Available at Amazon in Hardcover, Paperback and Kindle. Just click cover image above.

Where winter light meets ancient stone—share the spirit of Pilot Mountain with your gift giving this season.

Wrap up a little piece of Pilot Mountain for your special someone that hit #1 on Kindle for Historical Geography!

You could say that the pyramid shape of Pilot Mountain is hidden in plain sight. One also has to dig deeply into geology reports to find out it isn’t just that Big Pinnacle that is made of quartzite, it is the whole mountain from top to bottom. This view is what people see traveling from Winston-Salem toward Mt. Airy. The pyramid shape is seen on backroads in the Pinnacle, North Carolina area. While you are almost too close for the full impact, you can see the pyramid shape from the Pilot Mountain State Park visitor center at the base of the mountain.

Mount Pilot?

You bet—these books feature the real mountain Andy Griffith borrowed, renamed Mount Pilot, and made famous without asking permission of the owner, Ms. Pearl Beasley, at the time. Andy Griffith was raised just down the road from Pilot Mountain, in nearby Mt. Airy, just a dozen or so miles away from it. There was a running joke just how far away Mount Pilot was from Mayberry, often depending on who was driving. Andy Griffith, in his youth, must have looked at the Big Pinnacle of Pilot Mountain like it was a skyscraper.

While very different, if you liked reading Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander series of books and Charles Frazier’s Cold Mountain, these books on Pilot Mountain might be a good fit for your reading pleasure.

The cover of Faces of Pilot Mountain was taken on January 1, 2023. Grab both books for your holiday reading and then start your year out right by a walk through history on the trails of Pilot Mountain on the first day of the new year, 2026!

Did you know North Carolina has a 1,400 foot crystalline pyramid?

Pilot Mountain’s Big Pinnacle casts a sharply defined pointer, on the top of a pyramid-shaped shadow that shifts its position between the summer and winter solstices—much like a giant mountain-sized sundial. The entire mountain is made of 99% pure quartzite from top to bottom. The east-west axis of Pilot Mountain is shaped like a pyramid, but few see it driving north or south on I-52. When the sun is out and you can see your own shadow clearly, you can also spot the pyramid shadow from the right viewpoint. Clouds and the landscape may hide it, but the effect is real and happens all year long.

At Pilot Mountain, even the shadow keeps time.

Nearing the Winter Solstice this is almost the extreme northeast view of the pyramid shadow that is was taken from the Little Pinnacle on Pilot Mountain.

www.facesofpilotmountain.com

Available at Amazon in Hardcover, Paperback and Kindle. Just click cover image above.

Despite being banned from sale at Pilot Mountain State Park by the North Carolina Division of Natural and Cultural Resources (NCDNCR)—and with the author prohibited from discussing his work on site without an advance, paid permit—the books continue to gain recognition from major research institutions. Pilot Mountain draws over one million visitors each year, making these restrictions an unexpected marketing and research challenge.

When your book is banned locally, but celebrated internationally… you are doing something interesting, right?

Even so, the first book was added to the Southern Folklife Collection at UNC–Chapel Hill, where the author’s 4,500-image photography archive is housed. Faces of Pilot Mountain was later reviewed for three months and accepted by the Government & Heritage Library (run by the NCDNCR) in Raleigh in February 2025, followed by its acceptance into the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., where it is now being cataloged. Most recently, in October 2025, Trinity College Dublin—whose library dates to 1592—accepted a hand-delivered copy for its collections.

This Spring Equinox pyramid shadow at Pilot Mountain in 2022 is just moments before it faded from view. When it fades you have about 20 minutes to return to your car before dark. This was taken on the far side of the Big Pinnacle facing east.