Prestigious DNCR archival inclusion

and DNCR exclusion in the

State of North Carolina

Upon returning from Pilot Mountain State Park in March of 2023 I received a phone call from the office. As an author/journalist, I had innocently given my calling card and a copy of the cover of the book, “Faces of Pilot Mountain,” to a park ranger to give to Superintendent Jason Anthony.  I first met Anthony about five minutes after taking the cover photo on January 1, 2023 on the Jasmine Trail and wanted to share the approved for publication cover with him.   It was an exciting development for my first book as an author heading toward a release date of May 18, 2023.

I was told on the phone to never give a “calling card” to anyone on NC State Park property ever again. That included park rangers and the public. Below is the follow-up letter to the phone call with the specific rules that had been violated. This was the first and only warning I was told over the phone.  There would be serious consequences if I ever did this again as that would be operating a business on NC Park Service public land. I was eleven years into research on Pilot Mountain and was unaware of any of the park rules for authors. I had been working closely with Public Information Officer, Katee Hall, at the home office in Raleigh. Up until this point the cooperation with the NC Park Service had been amazing, but that changed on March 23, 2023. This warning was so strong I was given the impression that an 8x10 photograph had been posted of me on the bulletin board in the park office, but that was never stated.

I want to be clear that the issues over documenting the entire history of Pilot Mountain to inform the public is not with the park rangers onsite. They are good hard working folks trained in life saving skills that I trust. It is the North Carolina Division of Natural and Cultural Resources that has determined that an author writing about a mountain should be treated the same as someone selling aluminum siding to you on the grounds of a State Park.

When I went to the mountain with WXII-TV reporter, Michelle Kennedy, I asked if she had paid the $45 for a permit to film the past two days for her report?

“No, we don’t have to do that because we are press and as a courtesy I just give Superintendent Jason Anthony a call in the morning that I’ll be on the mountain,” Kennedy told me.

https://www.wxii12.com/article/pilot-mountain-spring-pyramid-north-carolina-equinox/64244466

Then on July 7, 2025 at 11:11 A.M. we had another summer solstice ceremony with Yona FrenchHawk and a gathering of friends on the spur of the moment. This was to reinforce the ceremony on the solstice that was held on Friday on June 20, 2025. The response of the turkey buzzards over our heads was astounding. At first three flew right over our head, then one came by and that was followed by nine. Yona sang, played his drum while speaking to us and the mountain.

On July 4, 5 & 6, 2025 I gave out one hundred and fifty calling cards for people to contact me with the wonderful family stories they told me at the park. One person wrote their story down and gave it to me and two more sent images. Because I was not able to record the oral history stories at Pilot Mountain State Park, under the rules for the permit, those were lost. It was just under five hundred miles travel for the three days and coming home was in the worst rainstorm and flooding in Orange County, North Carolina on July 6, 2025. Since the next book will also be donated to the Library of Congress and the Government & Heritage library for future researchers it really is a shame those fantastic stories about the mountain were lost because of administrative rules for doing research for publication on Pilot Mountain. It was a whole lot of fun for the author and many children appreciated my magic trick with the profile of the mountain and then on the flip side the shadow of the mountain. The excitement in their eyes made the whole experience worth the treacherous driving.

Does Pilot Mountain State Park work under NC Park Service rules, National Park Service rules or both?