(gentle music) - Hello everyone, I'm David Crabtree.

I'm so happy to be joined today by Elizabeth Hudson, the editor-in-chief for Our State Magazine.

This has been a part of your lives and your family's lives since 1933.

- That's right.

- And here we are today with this particular issue called "Mountain Strong."

It's the October issue.

And Elizabeth, a quote from you that's very important.

"When the storm hit, the mountains bent, but they did not break.

What stayed strong was the spirit of the people who live here."

This issue is our love letter back to them.

- Right.

- A love letter about their resilience and what it meant to all of us.

- That's right, that's right.

- How did all of this come about?

- Well, this is our annual mountain issue.

Every year in October, we do an issue that is devoted to the mountains.

And a lot of things people don't know is we work a year in advance.

So last year, we would have been photographing for what would have been our big mountain issue like we do every year.

And right when the hurricane hit, obviously we could not get photography, couldn't get writers to the area.

I mean, none of that.

And we thought, what are we gonna do?

You know, what are we gonna do?

How are we gonna make a mountain issue for this year knowing that we work a year in advance because we shoot seasonal photography?

And I mean, it was awful.

I mean, we're in the office thinking about what is happening and what's going on.

We have no contact with our friends and neighbors that we've known, tourism people, and like I say, writers and photographers that are out that way.

And it was just, it was horrifying.

We weren't sure how we were gonna carry through with a mountain issue.

We didn't know if we needed to just reinvent and kind of come up with something else for this year.

Couple of weeks into the storm and the recovery, we got a text from one of our regular writers.

His name's Brad Campbell.

He's amazing.

He sends a text of a rainbow that had arced over a house that he was working on.

He was up on top of a roof with his neighbor, and here's this rainbow.

And he, for one thing, thought to send us a text in the middle of this, and it was just, I mean, you can imagine.

We're sitting in the office.

All of us are just overcome with emotion.

And we thought, okay, this might be the way forward for this mountain issue this year, is to really use that image of that rainbow and think about the stories that fit strength and hope and recovery.

And so we really worked to build an entire issue.

In fact, it's interesting.

This is the largest issue in the history of our state magazine.

93 years of publishing.

This is the largest one we've ever done.

And we did not focus on a single image of destruction.

We figure it was enough of that.

So our photography shows the optimism and the movement forward and the recovery.

And I think it's beautiful.

- I was going to ask you about what you just mentioned, which has become known as the Our State Way.

- Yeah.

(laughs) - That you don't focus on the negative.

- Right.

- You said you never published a story about COVID.

- Right.

- My understanding.

- Never showed a mask.

- Never showed a mask.

- Right.

- And yet when you knew of the destruction that had happened, there had to have been some tension, excuse me, about how do we properly tell the story and represent what is happening and what we know will happen because of the resilience of North Carolinians.

- Right.

Well, we think about our mission constantly, which is reflected right in our tagline, celebrating North Carolina.

And everything we do is intended to be a positive portrayal of life in this state that instills, I think, a sense of pride, a sense of gratitude, that sense of hope.

So I want to be sure that all of our stories really do reflect that.

When we had that kind of through line for this issue, I mean, the stories just started coming.

They just started coming.

We heard about in Swannanoa, one of our pieces is about a guy who, he's from Holland, and he thought, "I'll get somebody in Holland "to donate some tulips."

He thinks he's gonna get a handful of tulip bulbs.

He gets 10,000 tulip bulbs that they plant in a park in Swannanoa so that when spring came, all of those tulips were blooming.

And we found the story of the woman, Heather Malloy, who has a dance theater troupe, and she wrote a dance about the storm, and she used all these donated, discarded water bottles, 15,000 of them, to become the backdrop for the dance that she did.

I mean, those stories that just started coming in, Josh Copas in Marshall, you know, Marshall got 27 feet of water.

It's amazing.

I mean, you can't even fathom that.

And his story of how he is really helping Marshall recover, I mean, the stories were just remarkable, but what struck us were, they were these small things that people did, just like Brad, who was on the roof, helping his neighbor and sees a rainbow.

One of the stories we heard about was in Ashe County, and it's a guy who's a beekeeper.

He's, I mean, he has bees, and he said, "You know, I don't know how to build a house.

I don't know how to do construction.

I can't help like that, but I can build a beehive."

So these small things, he ended up building 400 beehives for people who had lost all of their beehives.

Little things like that, that help carry you forward, that help get you through.

And so that really was what this issue became, were these stories of the small things that people can do that become huge things.

- And again, that's part of the Our State way of telling stories.

You may not have a five-page spread on something, or you may, but you may have multiple stories told on three quarters of a page, or a page and a half.

Something that is readable, quickly, you can set it aside, come back, pick up another new story is there, and you leave it saying, "Gosh, I didn't know that."

- Right, right.

- So when you went through all of this, you said this was the largest, how many pages have we got here?

- Oh, it is 276 pages.

- 276 pages, okay.

Full, so many different stories.

How tough was it when you had to leave out a story?

- To narrow down?

- Yes.

- Exactly.

That's hard, it's hard.

- Editing is tough.

- Yes, it is, it is hard.

And even with, I always think about, we make 12 issues a year, once a month, and there's so much just in the state every month that I think, "Oh, if we could just get that in, "or get that in."

And of course, we try to be geographically balanced.

And even with this issue, the mountain issue every year, even though it is a mountain issue, we look for the deeper themes within whatever that issue is.

And so, for instance, in past years, our mountain issues have been devoted to, one year we just focused on the Blue Ridge Parkway, and all the stories, or these tentacles around the Blue Ridge Parkway, or one year we just focused on the Linville Gorge, and all the stories related to that.

And so we always look for what is that deeper, the deeper story we can find, so that it's not just a generic mountain issue, that there is some sort of metaphor, or theme, or through line.

And with this one, every story needed to fulfill that idea of mountain strength, and endurance, and resilience.

And yeah, we left a lot out.

- Mountain strength, endurance.

In some ways, we think of those words as predictable.

But again, these unpredictable stories, the story about the bulbs, again, that a person would think to do that, or that beehives are important to someone, or that we could use the refuge of 15,000 water bottles, as part of an artistic display around dance.

- One of our stories, which I love, is about an artist in Old Fort, which again, was another one of those just small towns that really got a lot of damage.

And the profile of the artist, she found just, she would gather up the storm debris, the broken glass from windows, all of that.

She gathered up all this storm debris.

And from the debris, she transformed all of that brokenness into these tiny little sculptures of bluebirds.

What a symbol of happiness and hope.

And she hid them in places around Old Fort, so that if you happen to be walking or hiking, or just going about your day, you might discover one.

And can you imagine what that would do to you if you just find this little sculpture of a bluebird?

Again, that's what we chose to focus on, is that unbelievable human spirit that looks for the rainbows in situations that are heartbreaking.

- In part of that philosophy for Our State, it's not that you're going to write about, specifically, adversity brings about wonderful things at times.

But you do show what the adversity brings about.

- Absolutely.

- Had it not been for Helene, these stories would not have happened.

- Exactly.

- Life would have gone on.

Fall would have been a beautiful issue.

Mountain issue would have looked great.

But you learned so much through this.

What did you learn about yourself?

- You know, I mean, I do think that is one of the things that I love about our state, is it, and I'm a lifelong North Carolinian, you know, born and raised here.

And I think this magazine, I hope, that it makes people feel this deeper level of appreciation for the place where they live.

You know, and I think it's one thing to have a beautiful magazine that shows, you know, red maples and the beautiful fall photography.

You know, we're known for our stunning photography, and that's wonderful, and I love that.

But it is those stories that, like you say, you didn't know about, that cause you to have a greater appreciation of a place where you call home.

And I mean, I feel that sense every month with every issue, that there's just so much to discover in this state, in those little small ways, like we said about the beekeeper.

One of our stories in here that I also love is, Jeremy Jones is a regular writer for us.

He's a professor at Western Carolina.

He essentially lost his house.

His entire home was flooded.

And he writes a beautiful essay about seeing a hellbender, you know, the salamander, the endangered salamanders that are there.

And he sees one and he picks it up.

He returns it to the water, you know, and his story is really just this metaphor of how we continue on.

And it is so beautiful.

I mean, it just, I hope the magazine changes how people see place and where they live.

- You're looking in this issue of Our State at a year later.

- Right.

- Might Our State revisit this in three years, in five years, 10 years?

- Maybe, you know, I wanna see how the recovery goes, what happens.

You know, one of the other things that I love about Our State is it is, as we say, evergreen.

You know, it's the kind of magazine that you can leave on a coffee table and come back to years later and still feel that the stories are relevant in whatever moment you're reading them.

You know, we talked about COVID.

That was one of the reasons we didn't wanna show masks or anything during that time, because when you come back to pick up an issue five years later, I don't want that to be the thing you remember.

And just like with this issue, when you come back to this particular issue, maybe next year or five years from now, what you're gonna read and see is beauty, which is amazing.

I mean, that's what endures.

- You came to Our State magazine in 1997.

- I did.

- Answering the phone.

- Right, I did.

- What a journey, 28 years ago, to becoming editor-in-chief, and that happened when?

- In 2009, became editor-in-chief.

You're right, I was hired in 1997 to answer the telephones in the circulation department.

We didn't even have email then.

It was if anybody called, they talked to me, which I loved, that was just great.

And in fact, I would listen to people who would call and say, "You really should do a story about," you know, whatever, and I would write that down and talk to the editor at the time, and we kind of built stories based on that.

And in 2009, I became editor-in-chief, and it's just, it's amazing.

It is the greatest job I could have ever dreamed of for myself or really for anybody.

I think it's the perfect job.

- Well, I understand that feeling, because I feel the same way about the work that I do.

So I'm curious of how, in those ensuing 16 years as editor-in-chief, how these stories have shaped Elizabeth Hudson.

- Oh, my.

- I mean, you write almost every month.

I mean, I look forward to reading your opening stories that are often about your childhood or someone in your family.

You write about the smells of your grandmother's house or the candy that was in the cut glass bowl that may have been there, those little things that we don't stop and think about until someone points them out to us.

- Right.

Yeah, well, you know, I mean, I love magazines.

I subscribe to a lot of magazines myself.

And, you know, one of the things when I became editor-in-chief that I realized I wanted to do was that I didn't want to write about what was in this issue.

You know, you can see in a lot of editors' notes in the front of a magazine, they say, "And, you know, we did this story, "and on page 25, you'll read blah, blah."

And I knew that did not sound like me.

I didn't think that would be the direction I wanted to go.

And so my very first editor's column was about sitting at my grandmother's house in Asheboro, where I grew up, and the sky, the ceiling of her porch was painted blue because we're in the South, and that's what you do.

You know, it keeps wasps from building, and I knew all that.

And so I just kind of, I was staring out the window thinking, "What am I gonna write for an editor's note?"

And the sky happened to be that same color of blue that day that I remembered my grandmother's porch ceiling was.

And so I just started writing that, and that kind of became the guide for how I wanted to write all of my editor's notes was really, it was as if I was just sitting with a reader, sort of talking about my life and what my life is like living in North Carolina.

And so I've done that now for 16 years.

I just kind of mine my own childhood experiences, and hopefully people will like to read that.

- Do you ever suffer through the tyranny of the blank page?

- Every month, every month.

- How do you get beyond that?

- You just keep sitting there.

You just keep sitting there and staring, and just you keep working through it.

You know, I take a lot of walks where I'll cook something.

You know, you do something that gets your brain working in a different direction.

But you know, I'm an only child, and I just, I have a lot of really great memories of growing up.

I've been everywhere in North Carolina now.

I've had the good fortune of being in all 100 counties many, many, many times.

And so, you know, there's just so much to write about that I think is universal emotion.

You know, what I'm really trying to do, not just in my columns, but you know, what I and my entire staff were trying to create an emotion.

The greatest thing is if you can pick up this magazine and you can say, "I felt something."

So that's what I hope to do with anything that I write or with anything that you read.

You wanna feel that there's an emotion to it, that there's a heartbeat.

- Wow.

I wanna circle back to something in a moment, but before I do, I do wanna mention our continued partnership with the new season of "The Best of Our State."

That's now airing on PBS North Carolina.

What have you heard?

Tell me how you're enjoying working on that again.

- Oh, it's so much fun.

- And what you're hearing from folks.

- Yeah, it's, well, you know, people always ask whenever I'm out and about, you know, what is that connection?

What is the affiliation?

People recognize that the two go hand in hand.

We've been so proud of our partnership with PBSNC, excited that the show is back.

We're doing all these new episodes and they're just extraordinary.

I mean, it really is amazing to see stories that were in the pages come to life, you know, and to hear the voices and see how they look and how they translate on the screen.

It's just a dimensional experience.

You know, you've got the magazine, which is great, and it's two dimensional.

TV brings it into a whole other third dimension and I love that.

I'm so proud that we get to do it.

- And people hear your voice.

- Yeah.

- And they see you.

It makes a difference.

I mean, I know people hear your voice now in your very successful podcast, but even in the pre-podcast days, you know, we read someone's words and we hear a voice in our mind until we actually hear that voice.

- Right.

- And then now-- - Maybe that's good, I don't know.

- Oh, I think it's very welcoming and very comforting, quite honestly.

But now when we read your work, that's what we hear.

- Right, right.

- And so we know that that is there.

- Yeah.

- For people who have yet to spend time with this issue, and it does require an investment of time, right?

- It's hefty.

- What advice do you have for them of how they process this highly emotional issue?

- Well, you can take your time with it, for one thing, but you know, I think this issue functions also as a guide.

You know, we are hoping people will realize that the mountains are there welcoming us back, that these communities in Asheville and Blowing Rock and Burnsville and Bryson City, you know, they want us to come.

They need tourism dollars.

They need people to come and eat in the restaurants and spend the night and do the things that help these businesses get back on their feet.

And so one of the things we really wanted to focus on was to show that the roads are open, the places are open.

One of the things I love that we did in this issue is we created a little section called Welcome Back, you know, with 21 of these quintessential mountain experiences that if you have not done it for a while, go to Tweetsie Railroad.

I mean, you don't have to be five years old to do that, or go to the Pisgah Inn and order the chicken pot pie and look at that beautiful view.

But, you know, these places, drive the parkway, do the things that maybe you haven't done in a while, that you think this is how to have the quintessential mountain experience in the fall in North Carolina.

There may be no more beautiful place to be than Western North Carolina during this time.

And while our stories are, I think, inspirational and beautiful, they also, I hope, will encourage people to say, you know what, let's get in the car, let's take a trip.

- Again, Our State, the October issue, Celebrating North Carolina, Mountain Strong, Stories of Recovery and Renewal in the Heart of Western North Carolina.

Our State magazine is a treasure.

This issue itself is a treasure chest, and we thank you for your commitment to it.

And to the editor-in-chief, our friend Elizabeth Hudson, thank you for your time and your heart in doing this.

- Thank you.

(gentle music)