Wildlife ecologist J. Drew Lanham finds himself spending more time alone hiking the Southern Appalachian’s Blue Ridge escarpment in South Carolina. The terrain doesn’t “offer thin air vistas or many bare rock spires,” he says. “But their beauty will leave you breathless in other ways.” These hills and “hollers” have supported his career in public work, provided space for deep reflection and forced him to reckon with the racism he’s experienced as a Black man who likes to “bird watch, hike and deer hunt in places where there are far more black bears per square mile than Black people.” Read the story here:
Photo: Cliford Mervil, Drew Lanham
