From the managing editor, October 2018

Maybe it’s just me. Do others raised in these mountains forget what trails they’ve hiked? Do you lose track of which parts of these beautiful ridges you’ve seen up close and personal?

That question popped into my brain as I read the feature on page 84 about Tim Line, the man who spent much of his life managing LeConte Lodge. I read Butch McCade’s great story and the first question that came to mind was, I’ve been atop Mt. LeConte, right?

I have, but it was decades ago.

Exactly which year I topped LeConte is fuzzy, though I know it was sometime between fifth and eighth grades. A classmate’s family was making the hike and I was invited along.

I doubt it was when we were in the fifth grade; I just can’t imagine Jim’s dad thinking it was fun to take 11 year olds on that strenuous hike.

We were probably sixth or seventh grade.

Nonetheless, I remember the hike up the mountain wore me out, and I was never as happy to be somewhere as I was to reach the top and to buy a sandwich from the concessionaire who runs the lodge atop the peak. It was a chicken salad sandwich, and it tasted so good after the hike up.

I don’t know which route we took. I believe it was Alum Cave, based on photographs of the current trails, but for the life of me, I do not know with certainty.

Is it like that for others who grew up here in the Smokies and saw the mountains and trails as an extended back yard?

Riding my 10-speed bicycle on the Blue Ridge Parkway was just the thing to do as I grew up near Oteen in east Buncombe County. I would pedal as far north as I could on the Parkway towards Craggy Gardens, then I would eat half of the sandwich I had brought and drink some water. Then I would turn the bicycle back south—which was downhill—and take off. I am confident saying those Parkway rides were the only times I was able to get my bike all the way up into 10th gear. I remember going too fast, forcing myself to slow a bit as the bike shot down the Parkway towards Oteen.

We did family hikes, as well. One of my mother’s cousins worked for the National Park Service as a landscape architect, and we often went hiking. But where did we go? I have no idea.

It’s like trying to remember where my aunt and uncle went when I joined them on Sunday afternoon drives. Now, it couldn’t have been that far, because we left after church and got back before dark. 

I went along with them because my cousin Kent was with them, and he wanted company. Kent and I are the same age, and we always played together on summer days in the early 1970s. 

We played Army out in the woods, digging makeshift foxholes or hiding in ravines that were covered with downed pine trees.

We played in Uncle Ellis and Aunt Edith’s yard, rolling down their grassed embankment or on the swing near the driveway.

But where did we go on those Sunday drives? I remember Cherokee, for certain. Maybe we went as far north as Boone, and as far south as Travelers Rest, South Carolina. I know for certain that I made at least a dozen Sunday afternoon drives with them and with Kent, and it involved a relaxed drive and stopping at a roadside restaurant for lunch.

But where did we go? I do not know.

Do families take Sunday drives anymore?  

I recall hikes in Transylvania County, North Carolina, and a meal at the Pisgah Inn on Mt. Pisgah, and at the Mt. Mitchell State Park Restaurant, which must be one of the highest elevation restaurants in the country as it sits near the top of the highest peak east of the Mississippi. Yes, there are taller mountains in the country, but how many of them have restaurants up near the peak? Echo Lake Lodge in Colorado is higher, of course, but I would have to think there aren’t many restaurants operating above 6,000 feet.

I remember camping near Rosman, North Carolina, and watching as my older brothers took off on week-long, deep-forest camping excursions into the Smokies. I never got to go because they said I was too young.

I’d like to climb Le Conte again. I’d like to head out for a week of campfires and tent sleeping. I’d like to rappel off Devils Courthouse again, though I understand such activities are no longer allowed.

I’d like to do all of this again, if my knees were new. Wouldn’t you?

—Jonathan Austin