Foxfire at 40

MOUNTAIN CITY - Foxfire refers to an odd blue-green glow sometimes glimpsed in forests, near the ground, on dark nights-a glow given off by a bioluminescent lichen that grows on decaying logs. It is common in the mountains of Rabun County and is the name chosen for a unique educational program centered in the northeast corner of Georgia which just celebrated its 40th anniversary.

The name was chosen in 1966 by a group of Rabun Gap-Nacoochee School students who were about to begin the Foxfire magazine project and had been charged with the task of coming up with a name for the venture.

And, the rest, as they say, is history.

Foxfire (The Foxfire Fund, Inc.) is a not-for-profit, educational and literary organization based that was the brainchild of an English teacher at the school, Eliot Wigington, and seeks to preserve the history and culture of the region by sending students into the hills and hollows of Rabun County to interview oldtimers about the way they live and the way things were when they were growing up.These interviews are preserved in book and magazine form as well as audio and video recordings.

Twelve books in the Foxfire series have been published over the past 40 years and a 40th anniversary book is off the press. Five "topic" books - highlighting such things as food, cookery, toys, etc. - have also been published, according to Robert Murray, curator of the Foxfire Museum.

According to the Foxfire Web site, Foxfire's learner-centered, community-based educational approach is advocated through both a regional demonstration site (The Foxfire Museum) grounded in the Southern Appalachian culture that gave rise to Foxfire, and a national program of teacher training and support (the Foxfire Approach to Teaching and Learning) that promotes a sense of place and appreciation of local people, community, and culture as essential educational tools.

Murray says it has been embraced by groups in 37 states and a number of foreign counties.

"The Foxfire Core Practices, reflecting a learner-centered, community-based expression of the educational experience, hold great promise for improving instruction in American classrooms (and) Foxfire is committed to the preservation of the original model of learner-centered, community-based education grounded in the Southern Appalachian culture that gave rise to Foxfire," according to posting on the Web site. (For a detail explanation of the Foxfire Core Practices, click on the link below.)

Murray, during a Sunday appearance on Northeast Georgia This Week on WDUN NEWS TALK 550 (like AccessNorthGa.com a part of Jacobs Media Corp.), said part of the original goal of the program was to break down the stereotypical images many in the country have of people of Appalachia as "backwoods hicks." He says, to a degree, there has been progress, but that image still dwells with many.

Another, and perhaps more successful goal, was to connect young people in Rabun County with their grandparents and people of their grandparents' generation.

"Today in America, only one in ten young (are) raised around a grandparent," he said. "In 1900, nine out of ten young people had regular access to their grandparents."

Closing this generational gap has been a goal of Foxfire. Where a grandparent was not readily available, those youngsters were put in touch with someone of that generation.

Murray says many times the students will go back again and again to get more information for their interview, developing a real bond with their subjects.

Those first students, 40 years ago, began with those who had lived through the Great Depression and World War 11 - and even World War 1. Now, according to Murray, Foxfire students are focusing on those to whom the Korean War was a defining moment in their lives.

He says that in addition to the twelve books, the 158th edition of the Foxfire magazine has just been published.Sales from these publications have been enough to help setup a two million dollar endowment and fund $850,000 in college scholarships for Foxfire students.

The Foxfire Museum and Heritage Center, located on 110 acres in Mountain City, "focuses on Appalachian life and is rooted in the work that hundreds of high school students, in The Foxfire Magazine classes, have put into documenting their local history," according to the Web site.

Murray said it offers an idea of what life was like for the mountaineers who settled the Rabun County area over 150 years ago and features 21 historic log cabins and replicas of traditional log construction designs, with some of the authentic structures dating back to the early 1800s.

"We have a chapel, blacksmith shop, mule barn, wagon shed, single-room home, gristmill, smokehouse, and more," he said," an many of them are furnished."The cabins also contain artifacts and crafts of early Appalachian life, including toys, wagons, cabin building tools, blacksmithing instruments, woodworking tools, handmade items, household items, logging tools, shoemaking equipment, animal trapping and hunting equipment, and farm and agricultural equipment."

There is also a wagon used in the Trail of Tears - the forced Cherokee migration from these mountains to Oklahoma.

The complex is open Monday-Saturday, 8:30 a.m.-4:30 p.m. The admission is $5 for adults; children 10 and under get in free, and admission includes a free self-guided tour booklet for each family or group.

Murray says the future "so far looks bright" for Foxfire. He says there probably won't be any more in the Foxfire book series, however, more "topic" books are possible and the magazine will continue to be published three times a year - letting the world know what it was like to live a hardscrabble life in the Appalachian foothills and trying to dispel the notion of the backward hillbilly .