Appalachians' north--south orientation. During the last ice age, as glaciers and ice sheets
spread down from the Arctic, northern flora all over the world naturally tried to escape
southwards. In Europe, untold numbers of native species were crushed against the
impassable barrier of the Alps and its smaller cousins and fell into extinction. In eastern
North America, there was no such impediment to retreat, so trees and other plants found
their way through river valleys and along the flanks of mountains until they arrived at a
congenial refuge in the Smokies, and there they have remained ever since. (When at last
the ice sheets drew back, the native northern trees began the long process of returning to
their former territories. Some, like the white cedar and rhododendron, are only now
reaching home--a reminder that, geologically speaking, the ice sheets have only just
gone.)
Rich plant life naturally brings rich animal life. The Smokies are home to sixty-seven
varieties of mammal, over 200 types of bird, and eighty species of reptile and amphibian--
all larger numbers than are found in comparable-sized areas almost anywhere else in the
temperate world. Above all, the Smokies are famous for their bears. The number of bears
in the park is not large--estimates range from 400 to 600--but they are a chronic problem
because so many of them have lost their fear of humans. More than nine million people a
year come to the Smokies, many of them to picnic. So bears have learned to associate
people with food. Indeed, to them people are overweight creatures in baseball caps who
spread lots and lots of food out on picnic tables and then shriek a little and waddle off to
get their video cameras when old Mr. Bear comes along and climbs onto the table and
starts devouring their potato salad and chocolate cake. Since the bear doesn't mind being
filmed and indeed seems indifferent to his audience, pretty generally some fool will come
up to it and try to stroke it or feed it a cupcake or something. There is one recorded
instance of a woman smearing honey on her toddler's fingers so that the bear would lick it
off for the video camera. Failing to understand this, the bear ate the baby's hand.
When this sort of thing happens (and about a dozen people a year are injured, usually
at picnic sites, usually by doing something dumb) or when a bear becomes persistent or
aggressive, park rangers shoot it with a tranquilizer dart, truss it up, take it into the
depths of the backcountry, far from roads and picnic sites, and let it loose. Of course by
now the bear has become thoroughly habituated both to human beings and to their food.
And who will they find to take food from out in the back country? Why, from me and Katz,
of course, and others like us. The annals of Appalachian Trail hikes are full of tales of
hikers being mugged by bears in the back country of the Smokies. And so as we plunged
into the steep, dense, covering woods of Shuckstack Mountain, I stayed closer than usual
to Katz and carried my walking stick like a club. He thought I was a fool, of course.
The true creature of the Smokies, however, is the reclusive and little-appreciated
salamander. There are twenty-five varieties of salamander in the Smokies, more than
anywhere else on earth. Salamanders are interesting, and don't let anyone tell you
otherwise. To begin with, they are the oldest of all land vertebrates. When creatures first
crawled from the seas, this is what came up, and they haven't changed a great deal since.
Some varieties of Smokies salamander haven't even evolved lungs. (They breathe through
their skin.) Most salamanders are tiny, only an inch or two long, but the rare and
startlingly ugly hellbender salamander can attain lengths of over two feet. I ached to see
a hellbender.
sean pound
(Sean Pound)
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