MT. LE CONTE LODGE, Great Smokies Park, Oct. 26, 1940—

This Le Conte Lodge, they say, is the highest mountain lodge east of the Rockies. It stands at 6400 feet. With one exception, it is the only place within the boundaries of the Great Smokies National Park where you can stay all night. And the only way to get up here is to walk or ride a horse.

The Lodge is open about seven months of the year. In winter it gets to 40 below up here, and the buildings lie deep in snow. The hottest they remember it being in summertime is 68, and the people who work here get so used to cool summers that they almost die when they go down to the valley heat of Gatlinburg, a mile below.

The lodge can put up 44 people. They charge $4 a day for room and two meals. In the three mid-summer months the place is full every night. But right now there aren’t so many. Unless somebody shows up late, I will be the lone guest tonight.

In the old days up here, all the beds were of balsam boughs. City fellers who walked up the mountain could go back home and tell of sleeping on a bed of brush and limbs.

But now this is a National Park, and you can’t even cut a twig from a tree. So visitors have to be content with nice modern mattresses and Hudson’s Bay blankets.

Some amazing people have walked into Le Conte Lodge. One 94-year-old man climbed the mountain on foot. An 83-year-old woman came up under her own steam. And another man past 80 walked up alone, got caught by darkness within 200 yards of the Lodge but didn’t know where he was, so lay down on the ground and slept all night. He walked on in after daylight, feeling fine.

BEARS DON’T HIDE

But let me tell you about my walk up the mountain. On the Alum Cave trail, by which I came, there is no place where you walk along an actual precipice that drops off straight down for thousands of feet. But I can say that if you are up here, and should suddenly find yourself in desperate need of a precipice, there are some places that would serve as excellent substitutes.

The first part of the trip, in the lower altitudes, is deep in a forest of trees and bushes. Rhododendron roots make a tangle that is absolutely tropical. You can’t see 10 feet into it, and this is where the bears used to hide when hunters got after them.

Of course, there is no hunting in the park now, so the bears don’t have to hide any more. The bears in the Smokies are black bears, a little smaller and a little faster on the bite than the Yellowstone bears.

The favorite bear story around here is about the woman tourist who got bit on her behind. She was just getting into her car after taking pictures of some cubs, when Mama Bear ran up and bit the lady right where she sits down. It made a gash three inches long 9 and an inch and a half deep. The doctor who tended it said it was a good thing the lady was fat.

They say there are at least 600 black bears in the park. But hikers on the trails needn’t worry about them. They’re not like the Yellowstone bears. They’ll run as soon as they see you. And if they don’t, I will.

STARES AT BEAUTY

After an hour and a half of walking, I had risen above the matted rhododendron vines, risen away from the bounding little rock-bedded mountain stream, risen to heights where the trail came out from among the trees and one could stand and look forever.

And it was then I realized for the first time in my life, that there can be as much majesty and stirring beauty in Eastern mountains as in the Rockies.

Many times on the trail I just stopped and stared and stared. I don’t know that I have ever seen a lovelier sight than the onward-stretching undulations of the haze-softened and color-splashed immensities of the Great Smoky Mountains.

WATCHED SQUIRRELS

Once, deep in the woods, I sat down on a rock to rest. It was quiet as the grave, and I had the feeling that I might almost have been the first man here.

Suddenly I heard a rattling in the trees. It startled me at first, and then I saw a flash of movement, and realized it was a squirrel running down a tree trunk.

I sat there real still. Soon there was another squirrel. And then another. They were odd little fellows—only half as big as the ordinary squirrel. Later I learned the mountain people call them “boomers.”

One of them walked a fallen log right up to within six feet of me, and sat there on his haunches, eating and staring.

I gave a little whistle. He stared harder. Then I whistled again. And several more times. And maybe you think I didn’t feel silly, and a little thrilled, too, when a bird started answering me. Yessir. I’d whistle, and the bird would whistle right back. It made me feel like Audubon or Thoreau or somebody.

That went on for five minutes. But finally I had to go. So I got up and said, “To hell with you, you lousy little squirrels and birds, you’d probably eat me up if you had a chance.”

Any savage squirrel that attacks me will get the toe of my boot right where he sits down, that’s what he’ll get. No squirrel is going to eat me up. I got up to the top of the mountain without anything else happening.

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