Great Smoky Mountains National Park
Few mountains anywhere in the world are more aptly named than the Great Smokies. Rank upon rank of smoothly rounded ridges recede toward the horizon like shadowy silhouettes, their contours blurred during the summer months by an ever-present haze, the product of incalculable quantities of vapor exhaled into the air by the luxuriant mantle of forest that covers these well-watered slopes.
Time has gentled the ancient Smokies (they are among the oldest mountains on earth), softening their outlines as erosion works its magic. Yet the heights are still impressive: 20 peaks rise to elevations of more than 6,000 feet. Tallest of all is Clingmans Dome, near the very center of the park, at 6,642 feet.
On the heights are forests that seem strangely out of place in the South, a touch of Maine that is a remnant and reminder of the bygone Ice Age. During the thousands of years in which the northern part of the continent was locked in the grip of ice, the climate here was much cooler than today. As the glaciers advanced, cold-loving evergreens gradually extended their range farther and farther to the south. Then as the Ice Age came to an end and the climate warmed, these forests receded toward the north, except on the mountain slopes, where they found the cool, moist growing conditions they require. And there they remain to this day, covering the ridgetops with the year-round greenery of red spruce and Fraser fir.
Dampness is pervasive on these heights: showers are always imminent, fog a constant companion. Moss grows everywhere, and the wood sorrel spreads its delightful blossoms over the forest floor. The calls of winter wrens and the scolding of red squirrels, wildlife more typical of Canada and New England than of the South, echo through the trees. Otherwise only the sighing of the wind interrupts the silence.
Spring on the summits is brief, summer is damp and cool, and autumn is almost nonexistent. By October the highest elevations have already felt frost, and the first icicles are forming on rocky cliff tops. Through November and early December the weather is indecisive: one day it is warm and hazy, the next day a howling wind pulls a shroud of clouds across the peaks, and on the third morning the trees glisten with a coating of rime. Finally the snows begin.
Even this far south, winter stakes out a claim, and often does so with force. Storms carry moisture hundreds of miles northward from the Gulf of Mexico and dump it on the Smokies. At lower elevations a cold, drizzly rain sometimes falls for days, feeding the streams until their roar fills every valley. On the ridges the moisture falls as snow, sometimes in big, wet flakes but often in fine, stinging, wind-driven granules. When the storms pass, warm Gulf air is replaced by frigid blasts howling their way southward from the interior of Canada. The trees moan under the assault of the wind. Clouds rip through the gaps, limbs snap in the gusts, and temperatures plummet, sometimes reaching -20°F in January. During these bursts of Arctic fury it seems as if the ice ages have once again returned, if only for several days or weeks. Finally toward mid-February warm spells become more frequent. But winter does not give up easily at these elevations. Though spring has been creeping up the slopes since late February or early March, it does not scale the summits until May.