Smokys Serenade

Lest you get the impression the Indignant Citizen is a curmudgeon without a helpful or nice word about anything, let us focus for a moment on what is left of America’s natural beauty. Take, for example, the Great Smoky Mountains.

As the Indignant Citizen mentioned in an earlier post, he and his Smart & Beautiful Wife drove the Blue Ridge Parkway through the North Carolina portion of the Smokys before turning onto Highway 441, the Newfound Gap Road, and eventually encountering the Shimmering Port-A-Potty in the Valley known as the greater Gatlinburg-Pigeon Forge, Tenn., area.

Let it be known that the Smokys, when one is high up in them, are beautiful and awe-inspiring. The road through the Smokys offers stunning vistas around every turn. There are deep, densely-wooded valleys that bottom out in green carpets; smooth, tree-topped mountains rising into the haze and folded in behind one another as far as the eye can see; and above all, almost nothing else. No gas stations, no homes (or very few, anyway, we did see what appeared to be houses built into some hillsides but they were scattered and few), no restaurants, no outlet malls. Nothing. Even the occasional rest area with its bare-bones lavatory shack seemed like an intrusion.

It is nice to know places like this still exist in America—mile upon mile of wilderness. It’s easy to forget that they do. Growing up in the West, the Indignant Citizen took these vast areas of nature for granted. Intervening years spent in Chicago (now for the second time around) and New York City can leave one with the impression that man’s concrete reach has touched even the most remote parts of the country. Thankfully it has not and we have our predecessors to thank for that, at least in part. They recognized the importance of preserving open space from the country’s westward expansion. There’s even a Chicago connection, with Stephen T. Mather spearheading the creation of the National Park Service.

But back to the Smokys. Our drive started on a cloudy, cool day. We climbed into the clouds, and about a third of the way into the drive the fog was so thick we could barely see the lines on the twisting road. Occasionally we would round a bend and pop out of the fog for a moment, but the world around us was gray.

Then, as quickly as we were in it, we were out, confronted again with spectacular vistas (the road has pull-out points seemingly every quarter-mile, and each one is worth the stop). About the time we crossed over into Tennessee from North Carolina, we were hit by a dark and massive thunderstorm that forced most traffic off to the side of the narrow road, sent rivers of water and rock across the highway and dumped pea-size hail in a quantity sufficient to make the road slick and coat the sides of the hills in a winter-esque white.

The descent out of the mountains is quick, but the terrain takes its time flattening out. Not until just south of Lexington, Ky., does the landscape begin to yield to the glacially-smoothed topography familiar to most Flatlanders.

Something about the mountains is intoxicating. Perhaps it is the remoteness, the feeling that, once in them, one is disconnected from the world. Standing on the prairie, there is always the “out there,” the long thin line where the horizon meets the land. In the mountains, perspective is shortened—unless you’re on a peak, which is generally a temporary situation. In the mountains, there is only the here.