A Smoky Mountain Jaunt

Sunday in the Great Smoky Mountains started brilliantly with warm edges of fluid sunshine knifing calmly through the leafless canopy; heating patches of forest floor just long enough to beckon pale green shoots of trillium and other wildflowers from their winter slumbers – life emergent from a lifeless covering of decaying humus.

The early hours had been spent tediously off -trail hiking the steep upslope of a boulder-strewn mini valley between two massive ridges of the Bull Head Mountain. The time spooled achingly slow as we wound our way to the point where the purity of hiking transforms abruptly to the tenacity of climbing.

Climbing in the Smokies is more often than not a manageable endeavor; something that doesn’t have to involve talc-covered hands grasping at miniscule crevices in a vein-throbbing-in-the-forehead effort to hoist one’s full weight to the next ledge – all by the pinky and ring fingers. No, here there are plenty more ways than one to skin the mountain cat. You have to be prepared for a different kind of agony though – one that involes slithering through densely tight thickets of mountain laurel, a tough-as-nails shrub that thrives steadfastly in any space of soil it can grasp between the rocks.

I’ve been friends with the laurel for a long time; best friends really since it is also what thy sweaty palms grasp when making the climb from rock to rock; the laurel understands my need to give a hard tug before fastidiously committing a labored pulling of the whole body to the outcropping above – it’s sure as hell not fun if the roots aren’t anchored like steel traps and the branch tears from the trunk and you find yourself flailing like posseseed chimp for the nearest handhold (better hope there IS one.) The effort does bear fruit of satisfaction though, usually I find perch that offers an unblocked vista towering well above the lower canopy – except of course on Sunday I found such a locale, but well: no damn camera. Such is life. More reason to return on another warm breeze soon.

Eventually I squirmed to lower elevations and made my way to a well trodden path in hopes of heading out a very thin sliver of ridge near the Mt. Leconte trail. The sky remained cobalt clear hardly cold, although my blood was warm and pulsing from earlier. The stream up the trail gushed easily with its trancing gurgles. I had the camera this time:

The trail was smoothly sloping, but full of gnarled roots at the bases of hemlock growing trailside. The roots are worn smooth with an ancient sheen from the thousands of travelers up some of these more popular trails over the years. Ahead I see the spine of the ridge emerge over the rise:

It has been many a moon since the last time I crept over these rocks. This ridge is known as keyhole ridge for a small hole in the rock face that shoots straight through. You can just make it out if you can see the blue haze of the far ridge shining from beyond:

It took another twenty minutes to loop around to the point of entry to the scraggly trail over the keyhole. And what did I find? Park Service had closed off the section – Peregrine falcon nesting site. $20,000 smacker fine if you stick one toe past the sign; the peregrine is endangered and having a tough time recovering in the Blue Ridge region. I was glad though, at least they HAD the sense to close it off, although I pondered on the amount of fools that surely had transgressed the boundary. At that exact moment I heard the high screech in the distance of one of the Peregrines flowing smoothly in the (what was fast becoming heavy) wind.
The sky once so blue had turned instantly. This is the way in the mountains:

Not this time. But someday. The rain smacked in cold beads against the world as I pushed down the trail towards the roads of man. The temperature drop was quick and extreme, my hands belied warmth as I wriggled my stiffened digits. Somewhere high on the mountain I could just hear a falcon whispering to another…