This photo was taken atop Clingman's Dome in the Great Smoky Mountains. To the Cherokee it is known as Kuwahi or Mulberry Place and has long been considered sacred.

This photo was taken at the Tsa La Gi Ancient Village display at the Cherokee Heritage Center in Park Hill, Oklahoma. It replicates a Cherokee village, as it would have looked prior to European contact.

These columns are all that remain of the original Cherokee Female Seminary. The building was opened in May 1851, but sadly burned in April 1887.

The Great Smoky Mountains have long been significant to the Cherokee people.

Oconaluftee Islands Park is a narrow island in the middle of the Oconaluftee river in Cherokee, North Carolina.

This building was build for the Cherokee Female Seminary after the first school burned in 1887. This Seminary campus opened in 1889.

The contrast between the hard, dark tree trunk and the soft wispy clouds above seem to encompass everything -- light and dark, soft and hard, life and dead.