The Splendors of Autumn

This weekend we returned to the Great Smoky Mountains for our yearly pilgrimage. That is where we got engaged. It is also probably my favorite place on Earth. The timing of our visit was dictated by the presence of H's family at a conference in western Carolina this week. It just happens that this is PEAK season for autumn colors in the mountains. Surprisingly, this is the first time we have seen the mountains at peak. I must say, it surpasses expectation. I should clarify that the tops of the mountains were in full color while the valleys were only starting to develop autumnal hues. The resulting effect is that the higher one hiked, the more beautiful the setting. There were trails that were literally covered by bright red and yellow leaves. One had the feeling at higher elevations that the hike was a set from an Yimou Zhang film (think "Hero").

On the first day of our trip into the mountains we drove along the Blue Ridge Parkway for the first time (it never seems to go where we are headed when we are in the mountains). On the right I've given you a sample of the colorful views available from the roadside. We made our way ever so slowly (because of the views) to Bryson City, our adopted home in the mountains, where we had reserved a campsite. The forecast for the next day was not promising, 50% chance of rain, cool and breezy. That's the forecast for the valley which means that on the mountain it's probably going to be wet, cold, and windy. I told H that I expected to walk in the mountains all day unless there was a thunderstorm. As this was a frontal system, I did not expect rain to lead us astray. H grimaced and agreed to humor me within reason.

After a cozy night in the tent, we got started on Day 2 (our only day of hiking) by engaging in a lively debate in the car (as we drove through fog and drizzle on our way into the park) as to just which trail to do. We eventually decided to take advantage of the "foul" weather and do one of the more popular trails in the park. The logic was, from my end, that many of the fair weather hikers would not bother with the mountains today (probably in Gatlinburg eating cotton candy at Ripley's Believe or Not museum) and we'd have the hike mostly to ourselves. So, we decided to do the Alum Cave Trail. It is a VERY popular trail in the park because it has great views, a natural limestone arch, and all the paradigmatic Smokies experiences lumped into one 4.8 mi roundtrip hike. The trailhead is also right on the main road through the park.

Now, the argument against doing Alum Cave was precisely that one of the attractions is a set of stunning views. Visibility was severely limited on this particular day (see photo of cloud that would be view, left), so views would not be the deciding factor. Still, I wanted to see the park in a variety of weather conditions, and I expected that the lack of expansive vistas might focus our attention on some other beauties on the trail. I was not disappointed.

We hiked through mist and rain for most of the way up to Alum Cave. You might think that's unpleasant (H would probably say so), but the results were fantastic. The trail was often shrouded in mist, giving it a "hobbit-like" feel according to H (see picture of rhododendron canopied trail, right). Have a look also at what the bluffs just before Alum Cave look like in the cloudiness (left). Once we reached Alum Cave, which is actually just an overhang, we stopped for a while to eat some M&M's and rest while enjoying the misted seclusion. We debated whether to continue up to Mt. LeConte, another 2.5 miles up the trail, as I thought that the views might clear up later in the day, and also that while we had hiked halfway up anyway... H was having none of it. So, we decided to do another hike somewhere else later in the day, and down we went.

On the way down I decided to annoy Hannah by being obsessed with spotting salamanders in the stream. It wasn't explicitly to annoy her, but it did the job. I think the annoyance was mitigated partially by the fact that she was much better at spotting salamanders than I was. This minor joy gave way to affected boredom as she could not be bothered to point out yet another salamander to my feable eyes. Still, we managed to spend twice as long descending the mountain as we had in ascending as I insisted that we stop at nearly every accessible pool in the stream to look for salamanders. Why salamanders? Well, it turns out that the Great Smoky Mountains National Park is home to a startling diversity (and abundance) of the little critters. In fact, if you measure by total biomass, and salamanders are not large creatures, they outweigh the total biomass of birds and mammals combined in the park! They are also reclusive, often brilliantly colored, and some even secrete poisonous slime for protection. These are all things that endear wild creatures to little boys.

Thus my enthusiasm.

We found one salamander on the trail (H spotted it). I caught the little guy and held it up for H to photograph, but the camera was not up to the task of focusing on his small wriggling body. So, I put him down and waited for him to calm down, and then got a nice photo (about thirty digitally expendable out-of-focus photos later). That was the yellow one (pictured). In all we saw a dozen or so on the trip down. It's a great exercise I think in learning how to look at the stream. Once you know that there is an abundance of something, you start to see that abundance because you train yourself to seek it out. We walked all the way up the mountain having only seen one salamander, and that one only because it was running across the trail right in front of H. On the way down several groups passed us while we were scrutinizing some tiny pool in the stream, and no one asked us what we might have found. I guess they thought we were just fascinated by a mountain stream, which is okay, but the fact that it might be teaming with fascinating, visible critters may not have occurred to them because they could not immediately SEE what we might be looking at. The fact is that it's hard to spot a salamander while moving if you don't already know very well where and how to look: A salamander is no bear (not to say that people don't walk right by those obliviously as well).

I think that in general we have lost a great deal of our appreciation for learning to see the world around us. We, culturally, do not seem to realize that there is just too much around us for us to process all of it at any one moment, and thus that "seeing" is a learned skill, or art, unto itself. The fact is that when you take someone out of their element there will be things around them that they literally do not see because they have not learned to pay attention in that way. Generally we have lost the discipline and skill of paying attention, of seeing, the world around us in the ways that presume that the world around is explicitly that of salamanders, thunderstorms, and autumn colors rather than the world of cars, thermostats, electronics, and money. I would go so far as to say that the dullness that we have developed is not just a dullness to the "natural world" but a dullness to the sense of sight when it comes to interpreting even our new "built" environment. Science, I think, is or should be predominantly about developing precisely this skill, about learning to see things in ever greater detail. "Understanding" is just a way of seeing, of deciding what is important and what is not in a picture. Understanding physical mechanics is just seeing which forces are at work. Understanding ecology is seeing who are the agents in what "economy" in an ecosystem. These are all just pictures that we paint of the world, and all good science continually calls those pictures into question. It is an exercise in seeing. I will leave it at that for now.

I love the mountains.