Western North Carolina is usually divided into three subregions, each with its own personality. The Far Western counties — Cherokee, Clay, Graham, Swain, Haywood, Jackson, and Macon — are mostly national forest land, with the Great Smoky Mountains National Park anchoring the western edge along the Tennessee border. This is also where the Qualla Boundary sits, the home of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, whose ancestors hid in these mountains during the 1838 Trail of Tears and managed to remain on their land. The middle group of counties — Buncombe, Henderson, Madison, Transylvania — is sometimes called the Land of the Sky and centers on Asheville, the largest city in the region. The northern counties — Alleghany, Ashe, Avery, Mitchell, Watauga, Wilkes, and Yancey — are the High Country, centered on Boone, home of Appalachian State University and the eastern United States' best-known ski hills. Yancey County also holds Mount Mitchell. The eastern edge — Burke, Caldwell, McDowell, Polk, Rutherford — is the foothill country where the Blue Ridge wall meets the Piedmont, branded by the local tourism board as the First Peak of the Blue Ridge.

These are not big mountains by global standards. Mount Mitchell tops out below 7,000 feet. But the southern Appalachians are old — over a billion years old at their core, with the surface ranges built roughly 200 to 400 million years ago during the Alleghenian orogeny, when the proto-African and proto-North American plates collided to assemble Pangaea. Long erosion since has produced the rounded summits and deep coves the region is known for. The temperate rainforest climate, the elevation gradient, and the fact that glaciers never reached this far south during the ice ages combined to preserve plant communities that disappeared elsewhere. The result is a botanical hotspot with more tree species in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park alone than in all of northern Europe. Salamanders crawl through the duff in numbers that taxonomists are still cataloging. Twenty-six species of orchid grow in the Pisgah National Forest. The Linville Gorge wilderness drops 2,000 feet through gneiss walls. Whitewater Falls drops 411 feet in two leaps.

Asheville, the largest mountain city at about 85,000 people, holds the Biltmore Estate — George Vanderbilt's 250-room French Renaissance chateau, finished in 1895 and still the largest private home in the United States. The city has built a national reputation on craft beer, art-deco downtown architecture, and a politically progressive culture that distinguishes it from most of the surrounding region. Boone, two hours northeast in the High Country, runs on Appalachian State University and the ski-resort economy. Smaller towns punctuate the rest of the region — Brevard with its waterfalls, Hendersonville with its apple orchards and the Carl Sandburg Home, Cherokee with the Oconaluftee Indian Village and the Museum of the Cherokee Indian, Maggie Valley with the Wheels Through Time motorcycle museum. The North Carolina Arboretum at Bent Creek near Asheville covers 424 acres of greenhouse, gardens, and trail. Each town tends to specialize: art, music, food, hiking, snow.

Asheville Regional Airport (KAVL) is the main gateway, fifteen miles southeast of the city. The High Country is closer to Charlotte Douglas (KCLT) or the Tri-Cities Airport (KTRI) on the Tennessee-Virginia line. Greenville-Spartanburg (KGSP) and McGhee Tyson in Knoxville (KTYS) are the next-nearest options. Interstate 40 crosses the region east-to-west, climbing the Blue Ridge escarpment at Old Fort and dropping into Tennessee through the Pigeon River Gorge. Interstate 26 cuts north-to-south through Asheville. Most of the actual mountain driving, though, happens on two-lane US highways and the Blue Ridge Parkway — 469 miles of scenic motorway between the Great Smokies and Shenandoah National Park, built by the Civilian Conservation Corps starting in 1935 and still one of the most-visited units of the National Park System. Drive it slowly. The point is not getting somewhere.

If you visit Cherokee, North Carolina, you are entering the Qualla Boundary — sovereign land of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, descendants of the families who refused to leave during the 1838 forced removal that emptied most of the southeastern United States of its indigenous population. The Eastern Band remained because of legal arguments, payments, and the willingness of some Cherokee leaders — notably Yonaguska and the white merchant William Holland Thomas — to find ways through the federal policy. The Qualla Boundary today covers about 57,000 acres across five counties. Cherokee language classes have been growing for two decades. The Museum of the Cherokee Indian tells the story from the inside. The mountains around it are not just scenic backdrop. They are someone's homeland, still, and have been for longer than written history.