nearly a century later, the sweeping concrete arches that once supported the ancient roadway command respect.

I recommend you pour a cup of coffee or hot tea, settle into a comfortable spot at home, and spend some unhurried time with the words and images offered here by your friends and neighbors. It may very well be the best use of your time all day. It certainly has been for me.

In the summer of 1948, Hendersonville danced.

It danced on Main Street between Third and Fourth, where forty couples might whirl at once under the glow of a setting sun. It danced at Poplar Lodge in Laurel Park on Tuesdays, at the pavilion atop Jump Off Rock on Wednesdays, and in the barn at the Saddle Club on Saturday nights. It danced to fiddles and banjos, to callers’ singsong voices, and to the steady beat of shoes on wooden floors.

And right in the middle of all that motion was a seventeen-year-old girl named Peggy Jones.