United States. National Park Service

“ Perhaps, the few prairie-dog sentinels that had stood motionless in the March wind wished that the spring would come. The sharp wind divides the dense fur of their winter coats while they survey the snow-skiffed ground of their silent town. They almost appear to regard the sun wistfully, wishing it strong, the snow gone, and the grass resurgent once again. But at last the meadowlarks lose their winter-long quiet, and the horned larks now lift up with extravagance, unhuddling from their long ordeal. ”

“ In the early morning hours they fill the wooden benches of tiny Palmer’s Chapel for singing and preaching and reminiscing; at noon they share bountiful food spread on long plank tables beside clear, rushing Cataloochee Creek; in the mellow afternoon they rediscover the valley. For what lures the stranger is what lures the old families back. They come to sense again the beauty and the permanence and even the foggy mystery of the Great Smokies. ”

“ Compared to the sharp shadows and glare of the 36 meadows and thickets I have left behind, the evenly shaded pine forest seems serene. Except for a diminutive red-breasted nuthatch that patrols up and down a nearby tree trunk, gleaning grubs and other insects as it goes, there is no perceptible motion. Even the few shafts of sunlight that touch the forest floor here seem, like me, to be intruders. Sound itself seems unwelcome. No birds sing or squabble or dart their colors to catch the eye. If anything walks or hops about, no leaves rustle to reveal its presence. ”

“ Going up the side of the knob, we quickly leave the forest and begin tunneling through dense thickets of rhododendron and mountain-laurel. Trees don’t grow here at all. On top, the shrubs become smaller and we can look out over them. Perched on the end of a spur from the side of a giant valley, we look up to high ridges on both sides and down to a stream far below. Is it our imagination, or do we really hear that stream whispering to us of the humid, secret world way down there under the big trees? For many minutes we are lost in contemplation of the Smokies’ green-blue spaces. ”

“ Through the gloom of the night, Sunday, October 16, 1859, a small band of men tramped silently behind a horse-drawn wagon down a winding Maryland road leading to Harpers Ferry, Va. From the shoulder of each man hung loosely a Sharps rifle, hidden by long gray shawls that protected the ghostly figures against the chilling air of approaching winter. ”

“ Adair, an intent observer of Indian life, marveled at the Cherokees’ knowledge of nature’s medicines: “I do not remember to have seen or heard of an Indian dying by the bite of a snake, when out at war, or a hunting ... they, as well as all other Indian nations, have a great knowledge of specific virtues in simples: applying herbs and plants, on the most dangerous occasions, and seldom if ever, fail to effect a thorough cure, from the natural bush.... For my own part, I would prefer an old Indian before any surgeon whatsoever....” ”

“ One does not make idle conversation with a man who has made a pilgrimage. We watch a pair of rock doves, outlined against the white brilliance of the boiling cloud, ride an updraft near the summit. Wings set and almost touching, they dip and recover, their resonant calls clear despite the distance. Nothing more to be said, I set out toward the trail. Not once did the man take his eyes off the Tower.
With the first dull report of thunder, I hear the chiding call of the falcon again. ”

“ On a float trip you don’t have to watch the trail or mind the horse. You just watch the animals and scenery and listen to the guide’s narrative, wildlife identifications, and local lore. The Teton Range appears to slide by, now peeking above a massive river-cut glacial moraine, now peeking through trees, now disappearing from view. Morning and evening floats are best for seeing wildlife. You may well see bald eagles, ospreys, moose, great blue herons, Canada Geese, beaver, otters, and various ducks. You can float the river in your own craft, but a permit is required. ”

“ Look sharply into the shadows under the trees and amid the high grass where the meat-eaters are resting or stalking their prey. When you have this picture of wildlife in mind we’re ready for our journey into the past.
Projecting ourselves back those 20 millions of years, we find ourselves in a landscape filled with animals. Some of the animals are not much different from those living today, but others are so bizarre that you may have a hard time believing they really existed. ”

“ Each, through its interaction with plants and animals, affects the total fabric of Smokies life. Far below, the trees of a cove forest march up a stream valley; on the slopes above them spreads a mantle of oaks. A narrow ridge far down and off to the right bears the dark green of pines. Nearer, we see the ragged lower edge of the spruce-fir forest, where it fingers into the northern hardwoods below it. But we sense an overall unity because each kind of forest merges into the next, creating an unbroken mantle that lies over all the ridges as far as the eye can see. ”

“ This Tennessee valley of the Middle Prong of the Little River does not differ widely from Deep Creek or Greenbrier or Cosby or most of the other branches and hollows of the Smokies. Each, including Tremont, penetrates the hills, divides them like a furrow, and protects its own rocky, racing stream with a matting of thick, green growth. Nearby Cades Cove and North Carolina’s Cataloochee might guard a few hectares of lush, hill-cradled pasture or farmland, but even these are stamped with the clear, cool air and feel of the Great Smoky Mountains. ”

“ In a valley this high (the elevation of Jackson Hole at the lower end measures 6,000 feet) the Snake should have cut, with its steep gradients, permanent channels. Instead, it still wanders in myriad channels across the glacial debris filling the fault basin. Here the Snake looks more like a prairie river rambling with the restlessness of youth. Its banks are a checkerboard of successional stages, as plant communities rise and fall with disturbances created by flooding, channel shifting, or fire. ”

“ Here is a land of blue skies, magnificent rock formations, and a clear, dry atmosphere that easily confuses and distorts your sense of distance. It is a land of mountain views, long probing rivers, deserts, and high plains and space—great unfathomable oceans of space. The West is the archetypal outdoors whose recreation possibilities forever grip the modern imagination. ”

“ Because its achievements are both fundamental and effective, and because it treats a splendid mountain area as a lasting and deserving homeland for plants and animals and human beings, the story of Tremont culminates this history of the Great Smoky Mountains. For here is one of the ways the Smokies can be best used: as a wild refuge and a living laboratory where young people may discover the deeper meaning of the park’s past and why, for the future, there is a park at all. ”

“ Surely when the bison and the prairie dog were finally replaced by cattle, the grasslands, free at last from such punishment, would flourish. But no, instead the grasses languished. How could this be so?
Nature is always more complex than our perception of it. For countless centuries the Great Plains had survived its many moods of drought, dust storm, and wildfire, its scattered plagues of bison and grasshopper. Nature knows no “varmits,” and change is not catastrophe, but opportunity. ”

“ Look to the northeast: there’s a herd of Miohippus (“Miocene horse”) wading into the river to drink and browse in the willows along its banks. Let’s walk 26 toward the herd slowly and quietly. We should take an especially good look at this herd—they are part of a doomed race! The genus Miohippus is making its last stand at this time. When conditions change, well adapted species may restrict their ranges to what is left of the old environment; they may adapt, if they are able, to the new conditions; or they may not survive if they cannot adapt. ”

“ So now, after all the years and all the tumult, the cattlemen have their grazing rights on the national forest lands and the right to drift their cattle across national park lands to reach those permits: people still have their homes, dudes still come to the dude ranches. No one, Oldtimer or Newcomer, would now deny that the national park has vitalized the economy of the valley a thousandfold. ”

“ By the 1600s these Indians had built in the Southern Appalachians a Nation hundreds of years old, a way of life in harmony with the surrounding natural world, a culture richly varied and satisfying. But barely two centuries later, the newly formed government of the United States was pushing the Cherokees ever farther west. In the struggle for homeland, a new era had arrived: a time for the pioneer and for the settler from Europe and the eastern seaboard to stake claims to what seemed to them mere wilderness but which to the Cherokees was a physical and spiritual abode. ”

“ This is Great Smokies virgin cove forest, a type unrivaled in the northern hemisphere for combined variety and size of trees. Here it is cool, shady, and moist. The tree trunks shoot high above into the canopy, which intercepts most 26 of the sunlight and seems to enclose us in a private world. The ground around us is covered with the greenery of small plants. We hear bird songs but cannot see the singers.
The peace and grandeur of the forest are interrupted by a slight movement off to our right. In the leaves beneath a large, rotting log a tiny shrew restlessly sniffs with its long nose. ”

“ Growing dusk fills the river valley. In the failing sunlight vanquished to a thin, vertical display on the Tower face, it is almost possible to imagine what this splendid landscape must have been like as wilderness. Bison, not cattle, would have grazed nearby. Instead of the howling dog that has escaped the campground and races into the prairie dog town, a wolf might be pressing home its attack on an injured pronghorn. ”

“ The mountain people were as solidly a part of the Smokies as the boulders themselves. These residents of branch and cove, of Medlin and Proctor and all the other tiny settlements tucked high along the slanting creekbeds of the Great Smoky Mountains, these distinctive “back of beyond” hillside farmers and work-worn wives and wary moonshine distillers lodged in Kephart’s consciousness and imagination with rock-like strength and endurance. ”

“ The crack of thunder suddenly wakens us from our reverie. A bank of clouds, dark underneath and contorted with churning air, is rolling over the ridges and into the head of the valley. The clouds shoot lightning toward the slopes below. Hypnotized by the spectacle we remain rooted to our rocks until the first drops fall, then we pull on our ponchos, determined to greet the storm. ”

“ On the edges and outskirts of the park, we still have the cloud of what Robert Righter describes in his history of the park as “the threats of subdivision and mammonism.” Righter bemoans the damper such activities can put on the human spirit otherwise inspired by the mountain range. “It seems important,” he says, “that future generations know that the Park commemorates not only the grandeur of nature but also the spirit of men acting for a noble cause; it is a park not of chance but of man’s design.” ”

“ All around me are boundaries—conspicuous where defined by plants, but invisible where respected by animals. No prairie dog has ever traveled across this slope, and no red squirrel has ever scurried into the treeless expanse of the prairie dog town. On no occasion would a rock wren enter the deep pine forest. Should its food supply somehow vanish, it would perish among the bare earth and gully washes of its own habitat rather than hunt the dog town or forest floor.
Each animal species is adapted to the conditions of its preferred environment. ”

“ There is no true alpine tundra in the Smokies, such as we might find atop certain mountains in New York and New England and atop many mountains in the West. But alpine experiences aplenty await us here for the climbing. They can be had on ridges, peaks, and, even pinnacles, from atop which we gaze out over a forested sea of peaks. It is a rare reminder of the mantle of forest that once lay unbroken over the eastern United States. It is often said that when Europeans first encountered America, a squirrel could walk from the Atlantic Ocean to the Mississippi without touching the ground! ”

“ Early fall, just as the range begins to brown, is perhaps a perfect time to be at Devils Tower. The park is uncrowded after Labor Day. Protected meadows are still green. Animals are in their prime and ready for the rigors of winter. The faint odor of decaying vegetation and the foretaste of winter on a particularly bracing chill wind—these are the pleasures of a long Wyoming fall.
Winter brings an air of enforced isolation to Devils Tower. Heavy snows and frequent blizzard conditions on the highways discourage most travelers. A rare treat awaits those who do come here in winter, however. ”

“ The present-day Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts, located upon a peaceful estate in the heart of commercial Gatlinburg, attests to the imagination of a generous group, the cooperation of a chosen community, and the lasting good works of both. Like Qualla, like the CCC camps, like the park today, and, most of all, like the Walker place, Arrowmont signifies the profound beauty that can result when people practice a simple respect for their homeland. ”