The wind roars overhead with the constancy and deepness of a Niagra Falls, news reports suggesting wind speeds of 40mph with gusts of 60. In the canopy of the forest, boughs of trees sway and bend out of sync. The trail narrows and disappears under a stream of brown leaf litter that camouflages protruding rock land mines and exposed root trip wires. I fall up the mountain trying to keep my eyes both down on the footing and up towards any overhead booms that might be launched my way by angry winds.

We stop to talk to a couple that have stopped for a snack to discuss strategy. They are the only other people hiking in all of the Smokies (as far as I can tell) and that includes elk and black bears. They report that a tree fell between them on the hike up. Yet they bravely persist.

Brooke and I trudge up the trail gaining some 2200 feet of elevation in  five and a half miles. I work up a sweat despite the cool weather, the sun more of a background glow than a source of heat, while repeating Les Stroud’s mantra to myself: you sweat, you die. The Russell Field trail finally joins up with the famed Appalachian trail. We take shelter in an official trail shelter, a welcome respite from the wind.

We have a decision to make. If we continue on, we have eight miles to go and more elevation; if we go back, five. Its already after one in the afternoon. We started late not because we are lazy but because we had to replan and reroute to the west side of the park due to the Chimney top fires that have shut down access to the rest of the park.  We are averaging a little over two miles an hour. No brainer, as much as i hate out and backs, we have to go back or risk hiking at night and having Brooke’s car Foxy Roxy locked behind chained gates.

  

Our downhill speed improves despite ice walking on slippery brown leaf litter that takes me down once and Brooke four times. I never snicker once maintaining complete reserve as a concerned parent must (in all fairness, she has the lead so I can learn from her mistakes). A few trees still wear a dull red blouse of late fall leaves, but most stand bare naked to the wind. We missed leaf peeper season, and made it just in time, judging by all the brown leaf litter on the trail, for leaf pooper season.

Some four hours later, we are in fact out of the woods. We may not have seen great views or bears or the plant life in its full glory. We may not have made the full loop. But we stomped our feet on the real Appalachian trail damnit. We did.

—- a week earlier

—- monday 5 pm

After the hike, we head back to our apartment. When we get back to the visitor center just south of Gatlinburg, the smoke is worse than before. Brooke dons a black nose and mouth covering to keep out the bad air. We head up to our apartment where the air noticeably clears.

—- monday 9 pm

The wind is insane. Gusts pound our third floor room and the whole room shakes swaying back and forth like we are in  a mild earthquake that repeats every couple of minutes. The chimney vent amplifies the sound. The windows rattle. Power flickers on and off. The cable TV goes out. I imagine the satellite dish frisbeeing off into the stratosphere.

I read aloud from my digital book “The Dorito Effect” to provide entertainment. The power dies. It comes on a minute later. I stop reading and plug in the phone in case i have to use it as a flashlight later.

—- mon 10  pm

Someone is pounding on the door. That cant be good. “We have to evacuate” shouts the voice from behind the door. I open it, “fire dept says we have to evacuate now.” “Where to?” I ask. “The ski lodge.” We saw the ski lodge on the way up. It isn’t really that far away.

Brooke and i speed pack in a few minutes and rush our belongings out to the car. As if on queue, the rain starts. On the other side of the building, the sky glows pink. I walk to the ledge and look down the mountain. I can see fires burning and not very far away. I snap a few pictures.

The wind is still gusting and the rain is coming down hard. We head out the driveway around a fallen tree that blocks the other lane. I start down the hill. Cars coming up hill flash their lights and stop by my window. The rain smacks my face when I roll down my window to talk. “You can’t get down the hill, all the roads are blocked by trees.” I believe them as I serpentine through debris looking for a turn around.

—- tues 12am

Back in our apt. The rain is heavy and the wind seems to be blowing the other way, at least for now. The wind rocks the building. Brooke checks the progress of the fire. I sleep on the couch near the window for the same reason.

We hunker down for the night. I think hunkering down is the same thing you do on any other night, just with trepidation. All things considered, I sleep pretty sound.

—- tues 10am

We load up the car again. I can see fires in about the same place as last night still with a pink glow. A fog covers the landscape down the hill for as far as I can see. I’m not sure if this is real smoke or fog smoke the mountains are named for.

Brooke drives. We see incredible wind damage: downed trees, trees laying across power lines, debris everywhere, even street signals turned sideways. Brooke quickly moves past a fallen tree held up over the road by stretched out power lines.

As we descend, we come to smoldering patches of woods, the ground ashen and still smoldering; then burnt or burning structures: an car that looks like it has been fire bombed, an exploded propane tank with a flame coming out the top, a melted shipping container, the ashen skeletons of rental street dune buggies that just yesterday Brooke had commented on how cute they were, the Chapel of Love burnt to its foundation except for what look like some stairs, and yes, hillbilly golf, my one memory of a trip forty years earlier that I had vowed to play this time in patronage to kitsch and some weak compulsion, like the urge to watch “Sharknado” when the only disbelief that you have to suspend, is the disbelief that someone could actually make such a movie.

The streets are empty, the town completely abandoned except for an occasional emergency vehicle that sirens by as we drive through the thick smelly unbreathable air and an army of State Troopers discussing strategy in a parking lot. We pass road blocks, then a Red Cross shelter with dozens of people standing about looking towards the post-apocalyptic Gatlinburg that was once their town.

As we leave this tragic scene behind, I feel that one long moment of being overwhelmed  as I try to text home the message “We are ok”.

Brooke and I have the best seat in the house. The house is the Blue Ridge Mountains; the seat, a slab of rock at the bottom of a recessed cliff face underneath a seventy foot overhang and behind Douglass falls munching on protein bars and taking pictures.

We cant dawdle. We fight the clock and the fading afternoon. We started late having spent the morning fleeing the Gatlinburg fires. Already 3 pm at the turnaround point, we need to hike over 4 miles to get back to the car. We cant ask for a better late November day: warm, sunny, and above all fire and wind free. Judging by all the debris and a few fresh tree kills, the winds whipped through here last night too.

At over 5000 feet elevation, the ups have me breathing heavy and putting out a pretty good sweat. The trail features four stream crossings. One of the crossings is a steep cascade that looks like it would make a great water slide, if there was any way to stop before you slammed into trees or rock. The bare tree tops reveal a second layer of canopy that itself covers fern and algae covered rocks and fallen logs. I find a few mushrooms for my photo collection.

On a flat mile on pavement, i make 1700 foot steps per mile. On steep, rock strewn, root matted, muddy, leaf strewn trail, i think i just about double that. Some, 12000 steps later, we make it back to the second best seat in the house, the front seat of car, beating the sunset by nearly an hour.

P.S. Why start a story in the middle? Did I mention that I really hate out and backs. No matter how hard I tell myself, we only made four stream crossings not eight and walked 12000 steps twice, not 24000 steps once.

Brooke and I hunkered down in the Deep South reading books, playing Ukulele, drinking craft beers, and eating shrimp and grits tacos. We trod upon the earth and the earth trod back on  us with rain, wind, and fire. We hiked the Appalachian trail, the Blue Ridge Mountains, the cities of Asheville and Durham. For a short week, I was part of Brooke’s adventure. We Survived!