Story by Sandy Lang
Dr. Bob Phillips was a dentist for thirty years at his practice near Philadelphia before he and his wife, Mitzi Cole, started looking for a retirement locale. A friend asked if they’d ever visited Western North Carolina. They hadn’t and soon booked a trip. Cole immediately fell in love with Asheville. And from his first look at the mountains, Dr. Bob was sold.
He’d been fly fishing since he was twelve years old, so he was excited about the possibilities in North Carolina. He remembers walking into an outfitter’s shop on that first trip and asking if there were any good trout streams nearby. The shopkeeper unfurled a map so densely marked with locations that Dr. Bob realized he might never get to them all. But he wanted to try.
Phillips and Cole built their house in The Cliffs at Walnut Cove and moved in during the spring of 2019, after their youngest daughter graduated from high school. Dr. Bob was busy exploring nearby fishing spots when he suddenly had to put his outdoor pursuits on the back burner—that December, he was diagnosed with leukemia. For the next two years, he’d seek chemo and then stem cell treatments, including new techniques at the Duke Cancer Institute’s bone marrow clinic. It was a difficult time, simultaneous with the pandemic, so family visits were rare. Dr. Bob remembers a particular day when he was feeling especially low, and a nurse asked him to imagine his happy place. He closed his eyes and described what he saw. “I’m standing in a small stream. I feel the water on my boots. I see the trees. That’s where I want to get back to—to get healthy, and to get strong again.”
The Navy veteran resolved he’d beat cancer, and eventually he did. (He still returns to Duke every six months for checkups and has remained cancer-free.) Able to fish again, he stepped up his outings. Dr. Bob now sets out on hikes to fly-fishing streams two or three days a week—often three or four miles to get to a remote spot. “I don’t like to fish around too many people. It’s more about observing what else is out there. I sit on a rock and just watch the water come over it. I notice the lichen. I’ve seen hellbenders [large salamanders] right at my feet that didn’t even see me.”
And he’s never troubled by weather, he says, likely because he grew up fishing on chilly, wet days in Pennsylvania. “When it’s cold and snowy here, I go out anyway,” he says. “The fish don’t care, they’re already wet.”
On the days he’s not fishing, Dr. Bob golfs or volunteers—he’s thankful he was able to help charitable efforts after Hurricane Helene in 2024. And when he does catch a fish, he always releases it. His favorites to find are wild brook trout, rainbow trout, and brown trout. He can still picture a beautiful brook trout from last fall. “About seven inches long, he was the prettiest I’d caught all year.”
And whether he catches twenty fish or none at all, he says he feels lucky to be outside in nature. “Having been at death’s door a couple times, I think, yeah, appreciate everything.
This story was featured in Cliffs Living magazine. To see more stories like this one and learn more about The Cliffs, subscribe here.
