SOLD OUT * SOLD OUT
18th Annual
Big Game & Beer Dinner
02/24/24

IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO HAVE YOUR NAME ON A WAITING LIST: EMAIL INFO@BACKYARDBOWPRO.ORG AND PROVIDE NAME, PHONE NUMBER AND NUMBER OF GUEST SPACES REQUESTED.

Last year the theme for our dinner was an imagined future marked by challenge and opportunity, modern science and rocket ships to mars. It was a fun exercise and I learned a lot putting it all together, but I must admit to a bit of awkwardness through it all. Probably the most important lesson that I learned last year was that what excites me most is not future imagined worlds, but the real history which has brought us to where we are today.

The best available evidence suggests that the first inhabitants of what is now Western North Carolina arrived here some 12,000 years ago. They would have found rivers and streams teaming with fish, fields and forests thick with useful plants, and an abundance of wild game everywhere they looked. The abundance that these mysterious people discovered here must have seemed almost overwhelming to them.

One imagines these first peoples as rich beyond measure in so many things. Tradition and history certainly. Close family bonds very likely. Probably a deep seated awareness of their place in the natural world around them. But in the context of this dinner we will be focusing on the abundance that they found here so long ago.

My own family arrived in this country some 300 years ago from Europe and made a life in a land already vastly different from its aboriginal roots. They were likely unfamiliar with the early Mississippian culture or the later Cherokee that dominated this area for so long… but even today those roots live on like echoes through the mountains and valleys all around us.

Certainly many of you have native people among your ancestors. Others have friends and family that do. I hope that you will accept this menu tonight as an offering of respect and admiration for a culture marked by power and strength as well as tragedy and loss. I urge you to remember that their journey is our journey and always will be, for above all they are good people. They are our neighbors and our family. In a real sense they are us.

I have tried to create a meal tonight that celebrates some of the great variety that these early people must have enjoyed. These are not their recipes, they are mine, but like so much in my life this meal would not be possible without those that came before me.

As always you can expect some silliness and some whimsy on this journey, but I hope we can stumble across some new surprises and lasting truths to remind us just how much we share.

Most of all I hope that you eat and drink well, enjoy good company, and have some fun.

Allen Dye

October 2023