Some days, the world just sparkles. Everything comes together, like a well planned, well designed movie script. It feels at once incredulous and marvelous.

There's the smells and the sounds of a beautiful scene outdoors, held suspended for a moment in some wonderful place in time ... you can imagine freshly mowed grass, fermenting hay, seething water across rocks.

As humans we know and can fathom spectacular, sublime beauty of a place in real time, in the grandest spacial sense. Our vision is broad as we soak it all in, all senses flaring. A captive, magical impression, to be held in moments of the bliss of nature.

The mountains do that to us the most, so much so that it's an indurate American way that our secluded uplands were preserved – so we could all experience that lush air of waterfall mist, the dreamy soothing coolness of deep ravine water, rushing on. Trees lean in, blessing the moment for us. All is at peace. Or we certainly wish and hope it to be.

This essay is about North Carolina, though looking at only small part of it. Starting it now, I am at once interested in exploring what being in North Carolina means, to me anyway, what it feels like and what it has meant. It's a lot, since it's been a lot.

I know, for example, that the North Carolina coast has two identities that often seem to criss-cross, literally, geographically back and forth. The Outer Banks, for example, seem lonely and ghost-like (the storm-brave Cape Hatteras and Okracoke Island and their memorable beacons with seafaring paint jobs) but also hectic coastal strips like Nags Head and Morehead. The middle, well, it has its stark contrasts too, the rustic yokels of Andy Griffith and the technological sophistication and urbane Research Triangle, Durham and the state capital Raleigh. North Carolina certainly is no one-course meal.

Perhaps these simply are fitting contrasts for a state where North meets South perhaps the best of any, and the dreadfully crowded interstate highways, I-95 and I-77, that now gratefully bind these two great societies into one. Today we cross into and over with barely a thought.

Now the very western part, this wedge squeezed in-between Tennessee and Georgia, is neither. There's the Biltmore touristy side of Asheville, a splendid mountain town and fancy-pants winery.

These are the "people" stories.

Mostly, western North Carolina leaves us at peace, to drift undisturbed and quiet, to relish in the natural mysteries of the great mountain places of Western North Carolina and its spiritual, magical Nantahala National Forest. This is a deep, dark world the Cherokee Indians called "Land of the Midday Sun" for, at most other times, shadows pervade ... and create great hiding places.

I drove up toward Murphy, N.C. in the Spring 2001. Soon I found a beautiful group of cabins not far from the main road through, U.S. 74. There was a wonderful stream running nearby; just down the road, a really great supermarket. I was set.

Then I remembered, Murphy, N.C. .... Murphy, Murphy ... that was near where Eric Robert Rudolf was from – and in the shadow of the mountains where he hid – from federal law enforcement people searching for him. Remember the Centennial Park bombing during the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta?

Likely Eric, far to the right of Andy Griffith intellectually and spiritually, was the scumbag police say set off the bomb. One of our own homespun Homeland Terrorists, a bomber dropping a knapsack full of explosives and lethal nails, murderer of one and injuring 100 people. Somehow he thought we'd make a connection between his anti-abortion message and this senseless violent act. It was also though he was behind a bombing of an abortion clinic more than 200 miles southwest in Birmingham, Alabama, also lethal, killing a staff member.

But what happened to Eric Robert Rudolf? The trail led up the road to Andrews, where one AP story would say:

Town divided over Eric Rudolph -- Some in Andrews Say They Would Not Turn the Bombing Suspect in:

To some residents of this close-knit mountain community, Alabama abortion clinic bombing suspect Eric Rudolph is an outlaw. To others, he's the protagonist of a long-running passion play, a rugged survivalist caught in a David-vs.-Goliath struggle with more than 200 heavily armed federal agents ... After giving a hint of his whereabouts over the weekend, suspected bomber Eric Robert Rudolph has vanished once again, staying a step ahead of an army of federal agents who think he is holed up in the thickets of Nantahala National Forest (The News Observer, July 16, 19, 1998).

Weird huh? Agents scoured these mysterious mountains looking for the freakish disappearing bomber, fresh from the Osama bin Laden school of evading justice in far-off mountain hideaways. Apparently the Taliban – er, anti-U.S. government sympathizers helped hide him away up in the hinterland, amazingly. But wait – the story gets even more freakish!

Bombing Suspect's Brother Cuts Hand Off With Saw (CHARLESTON, South Carolina):

Daniel Rudolph, the brother of Birmingham clinic bombing suspect Eric Robert Rudolph, purposely cut off one of his hands with an electric saw Sunday, the FBI says. Sources at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms told CNN that Daniel Rudolph videotaped the amputation, stating that on the tape that the amputation was being done to "send a message to the FBI and the media" (U.S. News, March 9, 1998).

Truly bizarre. Meanwhile then-Attorney General Janet Reno announced a $1,000,000 reward for Rudolf, while hundreds of FBI agents hunt in holes and caves across his mountain haunts where, as a boy, he'd been know to disappear for weeks.

Incredibly, local clergy were divided on whether to help the government find this suspected murderer, or support those aiding him. A sign at the local bar and grill advertised sardonically, "Rudolf Eats Here." T-shirts were being sold with the words, "Run, Rudolf, Run." Toward the end of that summer, a local volunteer posse, led by a charismatic former Green Beret colonel "Bo" Gritz, headed into the Nantahala woods Saturday on a self-styled mission to help Eric Rudolph turn himself in to federal authorities, asking that the "local sheriff" handle any arrest.

What an adventure! At once we think this really is the scene of some kooky, nauseating apocalyptic Hollywood film, set in Mazar e-Sharif, Afghanistan.

But it's not. It's an American tale.

September 11th would happen just three years later.

UPDATE, 5/31/03 -- Eric Rudolf May Have Been Caught -- See Details Below!

One thing was normal in the Nantahala that sordid spring in 1998 -- the Real World. Spring turned to summer, then to fall and then winter. Then things seem to return to normal for the quiet rural mountain region. The following Spring 1999, break-ins in far-flung mountain homes suggest a phantom killer still lurks. But by the end of that year, the departing FBI Director Louis Freeh announces he thinks Rudolf is lying dead in a mountain cave.

In March 2002, after a nearly four-year, more than $30 million manhunt, the FBI, quite busy with terrorists of the international sort, cut back its search for Eric Robert Rudolph. Though already scaled back considerably, after September 11th the Southeast Bomb Task Force still had a dozen or so agents operating out of an annex to the FBI field office in Atlanta and an agent working full-time in Andrews. Now, even that presence was cut back.

The mountains were at peace, once again. Or were they? They certainly seemed so to me. On my brief passage through, there was only the quiet of the water and the wind in the trees, an un-people whisper speaking a hushed language I didn't know.

What can the faithful hope for when evil steals away to their warrens of hate?

It was not quite midday when I moved through the Nantahala filled with wonder, completely unaware of what had transpired here just a few years ago. I stopped to gaze across its soothing waters under soft, sweet light somehow descending through ... on my way to reservation lands of the Cherokee.

Somehow, I'd like to think Earth can swallow down, take back its serpents, its now useless gargoyles. It spares us who see riches of faith in the lands of the world we've been given by a good God, who can cleanse as with rich mountain waters.

Likely, a half a world away we're told, in a frightening up sweep of desiccated mountains, in the "Pushtunistan," other very evil secrets lurk. Yet from here, the Indus too and its watershed waters flow away, purifying. Faith, like hope, has no religion. As a whole, humans long for goodness. The Earth responds, knowingly.

Of course that's being wishful. But hey, I've seen the Pieter Bruegel and Heronymous Bosch paintings, some right up close. I've watched Gregory Peck's Omen, Jack Nicholson's Shining. Through it all, the blessed light of Heaven's day wins, we pray ... and believe.

The warm, rich, noonday sun would eventually reach us. In a much earlier time, the Indians foretold its coming, in the Nantahala.

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Click the Images Below To Visit

Interesting Web Sites Featuring the

Mountains of North Carolina.

UPDATE, 5/31/03 -- Eric Rudolf May Have Been Caught

Update: Associated Press reports that a Justice Department official has confirmed that Eric Rudolph, man charged in the 1996 Olympic Park bombing in Atlanta, has been arrested in North Carolina. More Details to Come
CHARLOTTE, N.C. (May 31) - Sheriff's deputies arrested a man in the western North Carolina mountains early Saturday believed to be Eric Rudolph, the fugitive charged with the 1996 Olympic Park bombing and in bomb attacks at a gay nightclub and an abortion clinic, the FBI said.

The man was digging in a trash bin in the small town of Murphy when he was stopped at about 4:30 a.m., said Special Agent John Iannarelli in Washington. He said the man appeared to be homeless, but the deputies believe he is Rudolph.

Authorities were doing fingerprint analysis on the man Saturday morning to determine if his prints matched Rudolph's, and they expected to have the results by afternoon, Iannarelli said.

A law enforcement source in North Carolina who has been tracking Rudolph for years said he had seen the man who was suspect arrested Saturday morning and he believes he is Rudolph.

``There's a number of things that have to be done ... confirmation of fingerprints, other things. We have a lot of work to do,'' the source said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Rudolph, a 36-year-old Army veteran and experienced outdoorsman, hasn't been seen since July 1998 after he allegedly stole supplies from a health store owner in North Carolina. His truck had been spotted there early that year.

Authorities spent years searching the rural mountains and caves of North Carolina for any trace of Rudolph. They ran across some camping sites believed to be his and found cartons of oatmeal and raisins, jars of peanuts and vitamins, and cans of tuna they said were the same brands Rudolph ate.

Rudolph is believed to adhere to Christian Identity, a white supremacist religion that is anti-gay, anti-Semitic and anti-foreigner. Some of the four bombs Rudolph was charged with planting included messages from the shadowy ``Army of God.''

Authorities believe that on July 27, 1996, Rudolph placed a bomb hidden in a knapsack in Atlanta's crowded Centennial Olympic Park during the summer Olympic games. The explosion at the crowded park killed one woman and injured 111 other people.

Rudolph was charged in 1998 with that bombing and three others - at a gay nightclub in Atlanta, an office building north of Atlanta and an abortion clinic in Birmingham, Ala., where a police officer was killed.

In all, the bombings killed two and wounded more than 150 people, according to the FBI.

Rudolph eluded a massive manhunt and remains on the FBI's 10 Most Wanted list. The FBI also had offered a $1 million reward for his capture.

Pockets of western North Carolina have had a reputation as a haven for right-wing extremists. Some there mocked the government's inability to find Rudolph with bloodhounds, infrared-equipped helicopters and space-age motion detectors - and some said they would hide him if asked.

05/31/03 09:16 EDT

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