Making syrup in the old ways will be just one of the demonstrations you can see at Great Smoky Mountains National Park on Saturday during the annual Mountain Life Festival/NPS

There's something about the Appalachians. Perhaps it was due to my college days in West Virginia, but the history and culture held in the mountains and their hollows has always intrigued me. I felt that pull again earlier this week during a short visit to Shenandoah National Park. If you have felt it, too, you might want to visit Great Smoky Mountains National Park this weekend for the annual Mountain Life Festival.

A fixture at the park's Mountain Farm Museum for more than three decades, the festival brings you face-to-face with the traditional fall activities of those who lived in the Smokies before the park was established. Making apple butter. Blacksmithing. Mountain music. Chair caning. All that and more will be on display on Saturday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.

Other demonstrations will include cooking over an open hearth, how to make lye soap, and food preservation techniques. The centerpiece of the event is the sorghum syrup demonstration, which the national park has provided each fall for over 30 years, a park release says. "The syrup is made much the same way it was produced a hundred or more years ago, using a horse or mule-powered cane mill and a wood-fired cooker."

And, park officials say, the festival coincides with the park's music jam sessions held on the porch of the Oconaluftee Visitor Center from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. every first and third Saturday of the month.

The Mountain Farm Museum is located adjacent to Oconaluftee Visitor Center on Newfound Gap Road in Great Smoky Mountains National Park, two miles north of Cherokee, NC. For more information call the visitor center at (828) 497-1904.