Outdoor essay collection edited by Greg Hlavaty published in May

Greg Hlavaty, Lecturer in English, served as Editor of "NOC Stories: Changing Lives at the Nantahala Outdoor Center Since 1972."

Greg Hlavaty, lecturer in English, served as editor of “NOC Stories: Changing Lives at the Nantahala Outdoor Center Since 1972,” which was published this month by Menasha Ridge Press. The work is a collection of outdoor adventure stories and paddlesports history. 

According to Menasha Ridge Press:

If you asked current culture-makers and business owners in the whitewater industry about their formative years, you’d find many were previous staff members, clinic participants, and visitors at the NOC. You’d likely also hear that the NOC was instrumental in refining their skillset and in inspiring them to become pioneers in their field….These people are the stories that have become the NOC’s legacy, and this book is an attempt to collect and make sense of them.”

In addition to his role as editor, Hlavaty contributed two essays: “On the Eddy Line,” a philosophical consideration of the outdoor lifestyle, and “A Quiet Fighter,” which describes a harrowing trip with his wife on the Chattooga River. 

From “A Quiet Fighter”:

The current whisked her downstream and again she swam hard. Just upstream of the hydraulic, she grabbed the rock, and even as her body whipped in the current, she held on and slowly dragged herself up the wall. She rolled onto the flat top of the rock and lay there, face turned to sky, her body a living shape rising and falling against a jagged green tree-line.

The book is available for purchase here.