(gentle music) I think it's hard for anybody to go up on Grandfather Mountain and not come away realizing just how inspiring that vista is.

I've crawled all over that mountain and I found myself inspired by those kind of views every day.

Man.

(laughs) Over the years, you know, that first impressive glimpse would lead on to immersion into the history of the mountain.

And I became inspired by the mission to convince people that it was much more than they thought it was.

I am Randy Johnson, a North Carolina writer, conservationist, and I live in the North Carolina high country for, at this point, the vast majority of my life.

Yeah, I think a love affair with the mountain kind of talks to why I'm here and what a lot of my writing has been about.

Well, there's the grandfather.

I've been looking at that face for 50 years and I never get tired of it.

I guess the first time I met Grandfather Mountain was very, very late high school or early college on a drive of the Blue Ridge Parkway.

Wow.

Can't take your eyes off it.

It's just out there.

I kept seeing billboards for the Swinging Bridge and Mildred the Bear, and I said, "Oh, what we have here is a tourist attraction."

And then I discovered the wilderness out there and I realized, wait a minute, the Swinging Bridge is really not the top.

We're on Linville Peak and there's the Swinging Bridge, but look in the distance.

That's McRae Peak.

That's one of the three peaks on the mountain that are almost 800 feet higher than we are here.

And I said, "Wow, that is amazing.

That is where I need to go."

Sadly, one time I came back to Grandfather and there were no trespassing signs on the trail.

A hiker had died of hypothermia on the mountain and the owner, a famous North Carolinian named Hugh Morton, had closed Grandfather.

That shocked me.

I was stricken by that and just decided I had to come meet the man and I had to persuade him.

Somebody needed to do something to keep those trails open.

Neat photo of him.

I thought I could devise a system that backpackers and hikers would register to use the trails, that they would pay a small fee to fund it, and Hugh Morton gave me the opportunity to prove that I could make that work.

I moved to Grandfather Mountain to start the trail program in 1978 when I was 27.

That was one of the most difficult times in my life.

I mean, at that time, Grandfather Mountain's backcountry trails were a free-for-all.

Unmarked, people were getting lost.

We literally had to crawl hands and knees to find where the original trail was.

That kind of liability is what closes many private land areas around the country.

So I talked my brother into helping me and then I started talking volunteers into helping me, like the North Carolina Outward Bound School.

You know, you've never had fun 'til you hike up to the very top of a mountain and then start work building a log cabin, basically.

That just took years.

I mean, it took years, but looking back on that time, those years really helped me tap in more to the mystical side of nature that I was so fascinated by, and it gave me the opportunity to immerse myself in that, which led to wanting to capture that.

(light music) At the time, the mountain's preservation seemed pretty stable to me, but it began to dawn on me that U Morton had also developed a large country club in the valley below the mountain.

- And the golf course is one of the nation's best.

- And that truly did begin to worry me.

This is one of my favorite stories, with a picture of Grandfather Mountain here.

So basically my plan was to popularize the wilderness of Grandfather Mountain so much as a wild, beautiful, natural area, backpacking spot, a place where nature lovers could really revel in that.

Here's a historic piece I did, and then all the botanists and explorers who came there, and the more people who came to Grandfather for that, the less likely it would be that any kind of development would really be possible.

And there is U Morton actually gazing out at the Grandfather profile.

And that's when I really started writing with a vengeance, and trying to become a freelance photojournalist.

I was a photographer.

I loved to take pictures.

I was taking pictures in the back country already.

And then I began to really focus on writing and photography.

You know, I was traveling a lot.

I was writing about a lot of things, about the Smokies, the Blue Ridge Parkway, North Carolina, but I was on Grandfather all the time, and the mountain was in the center of my being.

I mean, it was in my heart.

It's amazing how many different types of articles that Grandfather Mountain can show up in.

I ended up chronicling the beauty of Grandfather Mountain, season to season, year to year.

These three backpackers were hanging around up top, and I asked them to go out there and sit on that rock.

You know, I would always come home to Grandfather, and I would always come home to trying to popularize the mountain.

The other side of the mountain, where hiking trails lead to spectacular peaks, that entire process started years ago for me, and it still continues.

Boy, oh boy.

Times have changed.

You know, the 1980s and the early 1990s, there was increasing evidence that the mountain was special.

It really wasn't even five years after I started work here that I realized there actually were development plans for the backcountry part of the mountain.

A development program on the lower flanks of the mountain had come into focus.

They wanted to build a condominium development in that area, and there was such a public outcry among hikers who had spent years loving those trails.

They knew what was there.

They knew how beautiful it was.

One more time.

Taking the pruners to the trail.

What happened ultimately is that controversy led to the Nature Conservancy stepping in.

The development never happened.

As you know, the Blue Ridge Parkway has been really hit hard by Hurricane Helene, and I think at that point, Hugh Morton started growing more as a conservationist.

Follow me.

Started seeing his legacy.

You know, this trail was built in 1943, and some of the scouts who built this trail were from your troop, and that's when he and his family, not that many years later, sold Grandfather Mountains Backcountry as a North Carolina state park.

There you go.

And not long after that, all that research that we'd been doing on Grandfather Mountain led to parts of the Southern Appalachians being designated as a United Nations International Biosphere Reserve, and Grandfather Mountain was the first part of that, the only private biosphere reserve in the world.

- Thank you.

- Sorry it took so long.

- Okay, no problem.

Those years slogging up and down that mountain, they worked out pretty well, I guess.

Today was a very nostalgic day for me.

The trails originally here were built by Boy Scouts.

I was a Boy Scout in my youth, and to be on these trails with a Boy Scout troop, they'll be here throughout their lives, and they'll be showing other kids, other young people, how to keep that tradition alive.

(gentle music) I still live in Grandfather's shadow, and I still hike the mountain, and I'm sure the future holds a time when I will be hiking much slower than I do now, but I don't think I'm gonna stop trying to get up there.

This place, that mountain, has really made the substance of my life.

A lot of years.

I never set out to get anything from Grandfather, but I'll tell you what, I've gotten a lifetime of meaning, stories and gratification out of my relationship with Grandfather.

Grandfather Mountain has provided me with the place that my life has made the most meaning, and I feel extremely lucky to be able to say that, and I also think that that Grandfather Mountain face up there, looking west, is gonna be gazing at that sunset for millions and millions more years, and that says a lot to the people of North Carolina.

I mean, that is the Grandfather Mountain of the entire Appalachians.

We have it, and I think more and more North Carolinians realize how special that is.

(gentle music) ♪