Asheville Was Always Strange

There's a popular narrative among Asheville's newer arrivals--one whispered in cafes, posted on social media, and worn like a badge at weekend markets--that they were the ones who made this town special. That before the vegan donuts, the boutique CBD stores, the mushroom tinctures and the mural festivals, Asheville was just another sleepy southern backwater. But this story, charming and self-flattering as it may be, is simply not true.

Asheville was always strange.

Long before the kombucha taps and artisanal axes, this mountain town carried a hum beneath its sidewalks--a restless, mythic energy, part-Appalachian and part-cosmic. A place where you might overhear a preacher quoting Rumi. Where a Baptist kid might learn about transcendentalism in the same week he gets baptized. Where artists, invalids, musicians, and mystics all came not to blend in, but to linger--to breathe thin air and think too much.

Thomas Wolfe, Asheville's literary son, captured this in the early 20th century. His novels weren't set in a generic Southern town--they were steeped in the Asheville of contradictions: ambition and shame, beauty and decay, mother-love and alienation. His Asheville was already haunted by its own self-awareness, already swollen with talent and discomfort.

And decades before that, the city became a haven for those seeking health and vision. The sanitariums. The mountain retreats. The New Thought gatherings. Even George Vanderbilt, with all his wealth, came here not just for land, but for something harder to name--an encounter with sublimity.

The town has always been a magnet for people who didn't quite fit elsewhere. That includes the modern arrivals, yes--but they're continuing something, not inventing it.

To be clear, this isn't gatekeeping. The gates were always open. But what's frustrating to old-timers--both native and adopted--is the amnesia. The idea that Asheville’s uniqueness began when someone opened a Himalayan salt spa in West Asheville or when a TikTok account hit 10,000 followers.

It didn't. It began in the hills. In the swirl of ghosts, gravity, and genius that have always hung over this town like morning fog.

So welcome, truly. But know that you're arriving at a party already in progress. One that started before you, and--if Asheville can endure its own popularity--will outlast all of us.

Asheville isn't strange because you're here. You're here because Asheville is strange.