A rainy morning in the Smokies.  Anne is at work.  If the weather were otherwise I would be exploring some patch of forest or field in search of birds before going to Bryson City to shop for groceries.

Anne was off work yesterday and we made a hike along the crest of the Smokies.  Starting at the Clingmans Dome parking lot we walked the paved “tourist trail” to the spiral tower at the summit.  On the border at 6643 feet elevation, “Clingmans” is the highest point of Tennessee, but not of North Carolina.  Mt. Mitchell, east of Asheville, has that honor at 6684 feet elevation.  Still, it and the ridge of the Great Smokies are impressive and always worth visiting.  More, it is never hot there, even during the current heat wave in the south.  Before starting the walk we debated what to wear and decided to put on a light jacket over a long sleeved shirt.  We wore short pants to produce lovely goose bumps. 

The view from the overlook at the parking area was grand.  The vista was largely clear but numerous clouds raced along above and below.  Reaching the ridge line, clouds arched up and slipped across through the balsams.  The movement of sunshine and shadow seemed to put the landscape below into motion, much as waves give life to the sea.

Already at nine a.m. there were a dozen cars in the lot, and people were beginning the one kilometer ascent.  Most had found shirts or jackets to throw on, but some ventured boldly in T-shirts.  Families, couples, and a school group ventured up, challenged by the steep slope, the gusty wind, the chilly and thin air, and the strange shifting light illuminating stark rock and the dark foliage of the spruce and fir trees. 

We listened for birds and heard and saw waxwings and siskins giving their thin twitters.  Winter wrens and veery gave their lovely songs along the trail seeming out of place this far south.  We chatted with a Louisiana couple at the end of the trail who told of their son studying ornithology. 

Before we reached the spiral tower at the summit the mountain had become permeated by cloud, so we did not bother to climb the structure.  Instead we stepped off the pavement and walked a few yards to the Appalachian Trail which follows the great ridge of the Smokies for some seventy miles from the Fontana Dam to Davenport Gap.  Clingmans Dome is the high point of the entire Appalachian Trail.   

We walked southbound  to enjoy vistas and the mountain flora and fauna along the narrow ridge.  The trail generally descends going away from Clingmans Dome, but climbs to pass across lesser summits including Mount Buckley.  The trail is well worn, eroded, and rocky in places, but much smoother than that in the northern high peaks where glaciers have recently scrubbed away much of the soil.  Here it passes through patches of thick spruce-fir forest and across openings filled with blueberry and  thornless blackberries bushes and small mountain maple and mountain ash trees.  The blackberries were in full bloom while their cousins in the valleys are already ripening fruit. 

Once away from the paved path we became part of a different and much smaller group.  We exchanged greetings with a day hiker at a trail junction close to the summit and then saw no one until we reached the Double Spring Gap Shelter where we lunched.  There we found four section-hikers also stopped for a meal.  The weather had deteriorated.  The ridge was enveloped in fog and the trees collected the mist and dropped it upon we hikers.  Fearing an afternoon thunderstorm, we decided to turn around rather than continue to one more summit, Silers Bald. 

While eating we chatted with a couple only a decade younger than we, who were making a four-day hike.  He was from Florida and she was from Colorado.  They rendezvoused here in the Southeastern mountains. 

Returning to the Dome, we got our exercise climbing about a thousand feet.  The clouds opened up briefly to give us grand views of Mount LeConte on the Tennessee side of the Smokies Ridge and the numerous smaller ranges in between.  On the Carolina side we saw the Thomas Ridge descend to Bryson City and Fontana Reservoir.  This is named for Will Thomas, the “white chief of the Cherokee” and colonel of Thomas’s Confederate Legion that defended this part of Dixie from the northern aggression.  Part of his unit was victorious in one of the last battles of the war.  Receiving a request for surrender from the Union commander, but at the same time receiving word of General Lee’s surrender at Appomattox Courthouse, the confederate ironically surrendered his troops instead.

Although we were blessed with a window of clear skies at the end of our walk, clouds poured onto the parking lot when we stepped from the trees.  Rain began as we pulled out and followed us all the way back to our motorhome.  It rained all night and through this morning.  Still, we enjoy our time here even in the summer rainy season.