A Quiet Walkway

One of the wonderful things about living near the Great Smoky Mountains National Park is the access to remoteness even close to busy thoroughfares and towns.

The quiet walkways along Hwy 441 over the mountain offer opportunities to escape the busy-ness of life. Yesterday the weather and light traffic offered such an opportunity to "escape" close to home.

Several quiet walkways are sprinkled throughout the Park. We chose the second quiet walkway just up from Sugarlands Visitor Center on Hwy 441. What is so interesting to us is how the 3 designated walkways are connected by man-ways rather than by maintained trails. 

 A few years ago, Chris and I accompanied family members up the Old Sugarlands Trail with the Rock House as our destination, but stopped for lunch on the huge boulders at the river near where the old highway crossed the river. At that time, the river was much fuller with water rushing over the large boulders. Today the water level was down significantly. I think we could have rock hopped across the river. It was fun coming from the other side of the river and seeing where we had spent time picnicking and boulder hopping.

 I love finding the old homestead stone walls! Obviously this wide path was once a main thoroughfare along the river.

 Listening to the rustle of leaves, chatter of squirrels and sounds of the river melts away all anxiety...until you encounter fresh bear scat! We figured most of the bears were spending their Thanksgiving in Gatlinburg rather than scooping up the abundant acorn mast. Scavenging in a dumpster is so much more rewarding for bears than searching out acorns and berries.

 Although it was a gray overcast sky most of the day, sometimes the fall leaves exploded with the sunlight. Just being in such overwhelming quiet beauty releases tension and anxiety. We walked down the wide maintained trail and where it intersected with the man-way along the river, we strolled a bit in both directions upstream and then downstream. A few blowdowns had us crawling, stooping, scooting and detouring.

 I love seeing the lichens' verdigris [green/gray] patterns on rocks. The rock serves as a stone canvas for the artistic patterns to develop. Mosses and lichens seem to enjoy each other's company!

 With the leaves off the trees, a clear view across the river allowed us to see the concrete abutment where the old highway crossed the river before the new Hwy 441 was rerouted. We decided to make a loop hike to return to the vehicle. Rather than return to the quiet walkway, we chose to find and follow the faint trail that passes across the flat bottom land, winds steeply up along the side of the ridge and emerges at the other end of the parking area. We had to navigate several blowdowns, but otherwise the trail was as I remembered it 7 or 8 springs ago before the fires.

 One last stop at another quiet walkway just past Sugarlands VC off the River Road! This trail was not as quiet because it was close to the highway. Nevertheless, it provided a pleasant stroll! Hmmm, I wonder what wildflowers grow along these lovely quiet walkways....