Guest Columnists

Fred First lives in Floyd County, Virginia. He is a blogger, photographer, columnist, radio essayist and author of "Slow Road Home" and “What We Hold in Our Hands.”

Or so Jane Hicks’ home once seemed to be. The award-winning poet and quilter lives in Blountville, Tenn., from where she coined the term “cosmic possum.”

Phil Francis’ career with the National Park Service spans 34 years and includes assignments at Shenandoah, Yosemite and Great Smoky Mountains national parks and the Southwest Regional Office in Santa Fe, N.M...

Rick Van Noy is the author of “A Natural Sense of Wonder: Connecting Kids With Nature Through the Seasons,” and a professor of English at Radford and University in Virginia.

Allen de Hart, retired from Louisburg College, is the author of the definitive hiking guidebooks for Virginia, North Carolina and West Virginia.