President Franklin D. Roosevelt dedicates the Great Smoky Mountains National Park near Gatlinburg, Tenn., on Sept. 2, 1940. The 520,000-acre park on the Tennessee-North Carolina border today is the most visited national park in the country. [Photo by The Knoxville News-Sentinel]
THE GREAT SMOKY MOUNTAINS
S FIRST-TIME backpackers, the two of us approached the Appalachian Trail weighed down with grapefruit and misconceptions. We held romantic illusions about the trail, envisioning our pioneer ancestors blazing a path from the Northeast colonies into the Southern wilderness.
No such thing. The Appalachian Trail was methodically laid out in the 1930s, specifically for the purpose of attracting hikers. We joked about that at first … build a trail to lure the hikers away from civilized society. But after journeying deep into the heart of the Smokies, we came to understand that the trail was built, instead, to keep civilization away from the hikers.
So much for the misconceptions. The grapefruit is another story entirely. Carry that weight: About 70 miles of the Appalachian Trail — a 2,000-mile footpath that stretches from Georgia to Maine — lie within Great Smoky Mountains National Park. It is the most demanding and isolated stretch of the trail, tracing the crest of the Smokies. Tennessee lies to the west, North Carolina to the east. There are 900 more miles of hiking trails in the park. In five days, we backpacked 30 of those miles — five of them on the Appalachian Trail. The trail was the brainchild of pioneering land-use planner Benton MacKaye early in this century. Hiking the entire 2,000 miles typically takes four to six months. Us, we had enough trouble packing for five days. We would, after all, be carrying everything we needed on our backs. Everything was as lightweight as possible, be it essential — sleeping bag, clothing, food, medical supplies — or luxury — books, a journal, a good cigar. Serious hikers weigh each item before it goes into a pack, then weight the packed pack. We forgot to weigh our packs but guesstimated they topped 50 pounds. In hindsight, that was a good 10 pounds too many. Important Lesson No. 1: That little can of Dinty Moore beef stew may not look like it weighs much, but after five days in a backpack it develops a mass roughly equal to that of plutonium. Much more sensible were dehydrated staples such as macaroni and cheese, beans and rice and Ramen noodles. We also brought along four grapefruit, which we later regretted. Actually we thought they were oranges. We were willing to carry the extra weight in exchange for the luxury of fresh fruit for a couple of days. But we bought grapefruit by mistake. Neither of us likes grapefruit. But, in the end, eating them was easier than carrying them another 20 miles. Forest: The Smoky Mountains are known for three things: the smoky haze that envelopes the densely tangled leaves in the forests, the wildflowers that bloom till October, and the fall foliage. The leaves of the maple, the birch, the elm are at their showiest by mid-October. We were a couple of weeks early for full fall foliage, but the Smokies were nonetheless saturated with color, in shades so rich they can’t be described with ordinary words. The sky was not just blue, it was azure. The leaves were not just read and yellow. They were crimson, vermilion, saffron. But those are the accent colors. The predominant color in the Smokies is green. The park encompasses the most extensive virgin forest in the East, about 200,000 acres. The portion of the Appalachian Trail we hiked passed through forest so impenetrable that even the Cherokees avoided it. This region was never logged and rarely even visited until the trail was constructed in the 1930s. The old-growth trees formed a thick canopy of leaves overhead, filtering out sunlight. Enormous trees felled by landslides lay broken and tumbled. It was dark, and dank. The Smokies are also one of the wettest places in the East. Pillows of moss covered trees and rocks indiscriminately. More than 2,000 types of mushrooms grow here, some of them brilliantly colored read and orange and yellow. Delicate liverwort fungus grows perpendicularly from tree trunks. The sound of water wan an almost constant background noise. We traced a creek from its origins as a trickle on a mountain slope, which grew to a tinkling spring, then a chuckling brook, then a rushing stream. Rainwater pooled in crevices in the earth, in the convex caps of mushrooms, in dried leaves curled inward upon themselves. Important Lesson No. 2: Rain gear is essential in the Smokies. Heads up: Backpacking is not about nature, per se. There are easier ways to get out in the woods, and it can be difficult to appreciate nature while slogging through mud with a 50-pound pack on your back. Backpacking is about essentials. About self-containment, and self-sufficiency. There’s something empowering about having everything you need to survive right there with you. The trails we hiked were rocky, steep, narrow, steep, muddy, steep, overgrown, steep, and steep. We climbed from 2,250 feet to almost 6,500 feet. As we hiked upward, I realized that, up here, the sky is closer. Above 5,000 feet, the old-growth forest gave way to pines and spruce. It took two days of uphill hiking for us to crest a mountain, but once we got there the ground fell away, leaving us breathless at the vistas. Mountains unfolded below us, the Smokies namesake haze drifting above them. Once, we walked through a cloud. As we continued to hike upward, I realized that, up here, the sky may be closer but it’s only because the ground is a lot taller. Important Lesson No. 3: Never try to bend over and take a photo with a backpack on your back. Bears in the woods: The Great Smoky Mountains National Park is the busiest park in the country, drawing about 10 million visitors a year. Most of those visitors venture no farther than the highways that snake through the mountains. Out on the trail, we saw only 12 people in five days. We were happy in our solitude. We tramped along, not saying much, singing the occasional show tune. Instead, we communicated with nature. I caught myself admiring the sheer artistry of a bright red leaf that lay, perfectly displayed, on a rock by the side of the trail. I am perhaps the only person who ever saw that leaf.
There are unspoken rules regarding communication with other hikers. When you meet someone on the trail, you must stop and chat. Talk revolves around a small group of subjects: trail conditions, destinations, the weather and bear stories. If you’ve seen a bear, you tell everybody about it. If you haven’t seen any bears, you tell everybody that too. (We didn’t see any bears.) The park’s black bear population varies between 400 and 600. The bears live mostly on nuts and berries, but have learned to rifle campsites and backpacks for food. The prospect of seeing a bear was both tempting and frightening — a strange mix of emotions we dubbed “bearanoia.” Symptoms included lying awake at night listening to every rustle in every bush, gauging the relative size and distance of whatever it was that rustled. We spent most nights in shelters, which are placed every eight to 10 miles along the Appalachian Trail. The shelters sleep 12-14 people (plus assorted birds and proprietary red squirrels). They’re of sturdy construction, with walls on three sides. Chain-link fencing stretches across the front, to keep the bears out. It was in a shelter at Tricorner Knob that we were introduced to the subculture of the Appalachian Trail. There was a log book in the shelter, courtesy of the A.T. club that maintains the section. We read stories from brothers and fathers, female college students and veteran hikers. We learned we’re supposed to have trail names. There were the serious hikers, with names like “Ridgerunner” and “Critter,” who bemoaned the toll that careless hikers take on the environment. Critter’s idea of hell is trails “jammed with real clueless tourists and a big gift shop at the end.” There was also a group of 50-something hikers from Atlanta, trail names Duff, the O’Hara, Kudzu and Honey Bee. We decided on our trail names: The Suspension Strapper (so named because I constantly fiddled with the suspension straps on my backpack) and Beavis. We were also introduced to the vocabulary of the trail. The Appalachian Trail is known simply as the “A.T.” “Southbounders” are hikers headed from north to south. “Thru-hikers” are going the distance between Maine and Georgia. “Tour-ons” are tourists on the trail. * We shared the shelter that night with Jim (trail name: The Floating Gardener). He was out for 12 days, hiking the A.T. from north to south within the park. Important Lesson No. 4: Don’t drink the water. The water supply is plentiful in the Smokies but untreated water is full of nasty bacteria. There are three methods of water purification: Boil it, which takes a lot of time and fuel. Treat it with iodine, which leaves an awful aftertaste. Or filter it, which requires an expensive piece of equipment. We used iodine, disguising the chemical taste with powdered Gatorade mix, which worked pretty well until we ran out of Gatorade. We were saved by Jim the Floating Gardener, who let us use his water filter. Hikers are always happy to share equipment and advice. Civilization: When we finally shambled out of the mountains, it was easy to spot how we’d changed on the outside: the dirt, the scratches, the sore muscles, the blisters. It wasn’t until later that we learned how we’d changed on the inside. Before we left the Smokies, we drove up to Clingman’s Dome, at 6,643 feet the highest point in the park. There’s an observation deck there. The Appalachian Trail passes within a few yards of it. A steady stream of people huffed and puffed up the mountain to the observation deck. They wore brightly colored clothing and funny hats. They paused to take photos and videos. Oh my, we realized. They were tour-ons. And we were different from them. They were moving too quickly. They weren’t stopping to get out in the woods. They would never see that single, brilliant red leaf so artfully displayed upon that rock. We had joined the A.T. subculture without consciously choosing to do so. We felt proprietary toward the trail. We stood there on the observation deck, outnumbered by tour-ons, civilization weighing heavily upon us, when we received a sign of reassurance. Below us, from out of the woods, appeared Jim the Floating Gardener. It was two days and 20 miles since we last saw him, but there he was, still steadily hiking the Appalachian Trail. He wasn’t nearly as surprised to see us. Imperturbable, like the trail he was walking on. 
