Mountain Bound and the Life I Found Book

Tales from Tug Fork | Spring Creek, North Carolina Paperback – January 15, 2024

From the introduction by Mitchell Davis

Tom Hare is one of the most unique, energetic and interesting people I have met in my life. We are very excited to be working with him to help capture his history of the farm and this road we live on here outside of Spring Creek, NC. We bought the farm from Tom and his former partner Judie Hansen in 2019. Judie had moved away several years before and the farm had been sitting for years sinking back into the temperate rain forest jungle. The day we came to look at the farm for the first time in May of 2019, we pulled into what is now the barnyard and this wild man with no shirt on, a long white beard and hair and a mischievous look in his eye came roaring up the road on a four wheeler offering to drive people to the top of the mountain. He then tells us that this is his farm and he lives up the road. My initial instinct was: “this guy has been scaring people off for years…I can definitely get along with this guy".

And so we do get along, and life is that much more interesting out here with him up the road. Tom is a world class raconteur, dealmaker, artist and dreamer. Tom adds color and character to our old mountain road and has stories and experiences to share with us that are incredibly valuable.

We did not take Tom up his offer for the four wheeler ride, but we did ask if we could come back the next day and hike to the top of the mountain. We came back, did the hike with our three dogs Freddy, Lucy and Bessie and somewhere on the ridgeline we sat down to take a break. As our dogs panted and we drank water in the middle of the forest, a small box turtle made its way toward us on the trail. We looked around at the trees, the turtle plodding toward us and then each other. Right then and there we said - "this is it". We are so proud and happy to be able to keep this place the way it is. To enjoy these mountains and the old buildings that have been part of this property for decades. And a big part of that is Tom's dedication to things old and interesting. He kept all these buildings rather than tear them down and we can now preserve them, enhance them and keep them alive.

Tom lives about a quarter mile up the road from us, in a chestnut cabin he renovated himself. The cabin is full of interesting and one of kind antiques that give is a style that is hard to describe. Often visitors to our farm will set aside part of an afternoon to get a tour and see all the oddities and hear stories about the family that built the cabin in the early 20th century. Some of the things you can see there are written about in the following pages and some are not, but suffice to say the entire place is a working art and museum project and we are lucky to be able to visit and see Tom having fun.

This book is an effort to capture some of those stories and ensure Tom's legacy lives on into the future.