Ramblin' With Dan: Introductory Blog Post
ADG founder Joel Anderson has enjoyed hiking and doing research for books and poster art with his good friend and co-author Daniel S. Pierce for years. After his recent retirement from a career as a university professor, Dan wanted to share his love for outdoor adventure through a series of blog posts. Joel jumped at the chance to offer Dan a regular spot as a guest blogger on the ADG website and social media platforms.
An Intro to Daniel S. Pierce
To kick off Dan's series which will be called "Ramblin' With Dan," ADG hosted an interview with Dan to allow our readers to get to know him better. We hope you enjoy this introductory post and the many other posts soon to come.
ADG: How did your upbringing influence your love for nature?
Dan: I had the good fortune to grow up in the mountains of western North Carolina. The local mountains—with their hiking trails, swimming holes, and sweeping vistas—were our playground growing up. As a result, I developed a deep love for God’s wonderful creations.
I also had the good fortune to find a wife who loves the outdoors even more than I do. We've shared so many incredible adventures over our 42 years of marriage that we've also shared with our nature-loving children over the last 36 years.
ADG: What did you do in your career, and how did that support your outdoor life (or hinder it?)
Dan: I’ve been a teacher for the past 47 years. I started out as a 5th grade teacher, then a high school history teacher/coach (track and volleyball) for eight years. In my mid-thirties I went to the University of Tennessee and earned a Ph.D. in history. I’ve taught for the past 31 years in a university setting, most of that time at the University of North Carolina, Asheville. At UNC Asheville, I served as Chair of the History Department and in an endowed professorship as Distinguished Professor of the Mountain South.
Most of the research I’ve done has focused on the natural environment, especially in the Great Smoky Mountains. And I had to spend a great deal of time outdoors doing “research” (at least that’s what I told my wife I was doing!) I retired in the summer of 2024.
ADG: You are not only a historian and a professor, but you are an author, too. How many books have you written?
Dan: I’ve lived a very blessed life and this is one of the blessings I never would have predicted. As a high school and undergraduate student I was a terrible writer and never imagined that I would write anything anyone would want to read. That changed because I had some wonderful mentors who simplified the writing process for me and gave me the confidence I really could write. I guess I’ve done o.k. as my eighth book was published in 2024.
I was fortunate to choose the establishment of Great Smoky Mountains National Park for my dissertation topic. That dissertation turned into my first book The Great Smokies: From Natural Habitat to National Park (University of Tennessee Press, 2000).
My second book was quite a departure from the first as it was a history of NASCAR’s early years entitled Real NASCAR: White Lightning, Red Clay, and Big Bill France (UNC Press, 2010).
Following that book I did three more books on the Smokies. The first of those is a book that combined my interest in the Smokies and an interest I had developed through the NASCAR research, moonshine. If you know the song “Rocky Top” you’ll know where the title to this book came from, Corn from a Jar: Moonshining in the Great Smoky Mountains (Great Smoky Mountains Association, 2013).
I followed that book up with one of my favorites but least-selling books, a study of a lost community in the Smokies, Hazel creek: The Life and Death of an Iconic Mountain Community (Great Smoky Mountains Association, 2017).
My fourth book on the Smokies was an Anderson Design Group national park coffee table book—Illustrated Guide to Great Smoky Mountains National Park (ADG, 2017)–where I wrote the text and Joel Anderson and ADG supplied the incredible images. I had such a great time with Joel and Nathan Anderson doing research for this book by taking seven fun-filled trips into the Smokies, often accompanied by friends and family.
My sixth book is a study of the history of moonshine in North Carolina, Tar Heel Lightnin’: How Hidden Stills and Fast Cars Made North Carolina the Moonshine Capital of the World (UNC Press, 2019). This was another fun book and even led to some outdoor adventures looking for old still sites.
The next was another national park book collaboration with ADG, Illustrated Guide to Exploring the Grand Circle (ADG, 2021). While the research on this book involved a lot of archival and book searching, it also involved several extended trips to southern Utah and northern Arizona. While I love the verdant green of the Appalachian Mountains, I have come to love the deserts of the Southwest almost as much. I made several trips to this region, including several weeks spent with Joel and his family having some incredible adventures, including a particularly harrowing trip into one of the most iconic and beautiful sites in the world, The Wave. I’ll be writing about this adventure in a subsequent blog post.
My latest book is another departure, a book on the history of a local girls’ camp, The Mountains Rise: A History of Camp Crestridge for Girls (Camp Crestridge Alumnae and Friends, 2024). I have a strong personal history with this book, as I met my wife at that camp.
ADG: Two of your books were published by Anderson Design Group. How did you get connected to them?
Dan: ADG Founder Joel and his wife Patty were good friends (through our church) from the mid-1980s to the early 1990s. We lost track of them as we moved away and as our families grew. That changed in 2014 when I accidentally came across an ADG national parks puzzle which led me to the ADG website.
I ended up inviting Joel to come to UNC Asheville and give a talk on art and the national parks. Over dinner Joel asked if I would be interested in collaborating on a book on the Smokies. I jumped at the opportunity and many great shared hikes and experiences later, Illustrated Guide to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park came into being.
The success of that book, and the great fun we had in producing it, led to another set of great hikes and experiences in southern Utah and northern Arizona and Illustrated Guide to the Grand Circle. Look for accounts of adventures with the ADG folks in coming blog posts.
ADG: Do you have a few favorite ADG posters? Why are they special to you?
Dan: Hard to choose because I love the posters so much and have spent far too much of my royalty money on ADG posters! They’re a major decorating feature in our house and in the houses of my kin. I have the original art for the Palmer Chapel Church in Cataloochee in the Smokies on my living room wall.
That’s a special place in my family’s life, and Joel was kind enough to incorporate silhouette images of my family (when my kids were much younger) in the foreground. I also love Joel’s iconic Alum Cave poster which features two silhouette figures in the foreground.
Both of those figures are me. I also like many of the fly fishing posters as they feature my older brother David as the model. Nathan Anderson, Joel's son, gave David the title “Fishin’ Dave.”
I also love some of the early Nashville posters as my wife grew up there and we lived there early in our marriage for eight years.
And I’m very partial to some of the early Kai Carpenter posters, especially his Redwood National Park Poster.
Recently, I’ve become a big Kenneth Crane fan and got to spend several days hiking with him this past summer in the Smokies.
ADG: What are some of your best and worst memories on the trail?
Dan: Several of these involve ADG folks. My most memorable hike was probably my trip with Joel and Patty into the Wave and our harrowing trip out. There will be an extensive blog post on this hike. I also had an incredible hike on the Panorama Trail in Yosemite with Joel and his sons Nathan, David, and Benji. The views of Yosemite Valley, Half Dome, and Nevada and Vernal Falls are just incredible.
Any hike in Glacier is memorable but an 18-mile hike over Pitamakan Pass gaining over 3000’ in elevation will always be one of my most memorable hikes. Hiking the Quiraing on the Isle of Skye in Scotland was another iconic hike with scenery reminiscent of the Lord of the Rings. And I have so many great memories of hikes into Raven Fork in the Smokies.
I don’t know if I have "bad" memories from any of my trail experiences. I’ve had my fair share of misadventures and some really dangerous experiences. But, since I survived them all, I’ll just call them “learning experiences.” I will be doing lots of “don’t do what I did” kinda stuff in future blogs.
ADG: Why did you decide to start writing this blog series?
Dan: I recently retired after almost 50 years as an educator. Writing is an important part of my life and I was looking around for a project that would be both fulfilling and enjoyable. One of my favorite things is sharing great hikes with people and so doing this blog is just natural to me. I’m really excited about the opportunity to collaborate once again with ADG!
ADG: What are some of your plans for outdoor adventure in 2025?
Dan: I’m going to the springs area of northern Florida in April, and I'm excited about exploring those crystal-clear springs, doing some snorkeling, and hitting the many trails in the area on our e-bikes. I’ll do lots of hiking in western North Carolina through the summer and we’ve got a week-long bike trip in Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Ohio exploring rails-to-trails in those areas and visiting with friends and family. I might be able to squeeze in a trip out west, maybe to Yellowstone, but don’t yet have definite plans and my wife, who’s still working full-time, is not happy when I go off on adventures without her. Fortunately, she retires at the end of 2025 so we’ll hit the road a lot moving forward and get lots of new blog material!
ADG: What can we look forward to in your future posts?
Dan: I’ll start off writing about a dozen or so of my all-time favorite hikes in probably the first three posts, although I think I may devote a whole entry to my Wave hike with Joel and Patty. As I move along, I’ll deal with specific areas where I’ve done a lot of great hikes and do entries like the Best of the Smokies, or New England, or Zion, or Yosemite, or Glacier, or the Pacific Northwest, etc. You get the idea. I’ll also go into other outdoor activities and my adventures biking and fly fishing.
I’m especially excited to see how ADG makes all this look visually and how they incorporate their iconic posters, along with some great photos, into my posts.
The Art Inspired by the Adventures
"Our fans use our art to tell their stories. When they display our prints, they 'Decorate With Adventure'. So I guess you could say we are all about The Art Of Adventure!"
That's Joel Anderson, founder and creative director at Anderson Design Group. Just as Joel, Dan, and their families have had dozens of adventures across America and the world, so many others have found both inspiration for future adventures and special souvenirs to remember past adventures thanks to ADG's travel art and vintage-styled poster art.
Whether you're planning an upcoming trip or looking for something to remember a recent trip by, these art collections will have something for you.
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