Peaks loom higher from the hollows: the mountains lagged the rest of the state climbing out of the hole the last recession dug. And this one's deeper.

• Position: COVER STORY

BNC: Economic activity in the region has continued to slip, even though economists say the nation hit bottom last summer.

Cherry: Western North Carolina lags the state and nation in a lot of these economic swings. In the last recession, I think it took us four years to recover our lost jobs. The rest of North Carolina and the country recovered jobs much more quickly.

The region lost more than 40,000 jobs the last two years.

It's following the national trends. That this is a rural region hits us particularly hard and makes it tougher to recover. Another reason might be tourism. Our occupancy rates didn't fall as much as some parts of the state, but it's such a big component of our economy that we feel it a lot more. We had a big hit on retail sales. We're starting to see some of that come back over this last year, but we're still down quite a bit from before the recession.

How did the decade's two recessions differ up here?

I don't think it's going to take as long to recover this time. That one in 2001 was more targeted in manufacturing. We didn't really expect to get those jobs back. This time around, it's broader-based, and there's a bit more in the service sectors. I think it's more likely to come back to what it was before. In the last recession, we lost a little over 3% of the workforce, and this time we've lost almost 10%--three times the negative impact on jobs--so 1 hope it doesn't take as long as it did before.

Economic activity in the west actually grew during the first part of the recession, not falling off until late '08. Has the region seen the worst yet?

I think so. It's hard to say. And especially with the data the way it is now. When you're at the bottom of the business cycle, the data is kind of mixed. But I think the worst is behind us.

What course do you expect the region's unemployment rate to take this year?

I would like to be an optimist, but I think it's going to remain high: above 10%. We're near the peak, but it will take some time to come off that peak.

Will tourism continue to be key to the regional economy?

It will continue to play a big role, and there's good and bad with that. It's seasonal, but it's a clean business and offers a lot of amenities for the locals like nice restaurants and shopping. So it's a good thing, but we need to try to use that as a base and diversify our economy.

How can you diversify without hurting tourism and those quality-of-life factors?

You have to have good planning and good...