On a winding dirt road near the top of the watershed, you stand above a tree-thick basin, and the slight man in clean mended overalls turns his blue eyes toward you as he cocks his head: "Hear that racket down there? That's your French Broad. Raises right under the Devil's Courthouse. Listen!" He listens. You listen together and hear the distant roar of "your" river. The man is slight, but he's tough as a laurel burl. You go over miles of the basin with him and he remembers.
Source: The French Broad, Wilma Dykeman (1955) at 5.
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