The Smokies

July 17-19: Great Smoky Mountains National Park, TN

We arrived in Gatlinburg, Tennessee after 12 hours of driving over foothill after foothill of the Appalachian mountains, from southern Pennsylvania through Virginia through the upper-left corner of Tennessee and finally into Gatlinburg, which nestled in the crook of the Smokies, north-central. Our first taste of Tennessee, authentic off-the-highway Tennessee, was Pigeon Forge, a sprawling strip-mall town north of Gatlinburg that boasts Dolly Parton’s Dixie Stampede dinner show, along with shows hosted by Dick Clark, Elvis, and every variety of fiddler/honky-tonk combo imaginable.

The accents here are just lovely, smooth sliding over all the vowels. My yank way of speaking seems stunted and way too efficient in comparison.

Gatlinburg describes itself as the “Gateway to the Smokies,” which seems apt since even from the parking lot of our motel, a 360 degree turn gives views of the mountains in every direction. Our first morning here, we turned left at traffic light number 8 and drove for a few miles before arriving at the trailhead for Rainbow Falls, our destination of choice for a day hike. “A rainbow,” promises the brochure, “produced by mist from this 80-foot high waterfall is visible on sunny afternoons.” Unfortunately, our weather was anything but sunny. We sat in the nearly abandoned trailhead parking lot, listening to the rain pound on the van roof, and watching each other for signs of hesitation beneath the several pounds of bright plastic ponchos. Nope, none recorded, or at least shown.

The hike up was a wet, wet, wet 2.7 miles, culminating in a rather disappointing waterfall. But the day was certainly not wasted. Walking through the forest fosters contemplation, and with the added curtailment of conversation by noisy rain, our hike was supremely peaceful. I find that I think well while I walk, and my mind traversed many memories and dreams to come en route to Rainbow Falls.

The Smokies are home to around 1500 bears (although the sheer volume of salamanders actually awards the latter the prize for most combined weight) but the only one we’ve seen is the tiny stuffed black bear/backpack my mom bought at the giftshop. Our new traveling companion, “Smoky,” finds his way into most of our pictures, and really does look genuine if his straps are hidden and the picture is somewhat blurry.

I was surprised to find that plenty of people have at one time or another called the National Park, home. In fact, several thriving communities were established in the mountains when the land became a national park in 1935, and mountain-dwellers had to leave. Most went to nearby towns like Gatlinburg, and augmented the growing tourist industry, while others found logging work in the Northwest or factory detail in Detroit. All that remains of their years of plowing, clearing, loving, and living on the land are their abandoned homesteads, now preserved by the park system.

We drove by several former settlers’ homes on a scenic motor trail. They are shaded on all sides by new forest growth, a testament to the resiliency of the forest even after being transformed into cornfields a few decades earlier. According to a video at the visitors’ center, even the homesteaders who lost their land to the national park now are grateful that the land they loved is conserved for every generation. And yet, I wonder how difficult the decision was to create public land out of what had been someone’s private property. And the settlers weren’t the first to lose the ground they had cultivated; the Cherokee Indian tribe were the first recorded dwellers in the Smokies, and their heritage and lore draws deeply on the natural beauty and danger of the region. In the 1830s, because of white settlers’ thirst for land and the discovery of gold in Georgia, the U.S. government forcibly removed most of the Cherokees from the Smokies and relocated them in what became Oklahoma. Their journey west became known as the Trail of Tears.

Back to the more recent upheaval between white settlers and conservationists, two groups who had different and yet arguably positive uses for the land – to use it for the maintenance of one’s family and community, and to protect it from continual stripping and eroding. It’s not a black and white choice between people and land, as if to care for a tree disregards a person, because the settlers’ style of clearing and cultivating the land was slowly destroying it, and without change would have ended in a dearth of land on which to live. I’m grateful for the land set aside by the U.S. government for the enjoyment of natural beauty and the continuation of ecosystems and wildlife, and yet it tugs at my sympathy to see log cabins painstakingly built and now abandoned.

Tomorrow we leave Gatlinburg and continue on to Nashville, where country music and humidity awaits us. I ask for your on-going prayers for our safety.