From the Publisher, February 2016

When I first moved to the Smokies, my wife and went hiking nearly every weekend. With only one infant child in tow, we would look forward to these all-day adventures, 8- or 9-hour treks to balds or waterfalls or secluded mountaintops that would leave us satisfied and exhausted by the time we made it back to the car to head home.

As more kids came and they got older, our hiking life grew more abbreviated. Don’t get me wrong, Lori and I spent plenty of time in the woods with our kids and they all love the outdoors. But as the oldest hit her teen years and the others aged up, there was serious competition for time. We still got our kids outside, but most times it was shorter hikes or family car camping trips instead of long treks to backcountry wilderness areas. Still fun and great family time, but just different.

I was thinking about that transition in “our hiking life”—sounds like a book title or an essay topic—while reading recent stories about the surge in visitors to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Seems the Smokies, which is the most visited national park in the country, is once again attracting record numbers of visitors—around 10 million annually—after a few years of decline. Park officials attribute several factors to the increase, but also admit that budgets have not kept up with the increased usage.

This situation hit home for me, literally. My youngest son is a senior in high school. He has a job, plays sports, and hangs out with friends. Again, he gets out to play in the woods, but it’s more often with his friends than with us.

But in a few short months, we’ll be looking for ways to fill time that previously was dominated by children. I’ve been semi-surreptitiously piling up hiking and camping ideas and books, mapping out two- and three-day cycling trips around the Smokies for Lori and me. I’ve thought about it often as a future without full-time kids at home looms just over the horizon: I love my kids, but I also look forward to spending time alone with that girlfriend who became my wife.

But I’m worried that the Smokies and that other great park in our region—the Blue Ridge Parkway (which is also seeing a surge in visitors)—will be challenged as they try to maintain the visitor experience. The terrible truth is that of all the things our leaders choose to spend money on, some of our most precious national treasures are being pushed to the bottom of the list.

This is one of the best seasons to enjoy the wildness that makes the Smokies so unique. The crowds are gone, and so it’s easier to get up close and personal with the backcountry. It’s also a good time to snuggle up with a laptop and dash off a letter to those who make decisions about park budgets and such, reminding them of how these great places hold a special place in your heart.

— Scott McLeod, publisher