This story is excerpted from a workshop conducted in Yancey County in September 2026 with Millie Lewis.

I was born and raised in- born in Crabtree, but I’ve lived in Yancey County my whole life, and to me, Yancey County is paradise. We’ve had some disasters, but they worked themselves out, and with the floods. But I went to Higgins, we always called it Higgins, to church. It was a Seventh Day Advantage Church, and they had a van, I was just young, and they had a van and they would come around and pick us up, and for us kids that was just wonderful, ’cause they had a playground up there at the church and, and then they had a big rock house up on the left side of the hill as you go up, then on the right side was the church and the playground and all that, and Yancey County to me is a very special place, especially Little Creek, Ball Mountain.