For four years I’ve been trying to get to the Great Smoky Mountains
National Park and to write some masterful columns about the astounding
manner in which Nature splattered her contours and evolutions over this
part of the globe.
But I monkeyed around and monkeyed around, and the first thing I knew
here was President Roosevelt down here dedicating the thing, and
stealing all my glory.
But I just figured, well, the mountains are still here and the words are
still in the dictionary, so I might as well come on anyway and compose a
little deathless literature on the Smokies, even if Mr. Roosevelt did
beat me to the draw.
So here we are in Gatlinburg, the north entrance to the great park.
Gatlinburg once consisted of five families. But today, thanks to tourist
money, it is an amazingly charming little city, oozing with handicraft
shops and tasteful inns and lovely stone houses and saddle horses and
pretty girls in jodhpurs.
Gatlinburg lies in a cup, and low wooded mountains rise on every side,
and a little river runs behind the town, and the main street goes a
little uphill and around a couple of bends, and it is all just like
you’d want a mountain resort to be.
Right now is the peak of the fall color season, and the mountains are
aflame with red and yellow and green, and anybody who can see them
without some kind of a gladness at being alive must be a dull soul
indeed.