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The African American Experiences Project is Making the Invisible Visible
By Atalaya Dorfield
A year and a half ago, if you would have told me that today I would be working with the National Park Service, my response would have been, “What is the National Park Service?”
I never would have imagined that I would be writing this column for Black History Month or that, in June of 2021, I would be hiking up
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Image for the Asking: Seeing the Forest Within the Trees
Story and image by Don McGowan
There are many folks I know who readily assert that their favorite season in the Smokies is winter. They claim this not because there are relatively fewer tourists streaming into Sevier and Blount counties, or back and forth over Newfound Gap from Cherokee and Bryson City. They make this assertion for the very
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Echoes in the Mountains: On Bulls and Close Encounters
Images by Phoebe Carnes
When I first started studying the bull elk of Oconaluftee last fall, I quickly learned that each male is an individual. They each have their own quirks that make them easily recognizable. One of the first males I began to study was a bull who goes by the name of “B” within the park service.
At nearly 14
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A Day in the Life of Forestry Technician Kate Beckner
Karetza (Kate) Beckner is a forestry technician at Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Her job is largely focused on removing invasive or nonnative species so the park’s natural plant inhabitants can thrive.
Karetza (Kate) Beckner is a forestry technician at Great Smoky Mountains National Park whose job is to remove invasive
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A Brief History of Air Quality Monitoring
By David Brill
Unlike most professionals, Jim Renfro knows he’s doing his job well when he can’t see the products of his labors. In fact, when Renfro takes in the view from high atop Clingmans Dome in Great Smoky Mountains National Park and sees nothing but the distant tree-fringed ridges—instead of a veil of unhealthy haze&
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Don’t Forget to Look Up
Photos by Sue Wasserman
The more I wander along trails in the Smokies, the more I notice how much time I spend looking down. It’s not just that I love to see what just-blossomed flowers Mother Nature is offering up for my enjoyment, but it feels important to be on the lookout for slithery creatures who might be trying to enjoy them
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Trailside Talk: Elk Ignore Park Signs
Photos courtesy of Joye Ardyn Durhum
The elk population in the Smokies has been one of the park’s key attractions for two decades.
In the early days of this grand experiment that has worked so well, elk headquarters was in Cataloochee. I made the 45-minute drive into the valley several times to see them. And, sometimes, to hear them,
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Remembering Poet Laureate Ella V. Costner
“The world turned in its lathe of time,
And the hot sands heaved amain...
The neoplasm stirred,
while from Above was the WORD
And she crept into life again.”
—from “Song of Life in the Smokies”
Following publication of her book, Barefoot in the Smokies in 1969, Ella V. Costner was named Poet
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Permanent Camp: Harbingers of Spring
Image of George and Elizabeth Ellison by Quintin Ellison
By George Ellison
When spells of cabin fever become more frequent, each observer of the natural world will have his or her personal “harbinger of spring” to use as an indicator that spring is just around the corner. Mine is the mourning cloak butterfly, which
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Image for the Asking: A Place Called Mulberry
Story and image by Don McGowan
There is a great mountain in the heart of the Smokies. It is called Kuwahi. It has this name because it is a place where mulberry trees were found; in Tsalagi—the language of the Cherokee—Kuwahi means “Mulberry Place.”
To the Cherokee people it is sacred; and to the European settlers who
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