SOURCE: Marshall, Ian. “Mary Noailles Murfree: Ecofeminist of the Great Smoky Mountains.” In Story Line: Exploring the Literature of the Appalachian Trail, pp. 51-69. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1998.

In the following essay, Marshall posits the theory that Murfree was an “ecofeminist”—a writer whose women characters had a special relationship with nature and whose male characters were often anti-nature.

At Mollies Ridge Shelter just a few miles into the Great Smoky Mountains. I'm talking with a young man recently graduated from the University of North Carolina, who's hiking with his father. They've been out for about three weeks, heading south from Damascus, Virginia. I'm curious about their father-and-son adventure, and I suppose I'm also projecting about eighteen years into the future and thinking I'd like to do a hike like this with my son someday. I learn that the parents are divorced, but the guy from UNC...