I have what can only be described as the world’s largest collection of bad intro hooks. This morning’s attempt went through about six versions before I gave up, grabbed the breakfast sandwich I could find, and just started walking.
The pancake line was already 500 people long by 8 a.m. The Anakeesta chairlift had a thousand people queued up. The cloudless sky — which is bad news for photography but good news for a drive through mountains — was telling me something. It was time to leave Gatlinburg.
Shift
My word for the year was shift, and I was already practicing it before I’d finished the coffee. The conditions against me: no clouds, too many crowds, a road that might be closed, January light in a bare deciduous forest that was not going to give me the fall color shots I had been picturing. The shift: be grateful for cool dry weather, a rental car, and freedom to go anywhere. Look for subjects in shade. Consider black and white. Make something out of what’s actually there.
I keep saying this and I keep having to relearn it: the scene in front of you is always more interesting than the scene you wish was there. The sooner you accept what’s actually happening, the sooner you start making something useful out of it.
Newfound Gap in the Snow
The road was open. I went through.
Newfound Gap Road in January in light snow is completely different from Newfound Gap Road in December in the dark, which is completely different from what it probably looks like in October when the leaves are doing everything. The Smokies layer. Every season is a different park.
I stopped several times on the way through. The waterfall pulloffs I’d sailed past the night before in a panic to reach Gatlinburg — stopped at those. The overlooks I couldn’t see in the dark — stopped at those. The light through bare trees in thin snow doing something interesting with the fog layer in the valleys below — stopped for that too.
It’s a long drive and worth every mile of it.
The Elk Field
Somewhere below the ridge on the way down into North Carolina I came around a bend and found what appeared to be an entire field of elk. Dozens of them, spread across the open meadow, close enough to the road that the scene immediately attracted a crowd of people who had apparently read none of the posted signage.
The signage says fifty yards. Fifty yards.
What was happening in front of me was considerably closer than fifty yards. Someone was attempting to feed one. Another person had gotten between the elk and the herd. A third was staging a selfie. I watched this from the car, from the correct distance, and said some things that I will not fully transcribe here. I kept a few of them in the episode because they paint an accurate picture of the experience.
Not everything has to be an Instagram moment. Some things just need to be left alone to be what they are. The elk — who were, I will note, genuinely spectacular, moving through the meadow in the cold afternoon light — did not need any help from the parking lot.
If you want to know more about what can go wrong when people don’t respect that fifty yards, search “elk incident” on YouTube. There is an abundance of educational content.
Franklin, North Carolina
I came down out of the mountains and ended up in Franklin, which is one of those towns I would have driven through without stopping in any other year of my life and will now remember specifically.
Known for gems and gemstones — this part of North Carolina sits on some of the richest gem deposits in the eastern United States, and the stores reflect that. There’s a ruby drop on New Year’s Eve instead of a ball, which is exactly right for a town with that kind of identity. It was 26 degrees. The Christmas decorations were still up. A fine art photography gallery called John McClean Photography was visible through the window and I made a note.
Dinner at the Chop House. Surf and turf for nineteen dollars — three shrimp and a sirloin — and a German non-alcoholic beer I’d had before and liked. The B&B where I was staying was a cottage off the main building on Harrison Avenue. I was going to introduce it properly but the phone battery hit ten percent and I wrapped instead.
Tomorrow: waterfalls between Franklin and Highlands. I’ve been promised they’re worth the drive.
