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Taste the New Delights

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Chasing Sunsets and Waterfalls

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There are so many great articles in the pages of The Laurel Magazine, sometimes you want to read them again. You won’t miss a thing. Use these helpful search parameters and find just what you’re looking for about Highlands, NC and Cashiers, NC.

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Mingling in the Magic of Oils

There’s nothing plain about Jill Wolfe’s latest Laurel cover heralding this summer’s Plein Air Festival, set for  July 15-19 on the Village Green.  In her capable hands, Abstraction, Impressionism, and interpretive realism mingle in a mashup of landscape magic.   That’s a style she’s perfected and settled into after years of experimentation and study with world class masters. Her work …

Coping and an Old Rope Swing

There are a lot of stories as to what the current coronavirus crisis is revealing about family life, society, the educational system, and our economy.   Here, Albert Carlton-Cashiers Community Library’s Jessica Martin reflects on what sheltering-in-place revealed to her, her husband and three boys.  Taken together, the details of Jessica’s day-to-day life and its meaning in the larger context …

Reinventing Her Restaurant

March 17, 2020.  The celebratory sounds of a traditional St Patrick’s Day celebration were silenced today as North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper halted dine-in service across Highlands.  In its place, you could barely hear the air sucked out of the lungs of local restaurateurs  – the hard-working folks who had spent decades serving the community.  Meritage Bistro owner Andrea Schmitt …


Celebrate Your Voice

Like the rest of the world, my life seemed to completely change in the matter of days.  I was a second semester junior at college. Before I was sent home from school in March I was living in an apartment on campus, I was working hard, getting good grades, and enjoying living with my significant other for the first time …

Time is an Abundant Luxury

Time is the fourth dimension after the three spatial dimensions. In Newtonian physics time moves forward, never backwards, and cannot be speeded up or slowed down. In human experience, however, time crawls, hangs heavy, drags by, creeps up, passes quickly, runs out, flies and slips away. While home sheltering during this pandemic, many people find they have “time on their …

Who’s Behind The Masks

When beautiful art binds with perfect function, the result is fantastic craft.   Nan and her mother, Nok, have joined creative forces to produce an indispensable creation in these troubled times…fashionable, protective face masks, custom-designed for men, women, and children, all ages, all sizes. Eleven years ago Nan flew from Thailand to Western North Carolina with a student visa in …


Coming through Renewed

Since the real estate market is fundamental to the Plateau’s economic health, the arrival of the Coronavirus and its social distancing mandates added another layer of anxiety to an already shaken population.  “All of a sudden, all of us in real estate were dead in the water,” says Terry Potts, owner of Country Club Properties. “Of course, everyone closed their …

Wear, Wait & Wash

Business as we knew it has been disrupted but there’s something mystical about mountains, flowing streams, moss covered paths and old growth forests of birch, hickory, oak, and maple trees and you’ll find that in abundance in Highlands. And this mysticism has been calling people here for centuries. Worldwide, the Covid-19 pandemic has brought travel and tourism to a near-standstill, …

Neighbors Helping Neighbors

Coming together in times of crisis is one of the things that makes Highlands such a special place to live. Never has this been more evident than during the recent and ongoing Covid-19 crisis.  The Highlands Chamber of Commerce has been instrumental in devising ways to help our community weather these unusual times. A suggestion was made to start a …


Plant for The Plateau

When the founders of Highlands drew up their plans for this tiny corner of Western North Carolina, they envisioned that the fertile meadows of Horse Cove and the Flats, the temperate climate, and abundant rainfall would allow the community to develop as an important agricultural hub.  Well, Mssrs. Kelsey and Hutchinson may have been a little too ambitious in their …

Community Care Clinic

The 2020 global pandemic has altered, either temporarily or irrevocably, the way organizations and businesses operate.   Executive Director Jerry Hermanson of Community Care Clinic of Highlands-Cashiers is not certain which will be the case, but for now there are operational procedures in place to protect the health and safety of patients and staff as COVID-19 continues to threaten. Community …

All in This Together

Few things have tested the mettle and resilience of our community like the ongoing COVID-19 crisis which has affected all our lives and livelihoods in one way or another. Few understand this better than Mayor Patrick Taylor who, in conjunction with our town board, has dedicated countless hours planning policies to keep our community safe and our businesses viable. Determining …