CLINGMAN'S DOME

And then we turned round, and saw the tops of clouds for the first time. They’re a grey wool-like fog that move ghostly around and through mountains and over the paved path we just walked. They’re cool and tasted of dew, smelt clean and fresh and new like that of another planet, like only 6,000 feet could. We looked out as far as the clouds let us, and weren’t unhappy where they didn’t.

Clingman’s Dome is a over a mile (6,643 feet) above sea level and over a sea of grey and green deciduous trees and conifers. Just before reaching this height, we crossed the Appalachian Trail where I picked a granite stone souvenir. The paved trail ends at an elevated, spiraled walkway that leads to a circled lookout platform---unchanged from the day it was made, constructed of brown- and tan-pebbled cement. Spruce-fir forest covers the mountains peaking and rolling through clouds panoramically, offering us sky views of Tennessee and North Carolina at cloud level. We took our time.

WATERFALLS

Waterfalls. Every thousand yards gushed a waterfall; brooks, falls, rapids, steep mountain sides sliding clear water towards the Mississippi. Water rushed over and around rocks---stones to gigantic boulders (smooth and round the old rocks, rigid and square the young). Tiered stone steps climbed up under and beside each falls, making it easy for novice hikers to get close. The cool mist must have been refreshing to the Cherokee or hiker before me who breathed hard up to see these falls.

The Laurel Falls is one of the Great Smoky Mountains’ most popular attractions. About a mile of well-travelled, slope-sided dirt path winds to the falls. Its condition reminded me of many high-traffic trails found in urban metro parks. Tree trunks and rocks were graffitied with initials, hearts, dates, and scratches of claiming rights to experiences--- articulations of unsophisticated and extroverted behavior, or some insecurity. Nevertheless, the falls rushed loud and fast when we reached a small wood bridge that crossed the fallen water. The temperature dropped when we walked up and we were hit again by mist. The falls fell at least a hundred tiered feet at twenty-five feet wide. You can climb some rocks down a ways to get a better shot. There were several hikers there one week before the high season began in May. Get there the earlier, the better.

BLACK BEARS

Some 1500 black bears live in the Smoky Mountains. We saw none. Some guy leaning on a barbed wire fence looking at wild horses at Cade’s Cove told us that a momma bear and cubs were sighted just around the bend; supposedly, when we got there, the ranger drove them off with a stick. A volunteer passerby on the Laurel Falls path warned us to be careful, that there’d been bear sightings all day. We saw crawling paths up and down cliffs, and even a fake paw print in the mud—a curled palm and four thumb prints—but no bears. I looked so hard I began to see bears: I took a large, dead black tree stump under a thicket of Rhododendrons to be a feeding male. Bears were sighted on the four-mile horseback trail according to our Wellington-booted, sleeveless Tennessee guide—but nothing. By the end of the week we began believe that warning out-of-towners of bear sightings was a running local joke, that it just couldn’t be helped, that they had to say it—because it was so easy.