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Tag: Trailside Talk
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Trailside Talk: Finding Solitude in a Busy Park
For many people, national parks are about an escape from daily life, a place to find peace and quiet alongside a stream, on the shore of a deep lake, or at the highest point of a mountain.
Is this sort of reverie possible in Great Smoky Mountains National Park, the nation’s most heavily visited? The answer is not only “yes,”
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Trailside Talk: The Wonder of Falling Water
The Smokies have waterfalls, dozens of them. Tall, wide, swift, slow. You can find them on the roadside and deep in the Smokies wilderness.
Laurel Falls Cascades. GSMA Archives.
Walking to a beautiful waterfall is the objective of many Smokies hikers. The hike is often its own reward, but to round a corner in the forest,
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Trailside Talk: Approaching Autumn
There are a few magical moments that bring in the seasons of the Smokies.
The first snowflake blowing across the shoulders of Mount Le Conte or Mount Guyot beckons winter. The tiniest wildflower signals spring is close behind. An afternoon thunderstorm rolling across the ridge freshens the Little River and declares that summer has arrived. And
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Trailside Talk: Great Bear Jams I Have Known
No one who visits the Smokies, particularly during the summer, should be surprised to encounter that long-time park phenomenon known as the bear jam.
Someone spots a black bear along a park road. Brakes bring the car to a screeching halt. Sometimes the bear spotter pulls to the side of the road (if possible). Sometimes the driver will simply
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Trailside Talk: The Perfect Smokies Day
Get ready, Cades Cove! On the alert, Laurel Falls! Look out, Alum Cave! Sugarlands, here they come!
Over the next several months, the Great Smokies face the year’s biggest season of visitation as schools dismiss students for the summer and hundreds of thousands of workers target mountain trips for their annual vacations. From one-
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Trailside Talk: A Wildflower for Dot
A wintery wind is still hurrying through the mountains, but the wildflowers of the Smokies’ spring are bursting forth.
It is this time of the year in these mountains that reminds me of my late and beloved friend Dot Jackson, whose connections to and love for the Smokies were long and strong.
Dot Jackson, photo courtesy of
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Trailside Talk: Quiet History and Scenic Beauty in Cataloochee Valley
Visitors to Cades Cove, one of the most popular spots in Great Smoky Mountains National Park, might be interested to know that there were discussions in the park’s formative days of preserving parts of another Smokies community in similar fashion.
A view of Cataloochee Field, 1938. Courtesy of GSMNP archives.
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Trailside Talk: Searching for Clingmans Lost Apostrophe
Image by Harry Cooke
The highest point in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park is also one of its oddest.
Clingmans Dome, at 6,643 feet, is the absolute roof of the Smokies, an imposing mountain within a group of imposing mountains. Unlike some other giants of the Appalachians, it isn’t necessarily a target of serious mountain
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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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Trailside Talk: Mt. Guyot
Every year, thousands of Great Smoky Mountains National Park visitors walk up the curving ramp at Clingmans Dome to reach the park’s highest point. Not too far away, others swarm one of six trails to access perhaps the Smokies’ most beloved mountain, Le Conte, the park’s third highest.
But what about the other peak in the
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