Excerpt from Smoky Mountain Living, Spring '03
The French Broad Riverkeeper
by Susan Lefler

The term riverkeeper held a kind of magic for me from the moment I heard it.

"Oh yes,"my mother had said, "every river has a riverkeeper to watch over it and keep it safe."

Since she was a passionate environmentalist who received newsletters from every imaginable environmental organization and read at least a half dozen environmental magazines, I took this news to heart.

As it turns out, her assurance was not quite accurate. By 1997, only about 20 of the nation’s rivers had keepers (by the year 2002, there were more than 80). Still, the idea captivated me and I tried to find out about riverkeepers from my antiquated computer system. I found nothing. But I was enthralled by the sound of the name and the idea that there were people whose job it was to be the keepers of rivers.

Excerpt from Smoky Mountain Living, Fall '02

Southern Highland Craft Guild
Southern Appalachian Craft
by Susan Lefler


Its Clay Day at the Folk Art Center on the Blue Ridge Parkway, home of the Southern Highland Craft Guild. A potter is helping a child shape a pot on the wheel. Nearby, a little girl carefully balances a tiny ceramic snake and a miniature basket on a paper plate.

"This one is mine," she says, pointing proudly to the snake, ?and my friend made the basket."
Lefler is Editor at Large for Smoky Mountain Living magazine and contributes regularly to that publication. The Fall 2005 issue included an article by Lefler about Canton’s Mayor Pat Smathers who shepherded his community through the disastrous floods of autumn 2004 and the aftermath as well as a dining review on The Gamekeeper in Boone, NC.

For Winter 2006, Lefler wrote a feature on Dr. Edwin Strawbridge English, a physician who practiced medicine in Transylvania County in the first half of the 20th Century, an article on “Medicine: Past, Present, and Future,” and an essay based on stories of a 95 year old mountain native about the births of two of her siblings before 1920.

Lefler considers her most important job for the magazine to be functioning as the “ghost writer” for the office dog, Molly. The result of those interviews can be seen in “Molly’s Musings” in each issue.