Buckthorn and poison ivy currently rule a large portion of the trail. The spikes on buckthorn deter native animals and the chemical it deposits in the soil discourages native plants from germinating. This contributes to soil erosion and poor water absorption on the trail.

Igor Schyb was born without a country. An ethnic Ukrainian, he began his life in a refugee camp in Munich, Germany in 1949. His family immigrated to America when he was two years old and they found a new home in the Ukrainian Village neighborhood of Chicago.

People can get seeds from the garden and then start saving seeds from the resulting plants. One woman Webber met did just that. “Every year she brings her seed back and every year, at the heirloom fest in August, she brings us a whole tray of tomatoes she’s grown from the seed from here.”

When it came time for some of her solo work, Herula said, “I’m really known for rocking out on Delta blues; but being at a wine bar, I don’t want to scare people away.”

A man at one table began chanting, “Scare us! Scare us! Scare us!”

When Brian Finkel decided to spend a year in “the promised land,” he didn’t go for the milk and honey… but he ended up staying for it.

McLean engages the audience as Lewis in a warm grandfatherly way. He muses, rants, and sighs his way across the stage while recounting the story of his conversion to Christianity in 70 minutes of spellbinding performance.

I hung out before sunrise one morning in the cigarette-butt-littered parking lot of Crossroads Treatment Center in Asheville. People in work boots, T-shirts, and jeans or sweatpants formed a line at the clinic doors, as minute by minute more beaten vehicles pulled into the lot. A police officer sat in his car, keeping a watchful eye.