Jack Burns Lives!

Adios, East Tennessee

Little River, Great Smoky Mountains

When I left East Tennessee seven years ago, it was a year too late. I was excited to be headed west, not quiet as far west as I wanted, but anything west of the Tennessee River seemed like an improvement.

Most of my reasons for leaving were business and financially related, although I was convinced, and apparently rightly so, that Knoxville was a town going nowhere. A town suffocating under the crushing weight of over development, traffic and human greed. For a brief, fleeting moment, I naively thought Knoxville could become a special place known for its greenways, intellectual qualities and environmental awareness. Instead, it, like too many places, cast its lot with the growth machine and the bulwark of the community, the University of Tennessee, lead the way.

I’m told by a professor friend, things are now so bad at UT that the professors are going to have a “vote of no confidence” of the President to show their displeasure with the direction of the school. It seems that really important academic areas are to languish, so the University can fund more research into profit motivated boondoggle known as alternative fuels and its ever expanding athletic empire.

Sustainability, writing, music and art are taking a back seat to Fuel Cells and Football. But that’s what most people want, because most people are frankly ignorant. Hopelessly ignorant.

I do have many fond memories of this place, a beautiful landscape of rolling hills, forests, flowing rivers and that well known ancient Proterozoic uplift best known for its incredible diversity of flora and fauna covered by a wispy, smoke-like fog. I met wonderful people. Shared incredible moments with my wife and children on snowy days in the Smokies and in our cozy, Cape-Cod styled home near the University.

I remember our creeky wood floors. Jack Johnson’s ghost. Our neighbors. The large trees that surrounded the house swaying back and forth during storms. Quiet afternoons reading on my deck with Buster the cat and Chewie the dog. Baseball at Lakeshore Park. Swimming at Court South. Our Halloween party. Cross country races on Cherokee Blvd.

Climbing to Spence Field and Gregory Bald and exalting in the glorious, fall sunshine. And best of all, perhaps my most favorite memory, was a brief magical moment near Clingmans Dome. Sitting at 6600 feet on a snow covered path with my wife, surrounded by snow covered trees and icicles, I held her soft, sweet hands and gently but passionately kissed her while the afternoon sun warmed our bodies. The place was beautiful and was so the moment.

“Why leave,” you may ask.

Although we made some life long friends there, one of the biggest issues for me was the people. There’s quiet a passel of ignorant, mean rednecks. I generally like rednecks. Come from a long line of ‘em. But I don’t like mean ones that don’t have a lick of sense. And then you have Oak Ridge and its nasty nuclear power industry, and those gawd awful TVA coal fired plants all over the place. Dumb, mean rednecks, dirty air and nuclear weapons production sort of spoiled everything else.

Over the years, I’ve returned to the park on a handful of occasions, each time promising myself it would be my last. My brother-in-law and other friends would entice me, usually for backpacking, and I found the allure of the mountains too much to resist. Yet, each time I came away saying it would definitely be my last visit to the Smokies. As Abbey would say, people were “loving the park to death.” Too many people, deeply eroded trails, lines of cars stretching for miles and crowded campsites.

And compared to the west, I frankly found it boring.

How does a nature lover find the most biologically diverse park on the continent boring? Within nearly 800 square miles, there are over 10,000 different species. From the southern hardwood forests at 875 feet moving upward to the spruce-fir forests at 6643 feet along the 70 plus mile stretch of the Appalachian Trail, you’ll find the same amount of forest diversity as you would driving from Georgia to Maine. Over 100 native species of trees, 1500 flowering plants and over 230 avian species.

I reckon it’s just a case of “been there, done that.”

I find the east, in general, lacks the color of desert, even in the glorious springtime when the hillsides are covered by white, pink and red rhododendron, or in the more famous fall and its harvest colors. The Smokies lack the wide open expanses of the west. The grandeur of the Sierra Nevada or the Rockies. It’s heaven for a biologist, but I prefer the open spaces. The hot sun. Red rock. Cacti. Dust. And I prefer the diversity of people in the west. American Indian, Spanish, Mexican and Anglo. Cowboys and vaqueros. Saloons. Ghost towns. My own, romanticized and fictional view of things I refuse to disturb with historical facts I’ve buried away somewhere in the recesses of my bizarre brain.

Yes, I’m in love with the over romanticized, often fictionalized west of cowboys and Indians. The real history of Geronimo, the Texas Rangers, Comancheros, The Sioux, Puebloans, Kit Carson and Edward Abbey. The make-believe world of Cormac McCarthy, Woodrow Call and Hayduke.

And as was the case with Abbey, I find the Four Corners region has it all. Mountains, high desert, canyons, rivers, history. I can see golden aspen in the fall and snow capped 14,000 foot peaks. Red rock and cacti. It’s like no other place on earth.

I did, however, return to the Smokies this month, for what I feel certain is my last time. My brother-in-law was once again the instigator, inviting me to accompany he and his son on a loop hike in Elkmont, the first section of the park I explored back in the early ’90s.

As I walked out, via the Sugarland Mtn., Huskey Gap and Little River Trails, I had a different feeling than ever before. Enjoying the pleasure of hiking alone, it was quiet and in this quiet I said goodbye to the park. Thanked it for harboring me and for allowing me to cut my teeth on its trails. For sharing its clear, cool water and its bountiful diversity of life.

Returning to the crowded parking area, I turned around, looked back at the trail and said “goodbye,” figuring my absence was the best gift I could offer this special place. And with a quick turn of the key and the ignition of the engine, I drove forward, not looking back. Looking only ahead, leaving behind some bad memories but taking the good ones with me.