Great Smoky Mountains National Park - Memories of Long Ago

Man too has left his mark on the landscape. When the national park was established, humans had lived in these mountains for many centuries. First to come were the Indians and then, two centuries ago, the first white settlers arrived. The mountain people lived quietly, maintaining themselves on small farms and gathering what they could from the land. Later, timber companies removed vast tracts of the original forest.

In nature, however, such setbacks are only temporary. Trees have returned to the abandoned fields and cutover tracts, so that these areas now support vigorous young forests. In valleys and on rugged slopes that escaped the loggers, even some of the towering monarchs of the original forest remain.

Though the years have been few since this healing began, traces of man's handiwork have become cherished treasures rather than wounds. Embankments ascending wooded valleys are remnants of old roads or the railroad beds from logging days. Stone walls mark the boundaries of former croplands and pastures. Where apple trees cling stubbornly to life in the forest, they reveal the locations of vanished orchards. Here and there are the crumbled foundations of houses and barns, often surrounded by a few tenacious shrubs or garden flowers, especially daffodils, that speak of simple pride in home and hearth.

In a few park locations, however, it is possible to savor the rural landscape of pastures, farmhouses, churches, and country stores, and to imagine a way of life, as they existed two generations ago. Best known by far of several such historical areas is Cades Cove, a broad, fertile valley hemmed in by mountains. Pastures and croplands still stretch across the valley slopes, revealing broad vistas of farmlands and forested mountains. Cattle range over the pastures; log cabins and weathered barns, white churches and simple cemeteries, dot the roadsides.

At first glance Cades Cove seems to be a living community. But no one has lived here since the 1950's, though it is only at dusk that this becomes apparent. No lights appear in the cabins of barns. No conversations drift through the warm, still air. No gospel hymns sound from the churches. Except for the lowing of cattle, there are no sounds of rural life. The mood of the place is almost elegiac, yet there is joy in the confidence that its past will remain untouched. Elsewhere across the lowland, up the narrowing creek valleys, and on to the high ridges, the human past is disappearing. The returning forests are slowly, inevitably covering the tracks of man and returning the ancient mountains to the natural inhabitants.

Imagine Cades Cove as it might appear on a warm, muggy evening in July. In the distance, high above Thunderhead Mountain, sunlight is reflected, appropriately, from a lone thunderhead, creating a suffused glow that softens the features of everything it touches. It is the time of shadows, neither daylight nor darkness.

Along the edges of the forest a few quail continue their bob-white whistles. Insects hum in the still air; locusts buzz in the sweetgum trees. Occasionally the cloud trembles with lightning, and low rumbles reverberate across the valley. A crow caws from an old maple as if signaling for silence. Darkness thickens now; it is becoming difficult to make out the shapes of the black Angus cattle on the pastures. Bats fly past in endless, veering circles. Somewhere far off in the forest whippoorwills are beginning to call.

There are more shapes in the meadows now. Gradually, as if materializing from nothingness, dozens of deer are emerging from the forest to feed. Within the forest, too, activity increases. Soft sounds await those willing to stop and listen; raccoons and skunks exploring, foxes searching for mice, rabbits nibbling nervously in the starlight, opossums trundling through the undergrowth. Gradually the whippoorwills grow quiet, their plaintive calls replaced by the hooting of owls. Over the mountains the atmosphere is cooling, and the lightning finally flickers one last time.

After midnight and toward the small hours of the morning the mountains float on a sea of mist. In the darkness, fireflies drift through the undergrowth and across the fields, glowing like particles of primordial energy. There is an eternal quality about the night, an evocation of the wilderness heritage that endures. Sanctuary has been provided, and the great rounded ridges, softly luminous in the starlight, belong to the ages. Here a remnant of lost, wild America still lives on.