Mt. Cammerer

Well, I noticed today that my collection of Smoky Mountain photography is reaching an elevated stage of fullness that is anything but parsimonious. Electronic folders bursting with hundreds of images designated only by the fractious prefix “IMG_….” ; leaving no sense of their depiction, only a relation from the general title of the folder in which they are nestled, waiting for a quietus from anonimity; a name, a specific name, ANY name to identify – but there are so many now: too many.

My fault, naturally, but I’ll leave it to memory and the hope of cerebral permeance to keep up with the specifics on each one; heck I don’t think that even Rain Man could remember all the details.

Sunday past was a decent trip to Mt. Cammerer, a peak in the Smoky Mountains, somewhere in the neighborhood of five thousand feet. My father and I started with the spackling of dawnlight to try and avoid the ravages of humidity that thrust quickly upon a body in the denseness of trees and leaves and forest. It can be suffocating in the mountain lowlands and an early start is a minor displacement of the inevitable sweat-fest, especially as the sun melts through the canopy.

The single best method to maintaining partial comfort is to maneuver thyself in close proximity to a stream. Cooling breezes blow a bit of the stream’s chill in your direction. A momentary relief, but unfortunately Cosby Creek here is only encountered in the first few miles of trail pounding. The hike progresses away from it up the watershed, a pity, for the light breeze is soon missed and the echo of the stream fades to a delicate murmur the higher up the ridgeline you progress.

As the terrain began the steep rise that winds the path upward a crossroads trail signs prepared us for the abandonment of the current languor of brisk walking. Mt Cammerer 5.2 miles. It never sounds very distant at first, but once the grade takes hold and the forest wraps the shroud of humidity and I take extra time with sidetrips and crosscountry forays and the camera…that bloody camera; the time gets to tickin’…

After two and a half miles of switchbacks and verdant hemlock groves the trail reaches a saddle in the upper ridge known as Low Gap. This is the top of the mountain, technically, although it’s still rugged uphill to the peak. From this juncture the trail follows the Appalachian Trail west to Mt. Cammerer. Here’s a quick peek at a chunk of the AT:

Still almost three miles to the tower and I couldn’t shake a group of gnats feeling the need to perform kamikaze dives into the corners of my eyes. Thankfully nary a single little bugger struck ocular paydirt, else I would have trudged the next few miles with what would have felt like a canoe rolled into the recess of my eye. My shirt was drenched with sweat from the burdensome humidity. Northward a bank of clouds began easing in and we were enveloped in a white mist – cloudwalking the AT in an ethereal shroud of what was likely an acidic haze of pollution, for the Great Smoky Mountains are unfortunately one of the (actually I think THE) parks most burdened with pollution. Has to do with prevailing winds sweeping southward from Pennsylvania and Ohio carrying noxious air pollution from the industrial matrix thereabouts; once it all hits the Tennessee valley the mountains shore up as a natural barrier to hold it in place, doing themselves in at the same time. They say the clouds that float the highlands are like vinegar – overly enriching the nitrogen content of the soil and causing an accelerated erosion of the diverse flora and fauna. And it’s only getting worse.

These thoughts burden me much more than the trivialities of heat and gnats and slickworn treeroots in the trail. I felt witness to a slow death – a downright murder with no abeyance in grasp to reverse these effects save for the unthinkable radical culture change it would take – but that’s yet another tale…

Finally we made near the the journey’s pinnacle high in the thrashing scrub of mountain laurel and rhododhendron just beyond my father is the top of the historic stone fire tower:

Nearing the tower I was able to get a decent glance eastward from where we had travelled. The haze subsiding just enough to diffuse the sunlight through the hanging gauze:

And of course there’s the tower to mark the end of the trail. A splendid structure rebuilt about ten years ago to restore the original that has stood on this blustery peak since the late 1930’s when it was constructed stone by stone by the CCC.

Stepping on to the tower deck one would expect a grand view, although the limitations of the burgeoning storm were creating mere spots of observation through the clouds. I could almost see to the Blue Ridge Mountains, but I could absolutely hear the thunder waiting to buffet the tower and its deckshackled denizens. The wind began heavy swirling and soon there was nothing but thickened cloudbank in every direction; it’s a feeling of standing on a distant precipace of heaven and facing an eternal void, except in this particular void I began to see the sparks of lightning.

Soon the torrent struck, and fortunately for us we managed to clink up the rusted latch on the door and take shelter inside. At first the door felt locked, but how? There was no keyhole nor lock so a little hard nudge did the trick beautifully. And the electricity burned the air, and the rain slashed a small tree in every direction conceivable and we took it all in from the inside of the tower, surrounded on all sides by windows and I asked the padre, “Did you happen to see a lightning rod on this thing,” and he sort of laughed and said “No,” so I turned away slowly and prepared for death. 1.21 gigawatts baby, waiting to run the biometric distance from my head to toe, it had to be coming, had to be. But it didn’t, not even close; but a spectacular show indeed.

Allright, that’s enough for today, it’s getting too hard to make a decent entry here at work. Maybe someday I’ll listen to Chris and get the Internet at home…or maybe not – it would hafta help with spelling and content errors in the ye olde blog though…oh well….off to the forest (and an excess of more photos).