Mountain Piracy, or in it’s original form the Appalachian Mountain Piracy, started as a generalist competency group filled full of hard partying, retired Special Forces, Combat and Technical veterans who had grown tired of the normal day to day American life. Since modern America offered no new vistas of adventure, they took to the rivers and mountains in order to seek some release from the standard American way of life.
Into this mix, the group, soon too be a Brotherhood, came Captain Edward Collins. His no nonsense approach to life, simply philosophies and iconoclastic dialectics interested the crew of friends. From early in the 2000’s to 2012, the ideology of a ‘Mountain Pirate’ too root. Drawing from their North Carolina pirate roots and the historical events surrounding the true characters of such men as Edward Teach and others, the trend at the time was to adopt the common wealth ideals of the original Masters of Nassau.
Even though each man, and later woman, was skilled in the arts of combat, they focused on the watercraft of Whitewater rafting as a skillset to hone, perfect and enjoy. The groups well rounded approach to technical issues surrounding mountain living made many of their members important to official search and rescue missions and even outdoor medicine. In Asheville, no one, out of a deep respect for the Brethren, would knowingly cross a Mountain Pirate. Conspiracy theories grew about their supposed involvement with government underground bases, aliens and even biker/moonshiners. Howsoever, this was far from the case, they were simply friends pursuing a beneficial ideology that they felt the world could benefit from knowing.
The ‘Appalachian Mountain Pirate’ philosophy spread into downtown Asheville, and even at one point, caused local owners to open a ‘pirate shop’ on Broadway. Until the Diaspora of Pirates, this was their Golden Age in Asheville. Everyone, and I mean everyone, wanted to be a Mountain Pirate.
When their founder died in the year leading up to December, 2012, the group withdrew from public life in Asheville and instead, true to the nature of the group, took to the hills.
As life in Asheville became more ‘gentile’ and ‘overpriced’, the Brothers and Sisters experienced a resurgence of interest in the years of 2015. Native Ashevillians were feeling the sting of the newcomers and the town was losing what originally made it a rough and ready mountain town. It was in 2017 that the Mountain Pirates met again on Mountain Island to assist in spreading the original goals of the group : make good people better – and in the case of Asheville, help them stay in their mountain home not to be displaced by the newcomers and their wealth.
Since then, the philosophy of the Piracy has spread. If you are reading this, then you are one of those folks that has found out about this once secretive group.
