During the summer, before the catastrophic flooding, I drove 35 hours from Asheville to the Old Faithful Inn Dining Room in Yellowstone National Park. My three-month stay working at the restaurant held its fair share of wonder and joy, but I left the park with an enlightened understanding of Western North Carolina. Trading our rolling Blue Ridge Mountains for their jagged, snow-peaked ones illuminated previously undiscovered truths about how we treat our home and the price we pay for abusing it.

When Ulysses S. Grant protected the 2 million acres in Montana, Wyoming, and Idaho known as Yellowstone National Park, he invested in the country's future, dismissing the remonstrations of local ranchers and entrepreneurs. Grant, and then Teddy Roosevelt after him, recognized our country's beauty as a natural resource more sustainable and profitable than lumber, coal and even gold. Now, 152 years later, tourists seem eager to pay colossal premiums on food, drink and lodging to experience the geothermal magic, watch the great bison that roam the grounds and take in the stunning views. In short, they're paying for natural wonder and beauty.

Western North Carolina finds itself in a similar position to Yellowstone. In the early 20th century, tourists flocked to the Blue Ridge Mountains for clean mountain air, seeking respite from the tuberculosis epidemic. A century later, TB has been largely eradicated in the United States, but people are still flocking to our mountains, now for their beauty. The Blue Ridge Parkway receives an annual 16.7 million hungry, thirsty, tired tourists who want a cold beer, a hearty meal and a comfy bed. While the craft beer and farm-to-table food in WNC have a gravitational pull of their own, the surrounding mountains represent its economic cornerstone.

Unfortunately, our mountains don't have the same protection as those in Wyoming. Instead, we chop, blast and build through them. No one is more to blame than Chuck Edwards, our House representative. He claims to "have always been proactive and strong on environmental issues," but his voting record begs to differ.

Last year, he voted for H.R 8998, a bill that would slash Environmental Protection Agency funding by 20%. This year, he voted for H.R. 136, a bill that would nullify an EPA rule that attempts to phase out certain high-pollutant vehicle manufacturing. As the representative of an area that leans heavily on its environment, Edwards should be supporting the EPA, not going to war against it. Most importantly, Edwards refuses to acknowledge the dangers of global warming or enact any policies to curb it. He wants to log, drill, and mine until the Blue Ridge Mountains are burning, barren and broken.

Unfortunately, there's a future and immediate price to be paid for global warming. Helene, the latest natural disaster in the global warming age, ripped through Western North Carolina in September, destroying whole neighborhoods, districts and towns. To Western North Carolinians, it was equally unprecedented, shocking and devastating. Edwards has suspended his campaign to aid in disaster relief, a noble deed. But his anti-environment voting record reveals him as a short-sighted, profit-hungry man who will do the bare minimum only when required rather than fighting the climate crisis at its roots. Hurricane Helene was an anomaly, but it will become the norm if we keep voting for representatives like Edwards.

Instead of him, I will be supporting N.C. House Rep. Caleb Rudow in the upcoming District 11 congressional election. Rep. Rudow has a record of helping communities -- as a Peace Corps volunteer -- and as an avid local paddler, he acknowledges the natural beauty of our district and the importance of protecting it. Edwards' campaign is funded by super PACs and Big Macs, and Rudow's by hikers and teachers who care about their mountain home.

Rudow has the same view on the Blue Ridge Mountains as Grant and Roosevelt did on the West: In areas with stunning alpine beauty, the key to economic prosperity lies in the preservation of the mountains. Rudow will enact conservationist policies, support the EPA instead of undercutting it and fight climate change so we don't have to rebuild flood-wrecked communities every 25 years. For Western North Carolina, the choice is simple. Chuck Edwards will be complicit in destroying our mountains, and Caleb Rudow will commit to protecting them.

-- Jake Bernstein

Asheville

Editor's note: Bernstein reports volunteering as an intern for Rudow's campaign.