Smokies Life Volume 6 #2 Fall 2012

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—Arthur Stupka

volume 6 #2

“So ancient are these Ocoee rocks that they contain no fossils of plants or animals, having been formed before life was abundant on the earth.”

SMO KIES LIFE MAG A ZIN E

401008

$6.95

USA

GSMA

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From the Editor: And Now for the Good News…

PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY NATIONAL PARK SERVICE

marrow from the bones of As you are well aware, the memere mortals. dia generally shuns reporting ... on anything that even vaguely No heralding of good resembles good news. And for news in the Smokies could good reasons. Since time imomit the incredible improvememorial, fireside storytellers, ment in the park’s air quality. playwrights, novelists, and Yes, that’s right, headline: “Air journalists have demonstrated Gets Better!” Whereas 10 that it takes conflict, often years ago it seemed we would spiced with heaping doses of be eternally doomed to see fear and anxiety, to capture nothing but haze from scenic the public’s attention. overlooks while our lungs Nevertheless, stories in this were scorched from ozone issue remind me that somepollution and acid clouds times you just have to admit vexed the skies, today ours is certain things are getting beta vastly happier fate. Accordter. After an absence of over a ing to the scientists, from century, elk are officially back 2000 to 2011, visibility on home in the Smokies. The Nahazy summer days has imtional Park Service has long proved by over 100%. From believed that, like an automo26 years of personal experibile engine, natural ecosystems ence I can say that I have do not function optimally Data gleaned from over 20 years of meticulous air quality never seen faraway ridges apwhen they are missing some of monitoring eventually demonstrated to lawmakers, industry, pear so close or the rock outtheir parts. Its mandate is to and utility operators that the air in Great Smoky Mountains National Park was so polluted it was making people sick and crops on Mt. Le Conte preserve native plants and aniwas so laden with soot and sulfates that you couldn’t see a shimmer so vividly as in mals in our national parks, and mountain peak two miles away.

2012. This did not happen by when feasible, restore species accident. It required an Ironthat have been recently lost. man Triathlon of bureaucratic Consequently, visitors to tribulations, working with the Smokies can now hear the multiple states, with the TVA and assessments, addressing concerns of unforgettable autumnal “bugle” of a bull EPA, environmental groups, private park neighbors; these mundane but elk. They can watch a Peregrine Falcon citizens, utilities, tourism groups, and massive barriers that separate the prorocket through the sky and enjoy river industry to make the air in our Great tagonist from victory. Such work, in otters water-sliding on the banks of Smoky Mountains increasingly its own way, is just as grueling as any Abrams Creek. breathable and, once again—miracle other hero’s trial, whether it be crossWhat casual park visitors don’t see of miracles—mostly transparent. ing the storm-tossed sea or battling a are the soul-bruising bureaucratic Of course not all the news is jolly.

Cyclops or landing an Airbus A320 on marathons that must be run by park A wrath of seemingly overwhelming the Hudson River. Believe me when I staff and administrators to make these problems are at hand and on the horitell you that successfully completing improvements happen. Sneer if you zon that will test the mettle of the next the decade-long legally mandated like, as it is not your typical hero’s trigeneration of heroes (those with marprocesses for re-establishing an 800al: Jumping through hoops, completrow still left in their bones). Good news pound mammal on public lands in the ing the paperwork, holding public happens when good people persevere.

East is more than enough to drain the meetings, revising draft environmental

Steve Kemp Editor Steve@GSMAssoc.org

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Volume 6 Number 2 $6.95 Contributing Editor Steve Kemp Lead Designer Lisa Horstman National Park Service Publications Liaison Kent Cave Designers Joey Heath Karen Key Editorial Assistance Julie Brown Emily Delanzo Susan Simpson-Ehrenclou Research Assistance Annette Hartigan Advertising Sales Curt Talbot Š2012 Great Smoky Mountains Association. No portion of this magazine may be reproduced without written permission from GSMA. Executive Director Terry Maddox Membership & Special Events Coordinator Judy Collins National Park Service Coordinator Elizabeth Dupree

Front cover photograph by Karen Lawson Back cover photograph by Bill Lea Attention Retailers To carry Smokies Life in stores, contact Curt Talbot, Curt@GSMAssoc.org or (865) 436-7318 x350 Advertisers: Contact Curt Talbot, Curt@GSMAssoc.org or (865) 436-7318 x350 416 Cherry St., Gatlinburg, TN 37738.

Printed in the U.S.A. Smokies Life (ISSN 1937-0725) is published biannually by Great Smoky Mountains Association, a nonprofit organization. P.O. Box 130, Gatlinburg, TN 37738-0130 (865) 436-7318. www.SmokiesInformation.org This magazine is a premium for members of Great Smoky Mountains Association. To join, change an address, or make other membership inquiries, contact membership and special events coordinator Judy Collins at the address above or Judy@GSMAssoc.org. Memberships start at $35 per year. No submissions of manuscripts, photographs, or art, please. Written queries are welcome. Copyright 2012 by Great Smoky Mountains Association. Send address changes or other membership queries to Judy Collins at the address above or Judy@GSMAssoc.org. Periodicals postage paid at Knoxville, TN. Postmaster: Send all address changes to Judy Collins, GSMA, P.O. Box 130, Gatlinburg, TN 37738-0130 or Judy@GSMAssoc.org. www.SmokiesInformation.org

The text pages of this magazine are certified by the Forest Stewardship CouncilŠ as adhering to strict environmental and social standards. Printed with vegetable inks.

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PHOTOGRAPHS: OWL BY PAUL BANNICK; ELK BY BILL LEA; HIKER COURTESY FRANK NORTON; CHILD AT STILL COURTESY NPS

Great Smoky Mountains Association Board of Directors Danny Bernstein Warren Bielenberg Mitch Crisp William A. Hart, Jr. Dan Lawson Carolyn Leahy, Treasurer Kelly Leonard, Chairman Tom Massie David McGuire Barbara Muhlbeier, Vice Chairman Ken Smither Kate Welch

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In This Issue Smokies Life Magazine Volume 6 Number 2 The Elk Whisperers Now you can learn the “rest of the story” of how wild elk were returned to their rightful place in the Great Smoky Mountains.

by Rose Houk

Operation Blizzard Imagine waking up to the news that your teenage daughter is stranded in the Smokies backcountry in waist deep snow 10 miles from the nearest road, and that road is also buried in snow…

by David Brill

Ella V. Costner: A Life Without Fear The Poet Laureate of the Smokies displayed her independent mountain spirit throughout a life that ranks amongst the most exciting that anyone has yet lived.

by William A. Hart, Jr.

Children of the Night (and Sometimes Day) As we crunch along our favorite mountain trail, wide eyes may be watching us.

by Susan Simpson-Ehrenclou

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Get Real!

Cocke County, Tennessee

For your next “Real” Smoky Mountain adventure, give us a holler! www.cockecountypartnership.com 423.625.9675

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PHOTOGRAPH BY MICHAEL COLLIER

The

by Rose Houk

Whisperers

m oo kk ii ee ss LL ii ff ee SS m

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PHOTOGRAPH BY MICHAEL COLLIER

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On a perfect October morning in Cataloochee, over on the North Carolina side of the Smokies, silence hangs as thick as the mist above the grassy fields. Suddenly, the silence is broken by a prolonged, high-pitched screech that echoes across the valley and off the color-drenched hillsides. The unearthly sound comes from a handsome bull elk, tossing back his heavy-antlered head and giving a performance worthy of Pavarotti. He’s giving full voice to the fall rut, the elk breeding season. This guy with the stately rack is advertising to other bulls and his wishful harem of cows that he’s the KING—at least for today.

Kim DeLozier is a big man who has an easy way with people. He’s congenial and conversational, and can put you at ease right away. During his thirty-year career in Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Kim handled a lot of big animals too—especially black bears, but more recently elk.

By now, Kim has probably answered enough questions about elk to last him a lifetime. But true to form, he spent a couple hours with me at lunch, nursing a cold and a Diet Pepsi, patiently reviewing the elk reintroduction program in Great Smoky Mountains—a program in which he took a leadership role as the park’s supervisory wildlife biologist.

Kim and those who’ve worked alongside him can rightfully chalk up the project as a true wildlife success

story. Yet he will be the first to say it’s been a story as much about people as about a large herbivore.

During his final decade working for the Park Service in the Smokies, Kim spent nearly every waking hour on the effort to return elk. It was a never a 9 to 5 job, because wildlife don’t operate on the same schedules people do. In one instance, picking up one of the early groups of elk transplants, he was in on a nonstop, 50-hour drive from Alberta, Canada, in the middle of winter.

And that was only the beginning. Once in the park, every elk was ear-tagged and radio-collared for tracking.

One day, Kim had tranquilized a 650-pound male. Now this tranquilizing operation is tricky, and it takes some practice.

The drug cartridges are loaded into a dart gun, usually a

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ABOVE PHOTOGRAPH OF ELK BY MICHAEL COLLIER, RIGHT PHOTOGRAPH OF DELOZIER BY SUSIE NEEL

After a long absence, the electrifying sound of bugling elk has again become a rite of autumn in Great Smoky Mountains National Park. This is the first national park in the East where elk have been reintroduced. But these animals resettled here only by dint of much human effort.

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BOTH PHOTOGRAPHS BY SUSIE NEEL

Above: During the experimental period of the elk reintroduction, elk were routinely tranquilized, tagged, and radio-collared. Right: Kim DeLozier (left) and Joe Yarkovich work up a female elk in Cataloochee Valley.

Kim and those who’ve worked alongside him can rightfully chalk up the project as a true wildlife success story. modified .22, and the shot is delivered from about 50 yards away. The tranquilizer is used at a dosage that will put an elk out for about an hour. The drug is reversible, a distinct advantage; but sedation of elk carries the risk of an intolerable rise in the animal’s body temperature and possible aspiration and respiratory problems. To humans handling the drug, even a small amount is a potent toxin if it comes into contact with mucous membranes. Once anesthetized, the animal is blindfolded to lessen the trauma, while biologists take measurements and blood samples and attach the ear tags and collars, all as deftly and quickly as possible.

The 650-pound bull elk, Number 7 of the Cataloochee herd, had lost his original radio collar in a tangle with another male. But the whole process had taken a little longer

than Kim had planned. It was getting full-on dark by the time he administered the reversal drug. And it turned into a bit of wrestling match, as Kim held onto the animal until the very last minute, wanting to make sure it was fully awake before being turned loose.

This incident speaks volumes about Kim DeLozier’s approach to wildlife management. His goal has always been to do no harm to native wildlife. The only higher aim was never to see a park visitor or any personnel hurt by an animal. If anything like that happened under his watch, Kim considered it a true failure. To realize those twin goals, he never passed up the opportunity for a teaching moment, letting people observe, or if safe, even have a hands-on experience with a wild animal. But then, the animal was al-

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Well-known was the meningeal worm that causes neurologic disease in elk. Another was chronic wasting disease, an infectious disease that can be fatal to elk and deer. Bovine brucellosis and tuberculosis were also concerns. Suitable habitat in the park was a question too. Would these large herbivores find enough grass and browse to eat, or would they end up outstripping vegetation? Would they take to the high grassy balds, the Appalachian Trail, or Cades Cove? What about predators? The park’s numerous black bears, along with coyotes and bobcats, could potentially prey on elk, at least on the calves. Would poaching be a problem? And with eastern elk extinct, there was the fundamental constraint of finding a founding herd; the stress of capturing and trucking the animals over long distances; releasing them in a favorable spot in the park; and committing to monitor and manage them for some time to come.

In 1996, University of Tennessee graduate student Bob Long completed a feasibility study. He concluded that the park’s half million acres were more than adequate in size for elk, though open grazing lands were at a premium. Bulls and cows would have ample space for home ranges, there was critical cover to hide newborn calves, and the animals would find plenty of water and browse. Yet many of those conclusions were based on limited experience in the handful of eastern states that had reintroduced elk. As Long pointed out, “elk in the East are totally different critters” from those out West, which had received much more study. The only way to test the idea was to bring in elk and see what they would do.

Newborn elk calves protect themselves by lying very still. This makes them extremely difficult to find for researchers who monitor birth rates and population changes.

NPS PHOTOGRAPH BY JOE YARKOVICH

ways released to go about its life the way it knew best.

Kim DeLozier’s background suited him perfectly to the elk program. He’s never wandered too far from his home in Seymour, Tennessee, where he grew up on a small farm. He still lives there with his wife, and with his children, grandchildren, and his father all close by. A farm boy who worked a lot with livestock, he said he “turned right and went to the University of Tennessee” in Knoxville to college. Then after graduating, “I went to the highway and turned left and went to the park and got a job.” He spent his first summer up on Gregory Bald hunting feral hogs, then did backcountry patrol, and moved up the ladder to the supervisory wildlife post. His knowledge, dedication, and openness to other views earned the respect of his coworkers and peers. …

Elk were native to the East, but had been absent from the southern Appalachians for almost 200 years—overhunted and pushed out by settlement as early as the 1700s. The last elk was killed in Tennessee in the mid 1800s.

Thoughts about reintroducing elk in the Smokies were circulating as early as the 1930s. First park superintendent Ross Eakin received suggestions to bring back these large members of the deer family. In one letter, Eakin stated “there can be no doubt that the park was formerly a habitat for elk and ordinarily we would consider reintroducing them.” But citing poor results of a reintroduction in nearby Pisgah National Forest, “it is not thought at this time that elk will be reintroduced in Great Smoky Mountains National Park.”

But the idea of bringing them back had not died. In the late 1980s, as Kim DeLozier recalled, local members of the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation, then a new conservation and hunting organization, approached him about it. “We had already done Peregrines, otters, and started with the red wolf,” Kim noted, and all but the red wolf had been successfully reintroduced. Maybe, he thought, it was time for elk.

As it turned out, it would be a long and winding road to get them here. Kim may not have anticipated that it would be a dozen years before flesh-and-blood elk would actually arrive on the ground. Beyond strictly biological considerations, the idea faced some stiff logistical, political, and social issues. A seemingly endless round of meetings, discussion, and debate ensued. “People didn’t really know what elk were going to do,” Kim allowed. But as a national park, “it was our responsibility to ask what we could do. So we took a chance.”

Neighboring farmers came out in force to the meetings.

Kim understood their worries about possible damage to their gardens and cornfields if elk strayed out of the park. “I know, I’m a farmer too,” he said. Acknowledging “it’s a risk, but not a very big risk,” he gave them his phone number and urged them to make their concerns known. That empathy stood him in good stead as he navigated the sometimes rough waters along the route to reintroduction.

Other issues loomed large, especially disease and parasites that might hurt the elk or be transmitted to livestock.

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In 1998, then-park superintendent Karen Wade wrote a letter to Elk Island National Park in Alberta, stating the park’s “likely need” for 50 elk from their surplus herd. These were “Manitoban” elk, believed to be the closest genetically to the vanished eastern elk.

Perhaps more important— certainly to veterinarian and agricultural interests in North Carolina—the potential transplants had to be closely inspected and declared disease-free.

The release plans received a lot of press through the late 1990s, but it was stop-and-go for a while before all the pieces of the puzzle started to come together. A key piece—funding—came from outside. Most of the money, just shy of a million dollars, was raised by the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation, with additional contributions from Friends of the Smokies and Great Smoky Mountains Association.

In the summer of 2000 the park released a draft environmental assessment for public comment. It proposed an “experimental” release of elk into the remote valley of Cataloochee on the North Carolina side of the park that would last five years. That October the procedural path, at least, was finally cleared. …

The next task was transporting the elk and making them comfortable in their new home. That job involved the help of many volunteers, among them Ray and Ramona Bryson.

Life members of the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation, the couple began by attending their local chapter’s banquets. At the time, said Ray, they had no idea they would ever see elk in western North Carolina. Then they met Kim DeLozier, and it began to look like a possibility.

When I finally reached Ramona on her cell phone, she could only talk for a second because she and Ray were up in Kentucky hunting. When they returned, I met them in their log home in the woods near the town of Mills River, south of Asheville, North Carolina. Ray, a plumber, and Ramona, a retired school teacher, are, to put it mildly, gung-ho about elk.

Ramona pulled out several scrapbooks bulging with articles and pictures documenting their extensive participation.

She and Ray lent their hands building the holding pens for the new arrivals. Lumber, fencing, and gating materials were donated and trucked into Cataloochee over the narrow,

PHOTOGRAPH BY BILL LEA

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A young male in Cataloochee on an October day. The famous mating “rut” takes place in September and early October.

winding, gravel road. Ray devised a line to deliver drinking water to the pens. The elk would be held in the three-acre enclosure and fed hay for eight to ten weeks while they acclimated to their new surroundings. The pens were part of a designed “soft” release, easing the animals in gently rather than turning them loose immediately in a “hard” release.

As it turned out, the first 25 animals came indirectly from Elk Island via a refuge at Land Between the Lakes on the Tennessee-Kentucky border. Ray and Ramona signed on to travel to western Kentucky with Kim and others to pick up the animals. It was December 2000, as Ramona recalled, and things had been back and forth for a bit. “All of a sudden Kim called and said ‘we’re going to get some elk!’”

The following month they made the trip to Land Between the Lakes. The elk—13 bulls and 12 cows and calves—were tranquilized, captured, and blindfolded. To avoid conflicts or injuries, the bulls’ antlers were removed, and the cows and calves were put into separate trailers from the bulls. “We had to be really quiet,” said Ramona, and “be really respectful because these are wild animals.” Then they drove straight through to Cataloochee, arriving around 2:00 A.M. On a Friday morning, February 2, 2001, hundreds of onlookers gathered to witness the historic moment. When the trailer doors were opened, four rather bemused elk bounded out into the waiting pens—the first to set foot in the Great Smoky Mountains in nearly two centuries.

The following Monday, Kim DeLozier e-mailed Ray and

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PHOTOGRAPH BY BILL LEA

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At least one incidence of poaching has occurred since elk were reintroduced to the Smokies. Elk #21 (right) was shot by a North Carolina man in 2009. Thanks to reports from park visitors, the poacher was caught and convicted.

Ramona, expressing his thanks for their “willingness to support me and this project from beginning to end.”

His pleasure in the arrival of the elk was great, but even more was “meeting new friends and working toward a common goal.” His last words in the message: “Be thankful—Elk are back in NC.” Of course, Ramona pasted a copy of that treasured email into her scrapbook.

On April 2, 2001, the gates of the acclimation pen were opened, and all 25 elk barreled out into Cataloochee Valley. Now, it was really time to see if they would take to their new home as truly wild creatures. Among them was a pregnant cow that gave birth three months later to a 40-pound male calf, a red-letter delivery for the new elk herd of Great Smoky Mountains.

As planned, a second group of 27 animals was brought in the following winter. Those came directly from Elk Island in Canada. Ramona and Ray again made the journey with Kim to pick up that batch. The 2,200-mile trip took four days, nearly 50 hours each way, again without stopping. And it was bitter cold, Ramona remembered. A third planned release of another 25 elk did not happen because North Carolina put a ban on any more imports because of disease concerns.

The Brysons continue to keep close tabs on everything that’s happening with the growing elk herd. “It’s been a life story for us,” declared Ra-

mona. “We’ve proved,” Ray added, “that elk can live in western North Carolina.” …

Though the elk project has received a lot of public support, it hasn’t all been a bed of roses. Kim DeLozier had to deal with some tough situations. As he explained, the “soft release” strategy was chosen because the elk would likely show more affinity to the release site and might not disperse so far. But, some elk did wander beyond park boundaries. Kim well remembered one of his worst days, when he received a phone call from an irate neighboring landowner. The man was reporting that an elk cow and her calf had come onto his property and were scaring his cows. He was so angry he threatened to sue, call the sheriff, and kill the elk. As it turned out, there had been bad blood between the landowner and a park person before, and as Kim talked, the man finally relented and even apologized. Kim then went and got the elk and took them back into the park.

But, as the person making many of the choices and decisions in the project, the incident weighed heavily on Kim. Another wider issue for the park has been the upswing in visitation to Cataloochee. In pre-park days, a large and prosperous farming community had grown up in the valley, and many descendants of those residents still return each year to visit and reunite with

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relatives. For locals who fondly treasure this quiet, remote corner of the park, it’s a real sore point. On the Pretty Hollow Trail I had a chance encounter with one of them. He was hiking with his son and grandson back down from their backcountry campsite, wearing bib overalls and carrying a lawn chair. He stopped to talk, and I said we’d come here to watch the elk.

His mother had been born and raised in Cataloochee, he offered, and he wished the elk had never been brought in. He feared it would lead to paving the road out to the interstate, which would bring in so many people “you couldn’t stir ‘em with a stick.” The man had basis for his concerns, for visitation has doubled in Cataloochee since the elk were reintroduced. Cars and trucks from a dozen states now clog the narrow road in the valley, especially during the rutting season, when everyone, myself included, is vying for a close look and a good photograph of the striking animals. …

During the early years of the experimental release, another UT grad student, Jennifer Murrow, was also deeply involved. She followed every moment of the founding herd, and the data she gathered for her 2007 dissertation provided a great deal of important information about the elk during that critical time.

But since Kim DeLozier’s retirement from the park in December 2010,

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BOTH PHOTOGRAPHS BY SUSIE NEEL

Adult elk can weigh over 700 pounds, making them one of the more difficult animals for biologists to work with in the field. Below: A radio collar used to monitor and locate elk.

another “elk guy” has come on the scene. He’s Joe Yarkovich, a thirtysomething, dark-eyed man who has been working with the elk for the past six years. Raised and educated in Pennsylvania, Joe can be found nowadays at the Cataloochee Ranger Station. That’s where I met him in the pre-dawn hours, as he unloaded his equipment from a night of hunting feral hogs in another part of the park. I wasn’t too surprised that he needed a jolt of caffeine before we headed out to check on the elk.

Joe pretty much eats, sleeps, and probably dreams, about elk. His job involves working with other rangers, interns, and volunteers, and giving visitors the chance for personal encounters with the elk when they’re being darted and radio-collared. Over the years, Joe has captured, released, and tracked many bulls, cows, and calves. He knows every individual by number (the elk haven’t been given names, at least officially), and says he’s come to recognize the pitch of each bull’s bugle. He helps build fenced exclosures to see what the elk are eating, and keeps all manner of elk paraphernalia in his office. Joe’s computer files are loaded with photos of the elk work, and he’ll grab a huge reference book off the shelf whenever a technical question arises. I had to ask, though, about the screen saver on his computer—a photo of a lion from a research project in Uganda that he and his wife recently participated in.

Joe has also found out, the hard way, that elk like salt.

Though no artificial salt sources are put out, the animals have learned to come up to cars and lick off the road salt in winter. Joe had just bought a shiny new car, only had it a

week, and drove it to work in Cataloochee. When he came out of the ranger station, the car was covered with scratches and tongue smears. Though he laughed when he told me that story, I could only guess what he said at the time he discovered the damage.

Joe Yarkovich arrived as the park’s elk herd had plateaued at just under 100 animals. People were concerned that if it did not grow further it would not be able to sustain itself. Part of the problem was the smaller number of animals released than originally planned. A bigger problem was that too many calves were dying, primarily due to predation by black bears. The possible solution: relocate bears out of Cataloochee during calving time from mid May through June. Elk calves are most vulnerable in the first two weeks of life when they’re not yet able to stand or run. The thinking was that if the newborns could get a jump start on life, without bears around to eat them, the herd might start to increase.

For three years beginning in 2006, Joe and coworkers set culvert traps for bears. The traps were baited with bacon, sardines, and doughnuts. Biologists learned soon enough that bears have a sweet tooth for Krispy Kreme doughnuts especially. A bakery furnished seconds of that favorite brand, saving the park some money on bear bait.

They tagged and radio-collared the bears, then drove them some 40 miles away and released them in the Twentymile area of the park. Everybody appreciated that bears, with their strong homing abilities, would eventually find their way back to Cataloochee, probably within a month.

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PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY NPS

Bugle Corps

From May to November a group of stalwart volunteers called the “Bugle Corps” helps park rangers manage interactions between visitors and elk in the Smokies.

The Corps of more than 50 unpaid individuals roves the Cataloochee Valley successfully keeping the peace between man and 700pound beast.The uniformed Corps members remind visitors not to feed or approach elk, and if their words go unheeded, they contact park law enforcement rangers to rectify the situation. In a year’s time the Corps contacts over 80,000 visitors and logs some 7,000 hours of service.

But by then the calves would be up and able to escape. During the three-year effort, 49 bears were translocated; 30 of them were tracked, and of those nearly half did in fact return. In the same period, coincidentally, 49 calves were born. Twelve of them died, four of which were confirmed bear-caused fatalities.

Along with 18-hour bear shuttles as part of his full-time job, Joe was also working on his master’s degree at the University of Tennessee. The bear relocation effort became his thesis topic, earning him that degree in 2009. During the bear relocations, many fewer elk calves were killed. Even with an encouraging increase in calf survival, Joe and others didn’t see relocation as a long-term solution; so, bears are no longer being moved out of Cataloochee. What has turned out to be more important is that the expectant elk cows are learning to go to safer, more secluded places to give birth. One cow had a calf in the meadow, and it was

killed by a bear. The following year, she found her way up to Balsam Mountain and bore a calf that survived. The next year another cow followed her, and so it went. Consequently, calf “recruitment” has improved. Also, the cows are becoming more aggressive in protecting their newborns when bears or coyotes show interest.

The adult elk are doing well too, but a few have died from apparent natural causes. At least one incident of poaching in the park has occurred. Elk #21, a well-known bull that was among the first to be reintroduced, was found dead in a pasture in Cataloochee in November 2009. A North Carolina man was caught and pled guilty to the illegal shooting. He was sentenced to jail and a sizable restitution.

And while Joe Yarkovich the scientist may have to turn off some feelings towards individual animals, he doesn’t apologize for the emotional response he has toward the elk calves. Sitting in the cab of his truck after touring the fields that morning, I asked him about his most memorable events with the elk. He smiled and said without hesitation, “I love finding and catching calves.” The calves, so small and well hidden, are hard to find. But “you know it’s there,” Joe said.

“It’s a couple days old, you sneak up, grab hold of it . . . it’s all big dark eyes staring up at you . . . and you realize that’s the future of the herd.” …

The experimental release phase was extended from the original five years to eight. But in 2009, park officials were at a critical juncture. They would examine the evidence and decide if the elk were here to stay—or not. By the end of 2011, the total population had grown to about 140 animals, with small groups dispersing to the Oconaluftee and Balsam Mountain areas. And after fielding another environmental assessment, the National Park Service made the decision: the elk program would become a permanent reintroduction.

The 15-year “adaptive management” plan includes monitoring fewer individual elk, assessing the herd’s population status and impacts, and making changes if necessary. The elk are pretty much on their own now as wild animals, to grow and prosper as they will, with minimal human intervention.

As Kim DeLozier observed, “Everybody was watching what we were doing. We were under a microscope.” He readily admitted they didn’t have all the answers going in, that they would have to learn from the animals themselves whether the idea, and the dream, would work. The elk will always be full of surprises, but it appears that dream is coming true. v Acknowledgments: Thanks to Kim DeLozier, Joe Yarkovich, Ramona Bryson and Ray Bryson, and Carolyn Jourdan for their generosity and willingness to share what they know about elk in the Smokies.

Author Rose Houk is at work on a book on the return of the elk for Great Smoky Mountains Association. Her most recent book is Storied Stitches: Quilts and Coverlets of the Smokies, along with several Smokies Life articles.

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Operation

In March 1993, gale-force winds, frigid temperatures, and several feet of snow slammed Great Smoky Mountains National Park (GSMNP), stranding more than 150 people in the park’s half-million acres. For many of the victims—including 80 students and staff from a Michigan prep school—the storm’s crucible severely tested winter survival skills. Those sent out to rescue them turned one of the worst disasters of the past century into GSMNP’s finest hour.

By David Brill

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Students from Cranbrook Kingswood Upper School hiked in a “caterpillar” formation and switched leaders frequently to share the toil of breaking trail.

PhotograPh courtesy Frank norton

Section One: The Gathering Storm March 1993 arrived in the Southeast with much more of a bleat than a roar. A gradual warming trend that began on March 7 reached a daytime high of 71 degrees in Gatlinburg on Thursday, March 11. Even 6,593-foot Mount Le Conte registered a relatively mild 48 degrees that day.

Throughout the region, greening grass and budding flowers ushered in what appeared to be an early spring.

In Great Smoky Mountains National Park, rangers welcomed the arrival of the first of the early-season campers and backpackers, including dozens of high school and college spring breakers. Eighty students and staff from

Cranbrook Kingswood Upper School in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, were distributed among campsites deep in the park’s backcountry. The students, organized into 10 eightperson teams, were participating in a 10-day wilderness experience that had begun on March 6. Several other Cranbrook teams explored the backcountry of the Joyce Kilmer-Slickrock Wilderness in Cherokee National Forest.

Meanwhile, forty sixth- and seventh-graders from Mount Washington Middle School, located near Louisville, Kentucky, set out for an overnight educational field trip at the Great Smoky Mountains Institute at Tremont on Friday, March 12.

Seven long-distance hikers—two of them from New

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From Improbable to Inevitable

PhotograPhs courtesy Frank norton

Meteorologists at the National Centers for Environmental Prediction, a division of the National Weather Service located in Washington, DC, had a hard time reconciling the warm temperatures and calm conditions they glimpsed through their office windows with the troubling images that appeared on their computer screens.

Several days earlier, their weather prediction models had begun to indicate that a major winter storm could slam the East Coast if forces converged as the models suggested they might. An arctic high plunged down through the Central West toward the warm, humid air over the Gulf of Mexico, while the sagging Ushaped trough of the jet stream dipped south all the way to Texas—requisite ingredients for a fierce extratropical cyclone.

By Thursday, March 11, the possible—as unlikely as it seemed—started to look more probable, and by March 12, TV meteorologists from Florida to Maine began urging their viewers to dismiss past erroneous predictions and heed their warning: a deadly storm—packing gale-force winds, tornadoes, tidal surges, and, for GSMNP, frigid temperatures and feet, not inches, of snow—was unquestionably heading their way.

The events of the next few days would validate those predictions and go on to rank as one of the worst disasters of the past century. The blizzard, which became known as the Storm of the Century, manifested itself on a weather Many of the students camping in the park’s backcountry had only tarps to shelter them from the snow, howling winds, and temperatures near 0 degrees F. map as an enormous inflamed comma, its tail hooked below Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula and its broad, angled head spanning from Arkansas to Maine and plowing northwest into Canada.

Before the storm blew itself out on Sunday, March 14, nearly 300 people in 13 states would be dead, 15 tornadoes would rage across Florida, Zealand—made their way north from Georgia along the Flattop Mountain in nearby Pisgah National Forest would 2,180-mile Appalachian Trail (AT) and approached the clock winds in excess of 100 miles per hour, all major East park’s boundary at Fontana Dam. By departing the trail’s Coast airports would be closed, and 159 people would be southern terminus, Springer Mountain, Georgia, in Februmarooned in GSMNP. ary, all had hoped to avoid the AT’s notoriously crowded conditions through the South. The early start, they realFriday, March 12 ized, also exposed them to the risk of encountering a wintery blast, though the prevailing mild conditions seemed to In Gatlinburg, the daytime high reached only 50 degrees, indicate that their gamble just might have paid off.

21 degrees cooler than the previous day’s high, before it beMore than a dozen other hikers had locked their cars at gan its plunge to a low of 26, and misting clouds began to trailhead parking lots and were making their way into the mass over GSMNP. Nothing unusual there—wafting clouds backcountry. had given the park its name.

None of them anticipated anything more than a pleasBy late afternoon, the clouds produced a light snow— ant visit to the mountains.

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PhotograPh courtesy Frank norton

Cranbrook’s wilderness outings usually lasted 10 days and involved some of the most remote areas of the Smokies.

certainly more welcome than cold rain to the backcountry travelers distributed throughout the park.

Six friends—four men and two women—from a suburb of Atlanta watched the first snow fall at the Spence Field Shelter. They had hiked up from Cades Cove.

Two days earlier, on March 10, Patricia Hammann, from Indiana, and sister Cathy Davidson, from Missouri, also had left their car at Cades Cove and set out for Russell Field Shelter. According to Hammann, it was warm enough for the two to hike in T-shirts. They stayed at Mollies Ridge Shelter on March 11 before returning to Russell Field the next day. University of Tennessee students Jeff Burns and Todd Graves arrived at the shelter just behind them.

Before departing their homes, Hammann and Davidson had loaded their packs with several pounds of extra coldweather clothing and gear, just in case. Twenty years of backpacking had taught Hammann always to prepare for rough mountain weather, regardless of prevailing conditions. Many others in the park had not been so thoughtful in selecting their gear, and they would suffer the consequences.

Also on March 10, George Griffin of Maryville had dropped off his 40-year-old son, David, at Newfound Gap, according to an article in the Maryville Daily Times. David was resuming his northbound thru-hike of the AT, which he had begun on February 14, after spending a few days off the trail. David, an experienced hiker with plenty of food, planned to take two days to cover the 23.3 miles from Newfound Gap to Cosby Knob Shelter. He arrived at the shelter on March 12; it would remain his home for the following five days.

Four other AT hikers, including New Zealanders Gary Boyland and Sonya Baldwin, along with Susannah Chaplin, from

Maine, and Courtney McCollum, from Maryland, entered the park at Fontana Dam on March 12, destined for the Birch Spring Gap Shelter, 5.3 miles north on the AT. (The Birch Spring Gap Shelter has since been removed.) Ranger Glenn Martin inspected the group’s gear, informed the hikers of storm predictions, and advised them not to proceed into the backcountry. The hikers opted not to heed Martin’s advice.

AT thru-hikers the Reverend Richard Maloney, from Maryland, and New Yorkers Walter Pawlowski and Tom Schembri also entered the park at Fontana on March 12.

They, too, were bound for Birch Spring Gap Shelter. They, likewise, received but dismissed the warning from a ranger about the approaching weather system; they were carrying sufficient food to last nearly two weeks.

As evening fell, the Cranbrook students, now on the sixth day of their planned 10-day outing, occupied backcountry campsites, most of them in the remote southwestern section of the park, along the north shore of Fontana Lake or in the rugged mountains above.

For more than 20 years, faculty advisors from Cranbrook, a private college-prep boarding school in a Detroit suburb that counts Mitt Romney among its alumni, had been guiding groups of their students through the southern Appalachians as part of the school’s annual Wilderness Expedition Program. Each eight-person team included six sophomores, one faculty leader, and one student leader, usually a junior or senior who had participated in the program in the past.

Cranbrook English teacher Tom Murdock’s team had been on the west side of Hazel Creek, hiking northeast, when the snow began to fall about 3 p.m. Earlier in the day, the group had been forced to wade across two branches of

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the creek, and, Murdock says, keeping his students warm and dry was becoming increasingly difficult.

According to sophomore Jay Nicols, one of Murdock’s student campers, “Friday night was one of our worst scenarios come true.” Nicols reports that one of his schoolmates had earlier fallen into a creek and was on the verge of hypothermia when the group hastily established camp. Murdock’s students, like their Cranbrook schoolmates, would shelter under tarps, not in tents.

Hypothermia is a potentially deadly drop in core temperature caused by exposure to cold, wind, water, or a combination of those factors. The condition occurs when the body loses heat faster than it can produce it. The storm of 1993 packed more than ample amounts of all three contributing conditions.

Near dark, as the snow began to accumulate, Murdock’s team erected a tarp large enough to cover all eight of them.

The packs formed a wall at the back of the sheltered area, and Murdock placed his sleeping bag and pack at the tarp’s open front, hoping to block the intrusion of blowing snow.

“The kids were great,” recalls Murdock. “They worked together and put on dry clothes from different packs, helping each other stay warm.”

Murdock’s team and the other Cranbrook students expected to awaken to a light dusting of snow, more of a novelty than a nuisance to individuals schooled in contending with backcountry challenges.

The “light dusting” never let up. In fact, snowfall would

“Spring Break,” 1993.

continue and intensify, borne by high winds, over the next two days. On Saturday, March 13, more than 30 inches of snow fell on Mount Le Conte. The next day, the storm added another 30 inches to the mountain’s snow load, marking the largest accumulation anywhere along the storm’s path. Even the Florida panhandle received half a foot.

“Friday was the only really dramatic night for me,” says Murdock. “I was watching the snow pile up along the edges of the tarp until it eclipsed the light. I got pretty wet, too, so I had some frightening dreams about what might happen to us.”

Nicols awoke Saturday morning to find his sleeping bag buried under more than a foot of snow.

Section Two: Paralysis Saturday, March 13 Floridians living on the Gulf Coast, who had suffered through tornadoes, violent thunderstorms, and hurricaneforce winds on Friday, now braced for a tidal surge. The 12foot wall of water hit Florida’s west coast just before dawn on Saturday. The combination of wind and water claimed 44 lives in the state, according to a report by the National

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PhotograPhs courtesy national Park service

Scenes from the National Park Service headquarters area at Sugarlands. The blizzard knocked out power to the site for over a week.

Climatic Data Center. Residents of Georgia experienced a blinding whiteout accompanied by flashes of lightning and rolling thunder.

In GSMNP, paralysis swept in with the storm. Hikers, by definition, are a mobile lot, moving from point to point through the mountains, often with their homes tethered to their backs. But the storm moored them in place. Most who tried to venture out were soon exhausted by chest-deep drifts and battered by howling winds, and they straggled back to their previous encampments.

The nation’s most visited national park, itself, was likewise paralyzed. Staff could not escape their own homes, owing to hundreds of toppled trees and snow so deep it was impassable in places even by rugged four-wheel-drive vehicles.

On Saturday, while the blizzard gained intensity and snow began to pile up, a skeletal staff reported for work. A maintenance crew began cutting downed trees and plowing the road (U.S. 441) from park headquarters (HQ) at Sugarlands to Gatlinburg. Ida May Hobbs, who had stayed overnight in anticipation of the storm, assumed dispatch duties.

Other crew members began barricading roads to prevent additional visitors from attempting to enter the park. The effort to clear and plow the two miles of road to Gatlinburg proved hopeless and was abandoned.

A report came in of eight hikers stranded on Meigs Mountain, southwest of the Elkmont Campground. A search and rescue (SAR) was planned and then postponed;

interviews with families of the stranded hikers indicated that the group was prepared for winter conditions.

Two Cranbrook teams led by Expedition Program coordinator Frank Norton, a physics instructor, and Kristen Smith, occupied campsites 73 and 74, about a mile apart on the Lakeshore Trail near Forney Creek. Norton and his students had passed a difficult night.

“My first indication that we were dealing with really heavy snow was when my tarp collapsed at about 3 a.m.,” Norton recalls. After helping his students dig out, Norton returned to his sleeping bag. A couple hours later, near dawn, his tarp collapsed a second time. By then, about two feet of snow lay on the ground, and the storm raged on.

Norton wrestled with the critical decision to stay put or try to hike out, realizing that the wrong decision could trigger what he terms a “domino effect.”

The decision to break camp and move or remain in place is never an easy one for backcountry travelers to make, particularly in the face of potentially deadly conditions. Staying put allows hikers to conserve vital energy stores, pool food supplies and gear, and establish a functional and protective base camp.

Provided the hikers have conformed to their planned itinerary and are camped where they were scheduled to camp—which was true in Norton’s case—SAR teams likely have a general idea of where they are. Further, in unfavorable weather conditions, hikers on the move can stray from the trail, particularly one buried under feet of snow, and

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wind up not only stranded, but lost as well.

And there’s always the risk that a mobile group will become fragmented, forcing rescue teams to search for isolated individuals rather than a group situated in one place.

But staying put also exposes hikers to the continuing ravages of harsh weather and requires them to rely on an ever-dwindling reserve of food and fuel. Uncertainty about whether a rescue operation is even underway and, if so, when it might arrive can prompt fear and even panic. A prudent decision to depart camp can instill in a group of hikers a sense of purpose and, ultimately, lead them to safety. Such so-called self-rescues also allow SAR teams to focus their limited resources on locating and extracting Cathy Davidson and her sister Patricia were stranded for six nights at the Russell Field other groups.

Shelter on the Appalachian Trail above Cades Cove. Temperatures fell well below 0 degrees F. on at least one of the nights.

After carefully evaluating his group’s options, Norton instructed his students to pack up their gear; they were heading out. One of “Nicole’s kids did exactly the right thing,” says Norton. his students, unable to locate her backpack buried under the “They stayed put. They had plenty of food and fuel.” snow, made do with a duffel bag.

For team leaders Charlie Shaw, Jim Meehan, and Tom Norton’s team reached Smith’s camp later in the mornMurdock, self-rescue wasn’t an option. The three groups ing. From there, the two groups set out for the tunnel markwere camped in the mountains along the upper reaches of ing the end of the Northshore Road (also known as the Hazel Creek, where the snow was waist deep in places.

Road to Nowhere because it was never completed). It took Murdock realized that there would be no ground rescue them all day; they finally reached the tunnel near dark. Befor his team, so after he and his students emerged from their yond the tunnel, Norton realized, the road—provided it “hole” under the tarp, they ate a quick breakfast and started was passable—would lead them to Bryson City. hiking northeast along Hazel Creek. “We didn’t plan to go Cranbrook team leader Peter Fayroian and his students far, but we did want to get to a clearing,” says Murdock. “If had already made their way to safety. On Friday, Fayroian, someone flew over us, we wanted to be visible.” one of whose students was ill, had led his entire team one Though he had slept under a mound of snow, camper mile from Campsite 50, on the Chasteen Creek Trail, into Jay Nicols had remained warm and comfortable in his sleepthe Smokemont Campground, which served as a base camp ing bag through the night and awoke rested and ready to for the Cranbrook teams dispersed in the backcountry. Faymove. As the group prepared to break camp, Nicols noticed roian’s group was safe, but Nicole Schack’s team was not onthat one of his friends was struggling. ly stranded at Campsite 61 on the Noland Creek Trail; it “As we packed up our camp, he kept lying down in the was also leaderless. snow; he was exhausted,” says Nicols. “He just wanted to According to Norton, Schack and her student leader continue sleeping, but it was not an option, we had to had hiked ahead of the rest of their group, giving the stumove on.” dents instructions to continue straight on the Pole Road As they departed camp, the students contended with snow Creek Trail and turn left at the junction with the Deep that had drifted to five feet deep in places, Murdock recalls.

Creek Trail to Campsite 54. Instead, the students turned left “We were sinking about two feet down with each step.”

3.3 miles too soon, when they reached the junction with Traveling through deep snow without benefit of skis or the Noland Divide Trail, and headed northwest toward the showshoes—a process known as post-holing—is an exClingmans Dome Road. After realizing their mistake, they hausting ordeal, particularly for the lead hiker breaking backtracked to the junction. It was late in the day and betrail. With each step, the hiker must extract his foot from ginning to snow, so the students decided to return to the “post hole” and lift his leg high enough to clear the Campsite 61, where they had stayed the previous night. snow. Heavy snow and ice clinging to boots only adds to Meanwhile, Schack and her student leader were encamped the challenge. at Campsite 54 on the Deep Creek Trail when the storm Murdock estimates that the group progressed only struck. The next morning, Saturday, Schack and the student about 150 yards when he spotted a suitable clearing on the leader were unable to reach their stranded students, so they other side of Hazel Creek. The group’s river-fording shoes hiked out to the Deep Creek Campground to summon help.

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PhotograPh courtesy Frank norton

Some of the most isolated groups of backpackers were over 10 miles from the nearest road and that road was buried under two feet of snow.

(sneakers) had been lost under the snow the previous night, so Murdock devised a plan to keep the hikers’ boots dry during the crossing.

“We found garbage bags and wrapped them around our boots, holding the bags up with our hands,” he says. “I walked to the creek and slid down the steep wall of snow into water that was about thigh deep.”

It quickly became apparent that the plastic bags were “a terrible idea,” says Murdock. The creek water collected in the bags and infused his boots. He managed to get to the other side and drop his pack, but as he turned around, he saw that several of his students had already followed his lead. “I watched their faces fall as their dry boots filled with water,” he says.

Murdock slipped off his boots and, one-by-one, carried several of his students across the creek, wearing only thick wool socks on his feet.

Now on the other side of the creek, the team hastily began to stomp down a camp area. A cleared area for

packs allowed the hikers to store and organize gear. A living area included bench seats crafted from snow. A kitchen provided space for cooking and heating water for hot drinks. Cocoa with butter was a favorite among the students, says Murdock.

According to Murdock, during the warm early days of the trip, Jay Nicols had taken some good-natured ribbing for having brought a bright-yellow ski jacket. With their camp nestled among the trees, Nicols surmised that it would be difficult for a chopper pilot to spot them from the air, so he suggested that they use the jacket as a signaling device.

After the evening meal, Murdock found another creative application for the stoves and frying pans, using them to “melt the ice balls that were our socks.” The group also pan-warmed scarves, hats, and boots, but when Murdock tried to thaw his nowfrozen down sleeping bag, the nylon burst into flames.

Back at park HQ, four-wheel-drive vehicles proved no match for the snow, so National Park Service (NPS) staffer Ron Parrish made his way to Gatlinburg, rode the tram to Ober Gatlinburg, and borrowed the resort’s tracked snow vehicle. He arrived with it at park HQ at 4 p.m.

Just after 5 p.m., park HQ lost power. The power would remain out for more than a week. Shortly after, the phone system, with the exception of a single line, crashed.

Snow and downed trees had also taken out power to the Fry Mountain repeater, a device that picks up and amplifies two-way radio signals. With roads impassable and electronic communication with the outside world all but cut off, the park staff might as well have been operating in the 19th century.

At the Birch Spring Gap Shelter, AT hikers Maloney, Pawlowski, Shembri, Baldwin, Boyland, Chaplin, and McCollum spent the day gathering firewood, hanging tarps over the shelter’s open face, and filling cracks in shelter walls.

They later draped collapsed tents over their sleeping bags for additional warmth. The snow finally stopped falling at about midnight, but then temperatures began to plunge.

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The Cranbrook groups led by Frank Norton and Kristen Smith decided to hike out from their campsites on the Lakeshore Trail. On the far side of the tunnel the trail ends where it meets Lakeview Drive.

Sunday, March 14 The cargo ship Gold Bond Conveyor, carrying 24,000 tons of gypsum ore, had departed Halifax, Nova Scotia, in clear weather bound for Tampa, Florida. Saturday afternoon, the storm struck, battering the ship with 90-mile-perhour winds and 100-foot waves, according to a report posted on the National Gypsum Web site. The ship began to take on water and list to port; water had seeped into the port-side cargo holds and mixed with the gypsum, creating a heavy cement-like paste.

Late in the evening, as the ship continued to lean farther and farther to port, Canadian Coast Guard pilots circled the ship in a fixed-wing aircraft and watched, helpless, as a large sea swell struck and sank the crippled ship just after midnight on Sunday. All 33 crew members perished in the icy waters of the North Atlantic.

Back on land, 3 million American households and businesses were without power and, in many cases, heat, including some of the luxury chalets and vacation homes that perched on mountainsides above Gatlinburg. Many of the cabins’ occupants, like the hikers in the park’s backcountry, were stranded and, thus, forced to rely on whatever supplies occupied their pantry shelves. Over coming days, hovering

Black Hawks would drop boxes of meals ready to eat (MRE) to the marooned vacationers.

Early Sunday morning, a Pigeon Forge Police Department 4X4 picked up NPS staffers Keny Slay and Don Utterback and escorted them to HQ. Twenty inches of snow and toppled trees had rendered most roads impassable.

Road crews cleared the parking lot at Sugarlands to serve as a landing zone for the first of 12 Black Hawk helicopters that would soon begin arriving from the 101st U.S. Army Airborne Division in Fort Campbell, Kentucky, and North Carolina and Tennessee Army National Guard units.

Other specialized equipment was en route as well, including two Bell UH-1 Iroquois (Huey) helicopters from the Tennessee Air National Guard, four tracked vehicles and five High Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicles (HMMWV) from the Tennessee Army National Guard, and three fixed-wing aircraft from the Civil Air Patrol. All told, 167 NPS staff members, 32 National Guard troops, and 75 U.S. Army and 23 Civil Air Patrol flight personnel would play a role in the six-day SAR operation.

The reports of stranded hikers continued to trickle in: Three adults and five children were stranded in the horse barn near Elkmont. Thirty people—most of them 6th and 7th graders—were stranded at Tremont. Campers were also

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stranded at the Cataloochee, Elkmont, and Cades Cove campgrounds.

Ranger Jack Piepenbring, who lived in Maryville, picked up a few maintenance workers in his four-wheel drive truck and drove them to the park boundary at Townsend. Blount County plows had already cleared U.S. 321. Piepenbring knew the Kentucky middle-schoolers were trapped at Tremont and at least 22 campers were stranded at Cades Cove.

“There were a lot of trees blocking the roadway in the park, and since all the snow-removal equipment was kept at Cades Cove, the only thing we could do was to attempt to chain saw our way in to the students at Tremont,” says Piepenbring. “We were able to clear only about a mile, to the Tremont Road intersection with Laurel Creek Road.”

Ron Parrish en route to Newfound Gap in Ober Gatlinburg’s tracked snow vehicle found and rescued two hikers at the Alum Cave Bluffs trailhead mid-afternoon. Holed up in the Cosby Knob Shelter, stranded solo AT hiker David Griffin, turned on his portable radio and was encouraged to hear that rescue operations had begun in the park, the Daily Times article reported.

For many hikers stranded in GSMNP’s backcountry, small battery-powered radios provided a vital link to the outside world and the only source of information on the bourgeoning rescue operation. For those who heard their names referenced in broadcast reports, the radios provided comfort—they knew help was on the way. For those not mentioned, the radios only compounded their worries, suggesting that they and their whereabouts remained unknown to search crews.

Frank Norton’s and Kristen Smith’s Cranbrook teams emerged from their camp in the Northshore Road tunnel and set off down the road toward Bryson City. The clouds cleared and the sun began to shine. According to Norton, the road was choked with downed trees, but he and his students were able to get through, affirming the judgment of his decision to break camp and move.

Norton advised the students to “think like a caterpillar.”

The 16-person group formed a single line, with the person in front kicking steps in the snow. “Each person kicked 25 steps, or 50, if they were feeling strong, before stepping aside and letting the next person take the lead,” says Norton. “No one was a passive participant; everyone contributed to the good of the group.”

By late afternoon, the human caterpillar approached the park boundary, where the group encountered a maintenance crew out clearing debris from the road, and the group was soon in Bryson City. Later, they would check into the Holiday Inn in Cherokee and await word on the fate of their schoolmates.

Cranbrook advisor Cara Martin and seven students managed to self-rescue by hiking out nearly three miles from Campsite 17 to Abrams Creek Ranger Station. They would be evacuated by an NPS truck the next day and taken to Maryville.

In the Russell Field Shelter, Patricia Hammann, Cathy Davidson, Todd Graves, and Jeff Burns occupied their time by playing word games (“we thought of a food that started with each letter of the alphabet”) and discussing religion and politics. According to Hammann, temperatures dropped through the day, but the wind abated. Graves and Burns, hoping to reach the spring for water, tried to fashion showshoes from wire mesh they had found at the shelter.

The plan failed, and they were forced to burn precious fuel to melt snow.

At 5:20 p.m., the first three Black Hawks arrived at Sugarlands. One was dispatched to the Oconaluftee Visitor Center, and a second set out to cover the AT from Mt. Collins to Charlies Bunion and the road to Clingmans Dome.

The Sikorsky UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter was first put into service in the late 1970s, replacing the Bell UH-1 Iroquois (Huey), which had seen extensive use during the Vietnam War, as the U.S. Army’s main tactical transport chopper. The Sikorsky can accommodate two pilots and 12 passengers, and when equipped with an external motorized hoist, can lift soldiers—or, in this case, stranded hikers—to safety. The aircraft would assume the lead role in the ensuing rescue operation, assisting both in locating stranded hikers and extracting them from the snow-draped backcountry.

As darkness fell, the AT hikers at Birch Spring Gap Shelter discussed plans to push on toward Mollies Ridge Shelter the next day. Though they wrestled with the same decision Cranbrook team leader Frank Norton had faced the day before, their ultimate decision would prove far less auspicious.

Section Three: GSMNP Intensifies the Search Monday, March 15 On Monday morning, the NPS staff continued to trickle in.

Some were forced to cut their way out of their neighborhoods with the same chain saws they would later apply in clearing roads in the park. By then, bitterly cold temperatures had compounded existing problems. Sunday night had reached a low of -10 F on Mount Le Conte, a record for March. The low would bottom out there again Monday night, while the low in Gatlinburg would plummet to 1.

The widespread power outage meant most area residents were enduring the frigid temperatures without the benefit of heat in their homes.

The hikers stranded in the backcountry, depending on the elevations of their bivouacs, were forced to contend with temperatures somewhere in between. The luckier ones huddled in tents. The Cranbrook students lay under sagging tarps.

In the backcountry, hikers may have been cut off and stranded, but the NPS had a pretty good idea where most of them were. The park rigidly enforces its backcountry

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registration system, which requires all backcountry travelers to acquire permits listing all planned campsites for the duration of their visits. In the end, the system created a vital paper trail that led SAR crews to many of the stranded hikers.

At 7:30 a.m., NPS Ranger George Minnigh departed in a Black Hawk en route to the Luftee Overlook near Newfound Gap and evacuated three hikers from Syracuse, New York, two of them suffering from frostbite and exposure.

They were flown to Sevierville Medical Center.

At about 9 a.m., AT hikers Maloney, Pawlowski, and Shembri departed Birch Spring Gap Shelter en route to Mollies Ridge Shelter, five miles to the north. McCollum, Chaplin, Baldwin, and Boyland left shortly after. All encountered chest-deep snow. Seven hours later, they had covered less than half the distance to the shelter.

Piepenbring had arranged for snow-removal equipment operators to meet in Townsend in the morning, where a Black Hawk landed on U.S. 321 and flew them to Cades Cove.

“Once the equipment operators got the plows moving, they were able to push the downed trees out of the roadway and plow a one-lane road from Cades Cove to Townsend. After that I had a ranger lead the 22 stranded campers down Laurel Creek Road to Townsend.”

Public Information Officers Bob Miller and Nancy Gray arrived at a “dark and cold” HQ and set up a temporary public affairs office in two rooms at the Conner Motor Lodge in Gatlinburg. The motel, Miller reports, had power, phone, and FAX. Miller and Gray, along with many of their NPS colleagues, would remain on the job and not return home until Thursday evening.

“On Saturday and Sunday, March 13-14, few contacts with the park were possible, as only one emergency phone line was in service,” Miller wrote in a post-incident report.

“This inability to communicate directly with the park meant that, by the time we [Miller and Gray] came on line on Monday, much speculative, and often erroneous, information had already been put out by the media.”

Among the misinformation was the assertion that the NPS was searching only for the Cranbrook students, leaving the impression that the rest of the park’s backcountry travelers would have to fend for themselves. Some of the marooned hikers received the disheartening, though false, news via their battery-powered radios.

Miller pressed administrative worker Lisa Rolen into service to begin logging calls from the dozens of worried relatives of hikers stranded in the park. Meanwhile, Miller and Gray responded to the first media queries. Over the next five days, the two would field nearly 500 calls and interview requests from media representatives, many of them based in the home towns of the stranded hikers.

National media also recognized the newsworthy nature of the situation, and Miller and Gray talked with reporters from Life Magazine, The New York Times, USA Today, Good Morning America, National Public Radio, CNN, NBC, CBS, and ABC, among many others.

The parents of the stranded Cranbrook students used their clout to generate pressure from their senators and Congressional representatives and Department of the Interior administrators—all of whom contacted the park to check on progress.

Miller and his colleagues realized that they were racing against time; the longer the hikers remained trapped in the backcountry, under conditions now made worse by frigid temperatures, the more likely that the SAR operation might, at some point, evolve into a mission to recover bodies.

“We knew from previous experience that the equipment and judgment of those individuals stranded in the backcountry varied greatly,” says Miller. “We expected that some of the more skilled and better equipped and supplied hikers would just hunker down and be okay. But we feared that others would be woefully underprepared for those extreme conditions and make bad decisions and get into life-threatening situations to which we would be unable to respond.”

At 10:40 a.m., the NPS officially closed the park’s backcountry. Park staffers already had their hands full, and if there’s one thing they didn’t need, it was a few overconfident daredevils straying into the park and, themselves becoming stranded and further stressing limited SAR resources.

A few minutes later, a Black Hawk spotted a lone hiker on the Clingmans Dome Road and dropped a sleeping bag.

At 11:35 a.m., another Black Hawk hovered over the tight clearing near the Spence Field Shelter. Jack Piepenbring, who was onboard the chopper, said that the pilot executed a “dust-off,” revving his engines to blast away any loose debris and snow before he landed the aircraft. The clearing proved to be too small; as the pilot lowered the chopper, his rotor tips cut a landing zone in the rhododendrons on either side of the clearing, “slicing through the branches like a chain saw.”

Once on the ground, the pilot sent part of the crew out with a “crash kit” to cut away the branches that entrapped the now-motionless and sagging rotors while he inspected the damage. Piepenbring noticed that all four rotors were damaged, with pieces of rhododendron hanging from the cracked rotor tips. Nevertheless, the pilot, a Vietnam War veteran, deemed the craft airworthy and invited the six stranded hikers to climb onboard. Though no doubt a bit unnerved by the rough landing, the battered backpackers were more than ready to leave.

The day before, they had aborted an attempt to hike out when they were unable to find the trail, buried under feet of snow. That night, the group contended with sub-zero temperatures and snow blowing into the open-faced shelter past the plastic tarps they had hastily erected to seal off the interior space.

Early in the afternoon, Ranger Keith Nelson, aboard a Black Hawk, located Nicole Schack’s group of six students near Noland Creek, winched them out, and flew them to McGhee-Tyson Airport. At that point, Schack, who had hiked out to Deep Creek the day before with her student

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Even reaching the national park was a major obstacle during the early days of the rescue operation. Fortunately, the National Park Service had help from the Tennessee Army National Guard, Tennessee Emergency Management Agency, 101st U.S. Army Airborne Division, Cherokee Tribal Emergency Management Technicians, Ober Gatlinburg Ski Resort, Pigeon Forge Police Department, and others.

leader, was safe at the Holiday Inn in Cherokee.

A Black Hawk spotted and rescued Cranbrook advisor Fred Higgins and seven students from Campsite 41, in Cataloochee. Tom Murdock’s Cranbrook team, supplied with ample food, decided to head north along the Hazel Creek Trail toward the AT. “We left all our gear at camp and began breaking a trail,” says Murdock. “After working for a while, we’d walk back to the camp to rest.” The group did not progress far before they began hearing and seeing aircraft and realized that rescue was imminent.

At Cosby Knob Shelter, David Griffin spotted a Black Hawk hovering overhead. The chopper dropped a sleeping bag, food, and a note instructing him to stay put; help would arrive within 24 hours. The chopper’s rotors shook loose some dead limbs and provided Griffin with his only source of firewood, according to the Daily Times article. To keep his mind sharp, the article reports, Griffin checked and rechecked his gear.

At 2 p.m., Chief Ranger Jason Houck assumed the role of Incident Commander and directed his small available staff to establish a command center in the training room at park HQ in Sugarlands. The Tennessee Emergency Management Agency (TEMA) provided a generator large enough to power the entire command center. A telephone repairman installed four direct phone lines.

At 2:40 p.m., an NPS vehicle with Cherokee Tribal Emergency Medical Technicians on board rescued several teenage hikers who had made it out to the Oconaluftee Visitor Center.

Three of them were suffering from frostbitten feet.

Shortly after, a chopper hovered over the Russell Field Shelter and dropped a package instructing Patricia Hammann and her shelter-mates to wave their hands if they were okay, to wave a blue flag if they needed food, or to wave an orange flag if anyone was injured. Hammann says they deployed the blue flag; they were running low on rations. The chopper dropped a case of MREs before departing. The four hoped the helicopter crew would convey news to their families that they were cold and hungry but safe. Hammann’s husband, Tim, who had traveled from Indiana, awaited word in a Gatlinburg motel.

At about 4:30, a Black Hawk spotted the AT hikers— now splintered into two groups—struggling to make their way from Birch Spring Shelter to Mollies Ridge and lowered a medic. According to post-incident interviews, Shembri, the only one who interacted with the medic, insisted that all were okay but needed food. The chopper dropped food rations before departing.

The helicopter returned a short time later. A corpsman descended on a winch cable and asked McCollum, Chaplin, Baldwin, and Boyland if they wanted to be extracted.

Thinking the shelter was only 15 minutes away, and assured that the chopper would drop food rations, the group decided to remain on the trail.

As the chopper departed, its cable temporarily snagged on Chaplin’s pack, and its rotors showered the hikers with snow. They watched as the chopper dropped a load of food

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near the shelter, more than a mile away, and realized just how far they yet had to travel.

By now, the AT hikers had difficulty locating the trail. At 7:30 p.m., they dug out an emergency campsite in a cluster of trees. They kept their stoves burning to provide additional warmth in their tents. Boyland’s boots had frozen to his feet, and he was forced to cut the laces to remove them.

Tuesday, March 16 The Tennessee Interagency Mobilization Center dispatched 15 personnel with winter survival skills to assist NPS rangers in searching the backcountry on foot. As crews began to clear park roads, rangers catalogued cars parked at trailheads and matched license plates with the names of missing persons.

Public Information Officer Miller, now operating from the emergency HQ at Sugarlands, discovered that a number of media representatives were calling and massing at the Oconaluftee Visitor Center and dispatched Nancy Gray, via helicopter, to handle press relations on the other side of the mountain. There, Ranger Tom Robbins assisted Gray, while Ranger Karen Ballentine joined Lisa Rolen in helping Miller.

At about 10:30 a.m., about two miles south of the Mollies Ridge Shelter on the AT, Chaplin, McCollum, Baldwin, and Boyland broke camp. According to a post-incident interview with the hikers, at that point their boots were frozen, and they had no dry socks or gloves. They reached Mollies Ridge Shelter at noon and found the shelter filled with snow. Shembri, Maloney, and Pawlowski had arrived before them and had begun gathering firewood. The hikers set up their tents inside the shelter to conserve body heat and protect them from blowing snow.

Just after 11 a.m. Ranger Dave Panebaker appealed to the Federal Aviation Administration to close airspace over the park to avoid congestion and reduce interference with rescue operations. The FAA complied.

On the upper reaches of Hazel Creek, a chopper hovered over Murdock’s Cranbrook team and dropped a small package, instructing the group to form their arms into a Y if they needed help or to the sides if they were uninjured. According to Murdock, the group signaled that they were okay.

“We wondered if other people in the woods might need help more than we did,” he says. Soon after, the helicopter departed but returned and dropped a box of MREs. With the supplemental food, Murdock says, “we had enough calories to last us weeks.”

Murdock interpreted the food drop as a sign the campers would not be rescued for a couple more days, and he instructed his students to empty their packs to inventory gear. “Just when the students had taken apart their packs, the helicopter returned,” says Murdock. The chopper’s rotors scattered the loose gear.

A corpsman descended on a cable and informed Murdock that bad weather was blowing in; the students would have to be evacuated immediately, and their belongings would have

to remain behind. The Black Hawks operating in the park were equipped with extraction devices known as Jungle Penetrators (they were first used in Vietnam to hoist ground troops into hovering Hueys), which were lowered on a steel cable. The weighted device’s three arms are folded up as it’s lowered through the jungle, or in this case, forest canopy.

Once lowered, the arms open to create small seats.

The chopper hovered about 100 feet above Murdock’s students on the forest floor, and for each extraction, a student, belted to the extraction device, hugged a chopper crewman seated opposite him or her, and the two rose together to the chopper. According to Piepenbring, each extraction took about five minutes. Jay Nicols, who describes the ascent to the chopper as “beautiful, with great views,” confesses that he was “a little scared but more pumped to be going home.”

Once Nichols was onboard, the pilot confirmed that Nicols’ signaling device—the bright yellow ski jacket—had helped him and his crew locate the stranded hikers.

As the students were lifted one-by-one into the chopper, Murdock rifled through the students’ packs and the piles of belongings, grabbing cameras, journals, and other valuable items before he, too, was lifted to safety.

When the chopper landed at Oconaluftee Visitor Center, Murdock’s team was confronted by what he describes as “a crazy crowd of reporters. We were completely amazed by the level of interest.”

At about 2:30 p.m., Ranger George Minnigh, traveling on snowshoes, reached thru-hiker David Griffin at the Cosby Knob shelter, and the two soon began their hike out. By that time, above-freezing daytime temperatures had begun to melt and consolidate the snow, making foot travel possible, though still enervating and slow.

Late in the afternoon, Murdock was able to provide the rescue team with the approximate location of Jim Meehan’s Cranbrook team. Two pilots powered up their chopper and took off with Ranger Pat Patten onboard. Patten spotted Meehan’s group near the junction of the Hazel Creek and Lakeshore Trails. By then, according to Norton, Meehan and his students had managed to hike nearly eight miles down the mountain from Campsite 82, hoping to reach a ranger cabin they knew would provide shelter. They never got there. The chopper crew extracted Meehan and his seven students and flew them to the Oconaluftee Visitor Center. Shaw’s Cranbrook team was likewise rescued.

At 5:22 p.m., Incident Commander Houck advised his crew that the last of the Cranbrook students were safely on the ground. That left only 11 hikers marooned in the backcountry: the seven AT hikers at Mollies Ridge Shelter and Hamman, Davidson, Graves, and Burns at Russell Field.

By that time, Graves had managed to reach the spring near the shelter, and Hammann says they could hear helicopters in the distance. Graves learned from his radio that several people were yet unaccounted for in the park, and Hammann wondered if the four of them were part of that group.

That evening, weather conditions declined, with rain and clouds, and at 8 p.m., Houck shifted the SAR from air to ground.

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The willingness of U.S. Army pilots to make dangerous maneuvers in heavily-forested mountain terrain ultimately led to the rescues of over 100 people in the aftermath of the March blizzard.

Wednesday, March 17

Thursday, March 18

A warming trend brought rain and dense fog, preempting any attempt at air-borne rescue. At Mollies Ridge, the seven AT hikers spent the day scouring the ridge for wood and idling in their sleeping bags.

In the Russell Field Shelter, Graves’ radio broadcast a discouraging report suggesting that the search might be called off because of its skyrocketing costs, according to a post-incident NPS interview with the hikers. (An NPS assessment would later put the cost of the operation at $118,000.)

Though he heard news reports about other hikers missing in the park, he and his three shelter-mates were not mentioned.

Later in the day, Graves picked up another broadcast, which featured his and Burns’ fathers. According to Hammann, the young men’s fathers cited their “faith in their sons’ ability to survive the storm.” In another interview, Hammann’s husband, Tim, mentioned his wife’s 20 years of experience as a backpacker.

The four were heartened—even moved—by the news.

“We all had an emotional period after we heard the interviews,” recalls Hammann. “We all cried knowing that our families were worried about us.”

At Mollies Ridge, Baldwin, Boyland, Chaplin, and McCollum packed their gear, hoping that a helicopter would arrive the next day to rescue them. Meanwhile, Shembri and Pawlowski desired a different outcome, wishing instead that the NPS would leave them alone and not disrupt their journey north on the AT.

At the Russell Field Shelter, Hammann, Davidson, Graves, and Burns prepared to hike out to Cades Cove. The group was down to the last of its food rations, so they forewent breakfast. Before departing, they filled their water bottles at the spring.

As they reached the grassy clearing just beyond the shelter, Hammann says she could hear a plane fly overhead.

The fog that had persisted through the previous day began to lift. Hammann tied a strip of orange plastic to the top of her pack so they could be spotted from the air.

Though now seven days into a difficult ordeal, Hammann still managed to find beauty in the snowy landscape that spread around her. She noted in particular the ample hoar frost that adorned the trunks and branches of the trees and shimmered in the sun.

As they hiked down through snow that, in some places, was hip deep, the two young college students pulled ahead, and about a mile from the shelter, Hammann could hear Graves and Burns talking with someone. She soon discovered that they were talking with NPS rangers. One of them got on his radio to call in a transport for the hikers to the University of Tennessee (UT) Medical Center, but Hammann, a registered nurse, assured him that they were okay—just eager to get out.

The rangers led the four hikers back up the mountain to a clearing near the shelter, where, at 8:12 a.m., a chopper

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set down, loaded them up, and flew them to HQ. From there, a van took them to a motel in Gatlinburg, where Hammann was reunited with her husband.

In the morning, Shembri and Pawlowski departed the Mollies Ridge Shelter on handcrafted snowshoes but made little progress before the devices broke. Maloney, Baldwin, Boyland, Chaplin, and McCollum followed. According to the NPS post-incident interview, the group spotted a plane at 9 a.m., and 45 minutes later, a 101st U.S. Army Airborne helicopter arrived to extract them and carry them to Sugarlands Visitor Center.

Piepenbring, who was onboard the Black Hawk, says that Shembri turned out to be a reluctant, even resentful, evacuee. According to a post-incident interview with the two hikers, “It was evident that Shembri and Pawlowski probably would have stayed on the trail if they had been given that option. Shembri was quite vocal in expressing his desire to have continued.” Piepenbring did not afford Shembri any options. The hiker was ordered onto the chopper, and Piepenbring was forced to confiscate the lockblade knife that Shembri clutched in his fist.

Once on the ground at Sugarlands, according to an article in the Bar Harbor Times, Chaplin was greeted by an old friend wearing a NPS uniform. Chaplin, from Maine, had babysat Ranger Carroll Schell’s kids when he was stationed at Acadia National Park. According to the report, Schell had been in contact with Chaplin’s father over the previous three days.

Section Four: Epilogue Early afternoon on March 18, with all missing hikers accounted for and safe, the NPS began to shut down what had become known as Operation Blizzard.

At 3:30, the last of the helicopters transported Public Information Officer Nancy Gray from Oconaluftee back to HQ, before departing. Three hours later, the Tennessee Army National Guard caravan of tracked vehicles and HMMWVs set out for its home base in Knoxville.

NPS crews continued to remove snow and fallen timber from park roads. By Saturday, March 20, eight days after the storm hit, Sugarlands Visitor Center was still without power, but GSMNP had reopened U.S. 441 and the Laurel Creek Road from Townsend to Cades Cove. As of March 31, some of the park’s more remote roadways remained closed.

A few days after Shembri and Pawlowski had been plucked from the mountains, they resumed their hike on the AT. By summer’s end, they and David Griffin would achieve their quest; their names are included on the Appalachian Trail Conservancy’s “2000-miler List” for 1993.

The NPS, with invaluable assistance from the Army National Guard, U.S. Army Airborne Division, and TEMA, directly rescued 135 people from the park’s 800-square-mile backcountry. Twenty-four other hikers effected self-rescues, bringing the total to 159. In recognition of its efforts, the

GSMNP staff would later be awarded a Unit Award for Excellence of Service from the U.S. Department of the Interior.

The Cranbrook students boarded buses the morning of Wednesday, March 17, and arrived home late that afternoon. The students—and their parents—had endured a dramatic ordeal, and all who had ventured into GSMNP left the park with plenty of stories to share with friends and eager media representatives.

Murdock says that two years after the incident, when the sophomore participants were by then seniors, he read “a huge number of college entrance essays focused on the storm experience.”

With their students reunited with the families back in Michigan, Expedition Program coordinator Frank Norton gathered his staff in a hotel conference room and did what he could to help them process the difficult situation they had all endured. Murdock recalls Norton saying, “Your work as a leader is done. The kids are home safe.”

Then he asked them to reflect on their own thoughts and memories of the experience. “At that point,” recalls Murdock, “we were all crying and laughing in the exhausted way of people who had spent several sleepless nights worrying about everything and living on adrenaline.”

The skills they had nurtured in their students through the Wilderness Expedition Program had been severely tested and proven. According to Norton, many of the students returned home brimming with newfound self-confidence, and no regrets.

“When you’re 16, life hasn’t really tested you very much.

Your tools to handle difficult situations are limited,” says Norton. “The Wilderness Expedition Program was designed to provide students with a more extensive set of tools. This event was extreme, and the kids were tested in a potentially life-threatening situation. I can’t help but think that this experience played a key role in their ability to handle difficult challenges down the line.”

After the faculty leaders had returned to Michigan, Norton says, the Wilderness Expedition Program went through “an extensive internal and external review process.” Among other changes, guided by “best practices” at the time, Cranbrook shifted from a one- to a two-adult leader model for each team, while retaining a role for the student leaders.

Not all Cranbrook expedition participants emerged from the 1993 experience unscathed. Cranbrook sophomore Danielle Swank and faculty leader James Woodruff, a math teacher, who had been among groups stranded in Joyce Kilmer-Slickrock Wilderness, suffered severe frostbite and remained hospitalized at UT Medical Center. But that was the worst of it.

“I wouldn’t have given you a nickel on Sunday night that we wouldn’t lose somebody in this storm,” said Bob Miller, as quoted in the Chattanooga Times.

Miller’s post-incident report references “much fingerpointing.” According to the report, some parents of the

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Frank Norton and Jan Reelitz await news of the ongoing search for the last group from Cranbrook.

Cranbrook students castigated the NPS for failure to adequately warn the students and their leaders or to close the park’s backcountry. Other parents lay part of the blame on the leaders of the school’s Wilderness Expedition Program.

According to Miller’s report, four NPS rangers, three in North Carolina and one in Cades Cove, had, in fact, cautioned some Cranbrook leaders about the impending storm.

Frank Norton acknowledges that a ranger had visited him on Thursday and advised that a storm was headed his way.

“We knew a storm was coming in,” says Norton, “but we did not anticipate three to four feet of snow.” Indeed, until the storm actually hit, its arrival and intensity were still only part of a forecast—and one that pushed the limits of credibility.

Weather—or, more accurately, predicted weather—creates an inconvenient conundrum. Meteorologists are well aware of the effect of Chicken Little syndrome, where repeated warnings of weather crises that fail to develop incline their audiences to discount their predictions. If you get it wrong too many times, when you get it right, no one pays much attention.

The conundrum for consumers of the local news, particularly for those who have their backpacks loaded for a long-

anticipated trip to the mountains, is to weigh the risk of adverse weather—no matter how seemingly remote—against the disappointment and frustration that would result from scrubbing the trip only to discover that your target destination is basking in warm sunshine.

In the storm’s aftermath, interest in assigning blame, for the most part, eventually gave way to gratitude. Indeed, no one can question the Cranbrook leaders’ commitment to protect their kids and lead them to safety or the NPS response to the crisis, which was aggressive, organized, and remarkably effective.

In the end, the story of GSMNP and the Storm of the Century is more about deliverance than disaster. The blizzard, one of the deadliest storms on record, claimed nearly 300 lives, 19 in North Carolina and 14 in Tennessee, according to the report by the National Climatic Data Center.

Not one of those deaths occurred in GSMNP. v David Brill is the author of Desire & Ice, As Far as the Eye Can See, and myriad magazine stories for publications such as National Geographic Traveler and Men’s Health. He lives in a rustic cabin on the Cumberland Plateau. His last story for Smokies Life was “Thanks Giving.”

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Ella V. Costner

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A Life Without Fear Faced with what was

perhaps an attempt at a contrived marriage and malicious gossip that abounded in her small mountain community, the fifteen yearold girl felt her spirit was dying and that she could no longer remain at home. She acted on the only opportunity available to her: She left home,...

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Ella Costner as a teenager.

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accepting a ride to town with a neighbor, Lewis Williamson, on his apple wagon. The trip took all day and all night and the November weather was so cold that the young woman, dressed only in a calico dress with a thin shawl about her shoulders, had to walk most of the twenty-five miles to keep warm. Once in town, the girl’s step-grandmother allowed her to spend the night but put her out on the streets the next day. The girl walked away in the wind and rain searching for employment.

This was one of the telling moments in the life of Ella Costner, a young woman born and raised in the Great Smokies. It foreshadowed the life that she would later lead and reflected her determination, independence, and courage. However, it is unlikely that any of Ella’s contemporaries during her formative years could have fathomed the remarkable characteristics she possessed or foreseen the rich life she would lead. Even today, few people recognize her name and accomplishments. I was once one of these.

Kent Cave, supervisory ranger with the National Park Service, was the first to introduce Ella V. Costner to me, mentioning that she had been named the Poet Laureate of the Smokies and had written several books.

Later, Claudia Konker, an ethnographic researcher and Volunteer-in-the-Park who sometimes portrayed “The Spirit of Ella V. Costner” in interpretive programs, generously shared her knowledge and materials with me. Later, proud family members graciously contributed their knowledge. Now I know that Ella V. Costner was a nurse, military veteran, poet, author, story-teller, traveler, adventuress, romantic, life-long student and more. Also, I am firmly convinced that she is one of the unsung heroines of the Great Smokies and that her compelling life story deserves to be told.

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Born on Crying Creek Ella Costner was born February 20,1893 to Franklin Lorenzo Costner and Charity La Dora Belle Webb in a two-room log cabin on Crying Creek in the small community of Mountain Rest near today’s Cosby Campground in Great Smoky Mountains National Park. She was one of nine children who grew up on a rocky mountain farm where all the members of the family labored for the family’s common good. Although the work was difficult and living conditions far from ideal, Ella found pleasure in her mountain home with views of the mountain heights— White Rock, Low Gap, and Snake Den. Later, in her book, Song of Life in the Smokies, she shared insights about her childhood, one of hard work tempered with simple pleasures.

“While I roasted the coffee, at intervals I would run out the door to cool from the heat of the oven, and throw my head back to better feel the cool breeze from the South, the delicious, lazy caressing breeze, laden with fragrant aroma of the roasting coffee. And as twilight faded, and the stars came out and the moon showed an orange glow through the tree tops, I would forget the tasks of the day, the long day in the field, I would forget my bruised and briar torn feet and the discomfort of a sweaty grimy body burned by the sun, I would forget that the rattler’s fangs had missed me just by a hair’s breath. I would forget that life was ever difficult or hard here in this place, this my world so filled with beauty that nothing else mattered.”

Beyond the constant work, Ella’s early life was limited to the narrow confines of her small community. Her playground, shared with her brothers and sisters, was the fields and forest about the cabin. Here Ella played, picked berries, gathered chestnuts, explored the coves and mountain slopes and dreamed. Once a month, the family dressed in their freshly washed and starched Sunday-best and trooped to an unpainted church to hear a message delivered by a visiting minister. At other times, they participated in family weddings, music makings, and other gatherings, where they shared the news and gossip of the day. Perhaps, and most important, school provided the other major dimension in Ella’s life, even though the school term was only two or three months a year unless

The Origin of the “V” in Ella Costner’s Name What does the initial “V” stand for? Ella, who had a sense of word rhythm and cadence, added the “V” to her name for effect when she was an adult because she liked the way it sounded. Makes sense! Try it. Ella Costner, Ella Costner, Ella Costner—Ella V. Costner, Ella V. Costner, Ella V. Costner. Ella V. Costner has significantly more import.

sufficient money could be raised to keep the teacher for a few extra weeks.

Ella excelled in school and rapidly advanced to study with her older classmates, successfully competing with them and winning prizes for her scholarship. With guidance from her teachers, her inquisitive mind was cultivated. She was inspired by the works of great authors and introduced to a world vastly different from her own. By the time Ella was ten, she yearned for a creative outlet and found it in memorizing hundreds of verses of poetry. Finally, when her poetry resources were exhausted, she memorized pages from her spelling book. On one occasion, Ella prepared a recitation for a flag-raising at her school, a special event with speeches and refreshments—pink lemonade and ice cream. Her choice for the day was “Oh, Why Should the Spirit of Mortal Be Proud?” a favorite of Abraham Lincoln’s. She prepared for weeks, delivering this with “all the vim and vigor I could” while standing on a stump surrounded by forest. Notwithstanding Ella’s obvious intelligence, her father wanted to remove her from school at age ten to help at home and would have succeeded had it not been for her mother’s adamant refusal.

Ella’s mother and father were not able to expand her formal educational horizons because of their own limited background, however, they taught her other equally important lessons. In Song of Life in the Smokies, Ella reflects on one of the lessons she learned growing up. “We were taught independence in every phase of society, independence of all other churches, independence of all fads and fashions, independence of cast (sic), or convention, or creed or color, independence of all forms of Government and Law, save what was right in the sight of God.” Ella learned this lesson well and displayed her mountain independence in countless ways throughout her lifetime.

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T h e B e g i n n i n g o f A dv e n t u r e s Ella’s escape to Newport, Tennessee in 1908 was the beginning of her life of adventure. Always enterprising, Ella obtained employment with Mrs. Cora Massey Mims, wife of a local druggist, as a live-in domestic.

She would later write that Mrs. Mims helped me when, “I was a young helpless girl just out of the mountains.”

This employment allowed her to attend Newport High School and later State Normal School in Johnson City, Tennessee, where she studied teacher education. This training led to an offer of a position as a school teacher at Mountain Rest School in her former community; however, she refused and instead accepted a job with the Singer Sewing Machine Company where she

learned to keep books and demonstrate sewing machines.

Perhaps Ella was searching for direction during this period. If so, she found it in an article titled “Ellen Key’s Message to America,” that appeared in the November 1911 issue of Woman’s World Magazine—published 1884-1940. The article, written by Ellen Key, Swedish feminist, emphasized “training for women, training for homemakers, for mothers.” This message spoke to Ella and “was the torch that lighted the way for a hungry soul.” It inspired her and instilled in her a dream—the dream of becoming a nurse—although its immediate fulfillment would have to wait.

D e par t u r e f o r t h e Un kn ow n Ella intimates in one of her books that she continued to be plagued by gossip and false accusations while working in Newport, prompting her to contact an aunt in San Antonio, Texas to inquire about employment opportunities there. Through her aunt, she was able to secure employment with a “kind old German and his wife” in 1915 or 1916 who sent her railroad fare to come west. Alone and with little money, Ella slipped away to Texas before anyone knew. After working for a time, Ella ultimately entered nurses training at John Sealy Hospital School of Nursing in Galveston, Texas and after three years graduated with honors in 1920, fulfilling her dream to become a nurse. Attesting to her capability is the fact that the hospital gave her the position of supervisor before graduation and made her a member of the hospital staff after graduation, an honor available to few in her school.

Although Ella had found recognition and secure employment in Texas, she states “I did not stay there long but went to a Southern state where I was immediately given a position as night supervisor in a large new hospital,” presumably in Knoxville, Tennessee.

A Woman of Fashion Always attentive to her appearance, Ella was aware of the fashions of the day and periodically described her clothing in some detail. Following are examples.

“At Lampassas (sic) I bought a swim outfit, a navy blue wool suit that came to my knees, a blue and yellow bathing cap, some yellow stockings and rubber sandals.” “I purchased one summer dress, a pink beaded Georgette gown, a blue wool dress for the cool months, a winter coat and a hat (blue, with feathers).”

“I wore a dress of purple silk poplin [,] fur trimmed collar, cuffs and flaring side panels on the skirt. The fur was real and was about two and a half to three inches wide. The strips were near the top of the hem. I made the dress, but where I got the materials I do not now remember. It was a gorgeous outfit.

“I had made my trousseau (prior to marrying Al Winfield), which included some Parisian gowns. One was chartreuse, embroidered in silver thread, with gold velvet medallions. Another, a street dress, was of ashesof-roses. I also had a white evening gown with a royal train that swung from the shoulders and was caught up in the edge of the hem a little below the ankle. Finally, there was an exquisite one tucked all over by hand. I called this one my “dress of sighs.” “I also had my silver and Damask linen imported from Ireland.”

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N e w D i r e c t i on s , N e w A dv e n t u r e s Ella did not remain in East Tennessee long. She possessed self-confidence, a well-honed intellect, an inherent quest for knowledge and a mind-set of fearless independence. She knew that, as she put it,

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“there were other laurels awaiting me.” In pursuit of “other laurels,” she applied for a position at Bellevue Hospital in New York City and was accepted so quickly that “it almost took my breath away.” Thus, in February 1921, she made a “Great Pilgrimage” that included a stop in Washington, DC in March to attend the Presidential Inauguration of Warren G. Harding before continuing to her employment in New York City.

She requested a night position at Bellevue because it best suited her plans to continue her education, which she pursued with zeal. She made three educational trips a week to museums, art galleries and other places of interest and occasionally attended lectures at Columbia University. These experiences were not wasted on Ella and she counted her education in New York “worth ten of other years spent in small places.” After about a year of nursing, she applied and was accepted for a Civil Service Commission position and assigned to Colon Hospital in the Panama Canal Zone, arriving there in the summer of 1922. Ella spent three and one-half years as a nurse in Panama where, in addition to her regular nursing duties, she made a two-month trip to Salvador, the capital of San Salvador, to nurse the wife of the United States Ambassador, a reflection of her capability and credibility as a nurse.

When not on duty, Ella visited historical sites and some of Panama’s interior villages and generally enjoyed the beauty of her surroundings.

Because Ella was a striking and intelligent woman with a delightful personality and sense of humor, it is no surprise that she enjoyed an active social life, participating in dances, receptions, parties and concerts. Also, it is not surprising that she found romance!

A grateful patient whom Ella had nursed back to health told her, “I’m going to do something nice for you when I am recovered.”

A month or two later, the patient invited her to a party and told her that John,

a friend, would pick her up. John, a handsome man of thirty-five to forty, arrived at the appointed time and he and Ella joined ten or twelve people at a restaurant where the party was being held. During the evening, John and Ella cast occasional gazes at one another. Ella was “enthralled” by John, although it became apparent to her that evening that John was married. When the party adjourned to a nearby club, Ella traveled there alone with John, becoming better acquainted with him along the way. Later, when toasts were being offered, she finally learned that her escort was John D. Arosemena, the Governor of Colon, who later became the President of Panama.

Ella Costner in Panama with friends, “When the world was mine” she says.

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John and Ella maintained a close relationship during the majority of their time in Panama and, eventually, John, who anticipated a diplomatic appointment, asked Ella to accompany him to France as his secretary. She refused, however, out of concern for John’s family, and they later drifted apart. In her book Love Affair Around the

World —Volume I, Ella reflected, “the hours that I spent with John, I think were the happiest of my adult life.

With him there was joy, only joy supreme!” It was shortly after this that Ella resigned her position with the Civil Service for reasons of her own, described in the sidebar “The Men in Her Life”

A D ar k T i m e The next few years marked a dark chapter in Ella’s life.

She returned home from Panama to “drabness and mostly poverty” and performed private duty nursing for about a year until she became discontented and feared that by staying home she would be deprived of “the great thing in life.” She described it this way: “The great thing is LOVE, but if not love then wisdom, or to create SOMETHING, SOMETHING OF BEAUTY.” With this goal in mind, she again returned to San Antonio, Texas where she knew she could obtain the training she desired.

Once there, Ella met a homeopathic doctor, who was a teacher of Theosophy, and joined his group in the study of the teachings of the Theosophical Society, “a religious movement...incorporating Buddhist and Brahmanic theories such as reincarnation and karma.” She had found herself in the midst of what she was seeking. It was as if she had been transported on a “magic carpet.”

One of the people she met in her study group was a Dr. Aldenberg, a native of Norway who had been in the United States about twenty years. Dr. Aldenberg was a chiropractor, a student of oriental philosophy, a graduate minister of a protestant denomination, and reputed to be an expert hypnotist. Although his dress was out of style and his experiences drastically different from Ella’s, he

Charity La Dora Belle Webb, Ella’s mother.

Isaac Costner, one of Ella’s numerous siblings, served in the Navy in WWI. He was the brother that would get Ella arrested.

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Franklin Lorenzo Costner, Ella’s father.

was, nevertheless, a handsome man, who possessed “magnetic power.” Although opposites, Ella fell for him and became engaged to be married. “It was his interest in Theosophical studies that caught her.” Unfortunately, Ella was unable to see that Dr. Aldenberg was a charlatan.

Dr. Aldenberg and Ella married in the summer of 1929, despite her early misgivings about her husband-to-be, and she immediately entered into an abusive relationship. As the marriage unfolded, beginning with their honeymoon trip to Chicago, she learned that her husband was stingy, inconsiderate, stubborn, unreasonable, inept, uncaring, argumentative and verbally abusive. Although he was at times caring and personable, his worst characteristics dominated their relationship.

Once in Chicago, Dr. Aldenberg decided to take a free salesmanship course to become qualified to sell magnetic blankets with purported healing properties.

When the course ended, he told Ella that he was going to Minneapolis, Minnesota to sell blankets. Ella, convinced that her husband with his numerous credentials should be using his training more productively, told him, “do what you like, I am going back to Tennessee.” After three weeks the doctor returned to Ella in Tennessee and the two reconciled and returned to San Antonio. They faced

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Ella returned to nursing for a time until Mac McMahan, a friend since childhood and the real true love of her life, came back into it in 1931. Mac told her he was accepting a job in Cuba and asked her to accompany him as far as Miami. Ella, who had always wanted to visit Florida, complied with his request. Unbeknownst to Ella, Mac was married and his wife and son lived in Cuba, a truth she did not learn until they were in Miami. Ella forgave him for this deception, however, and when Mac left for Cuba she found work in a massage parlor in Miami: “It was a bona fide one, not a front for illicit entertainment.” In time, Ella traveled Ella V. Costner was attracted to Cuba and met to men and they were attractMac’s wife and son ed to her. Her books and pobut, afterwards, her ems are full of details about relationship with the men she met throughout Mac ended for good her life and these accounts and, as always, she are an integral part of her returned home. writing. She describes her reElla described lationship with the Governor her next adventure in Song of Life in the of Colon, John D. ArosemeSmokies in a story tina, her failed marriage to the tled “The Pitting of abusive Dr. Aldenberg, disWits.” In this story, cusses the love of her life, the name “Katie” is Robert “Mac” McMahan, who substituted for Ella’s. was in and out of her life for In the spring of years, and many more. Per1933, Ella rented a haps her life would have been six-room house and different had she married Al five acres in Cosby, Winfield whom she met in Tennessee within a New York City while on mile of where she leave from her duties in Panawas born, hung out ma. Mr. Winfield proposed a “For Tourists” sign and opened The marriage and Ella accepted; White Rock Inn. however, because of her reAdditionally, she sponsibilities in Panama, she apparently had a had to return there to comsmall store and fillplete her work. After resigning station associating her job, she returned to ed with her tourist New York City with a joyful home. Full of confiheart, anticipating her mardence in her busiriage. However, upon arrival, ness skills and used her betrothed was not there to hard work, she to meet her! After a few days, launched her new Ella learned that Al had died venture, but got off of pneumonia three days beto a bad start when the informal openfore she arrived. ing party turned

The Men in Her Life

Robert “Mac” McMahan was the real true love of Ella’s life.

Unfortunately, he was married.

difficult times there and lived in virtual poverty. The Doctor could not attract chiropractic patients and Ella could not find nursing work. Fortunately, they had a change of fortune. Both became employed by a health resort in Kenedy, Texas. The Doctor was responsible for various therapy treatments and Ella was employed as hostess, nurse and dietician.

Although their employment circumstances had improved, Dr. Aldenberg verbally abused Ella continuously for hours and he tried unsuccessfully to gain control of her through hypnosis. Finally, he became physically abusive, hitting and shoving her and putting her head under his arm and slinging “her around and around trying to break her neck.” Ella fought back and finally escaped.

This abuse precipitated the end of their marriage and within the year she returned to Tennessee where she ultimately obtained a divorce. In later life, Ella wrote candidly about the horrors of her relationship with Dr. Aldenberg in a thinly disguised story titled “The Pilgrim” published in Song of Life in the Smokies and in Love Affair Around the World - Volume I. This was indeed a dark chapter in her life.

The 1930s: Creeping [Boldly] Back into Life “The world turned in its lathe of time, And the hot sands heaved amain...

The neoplasm stirred, while from Above was the WORD And she crept into life again.”

—from Song of Life in the Smokies

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Ella Costner (far right) and two friends in Cosby, TN.

into a drunken brawl. Also, unknown to her, young men who hung about the store were peddling moonshine. Later Ella was raided. What Ella did not know was that a few people—the liquor peddlers among them—had “predetermined her failure.”

Ella was desperate. She had invested all her money in her business and her brothers and aged parents were depending on her for assistance. She had to do something to survive. Ella always survived: she was fearless. She went to Cosby and purchased two cases of “Home Brew”—an easy thing to do in Cosby—and began selling it. Soon she had the reputation of having the best in the “whole country.”

All went well until the raid. On a beautiful day in August, Ella “had bottled what kegged whisky she had and refilled a two gallon jug. She put the keg in the oven of her coal and wood stove with a slow fire. She took the bottles out and hid them under the back steps. She had two gallon jugs in a tow sack out by the back fence in a clump of rose bushes.” This was the setting when two deputies rushed in the back door, served a warrant on her, and continued right past the liquor keg, now behind where Ella stood, and began to search her house. While they searched elsewhere, Ella put the keg back in the oven and in a flurry of activity commenced throwing bottles of white liquor over a briar patch. When she looked up one of the deputies was standing at the back door laughing at her “fit to bust.” Ella asked him, “Why don’t you come down and take me in?” The deputy, still laughing said, “It ain’t my raid.” Talk about luck! Ella, an admirer of Kipling, now thought of the lines: “I pitted my wits

against the wits of men, sometimes they won, and sometimes I won.” This time Ella had won; however, when the season was over she closed the doors of her establishment for good.

During the 1930s, Ella had another run-in with the law; this time she went to jail. It happened like this— long story made short. Her brother, Isaac “Ike” Costner, was a member of a gang that robbed a United States mail truck in Charlotte, North Carolina of $105,000 dollars on November 15, 1933. The gang returned to East Tennessee and buried the loot. Some, buried in jars along the Pigeon River, floated into fields when the jars broke in a flood, leading to a public search. Another portion was buried and reburied, some in Ella’s father’s garden, then elsewhere. Ella’s father was arrested, but Ella, who was “trying to save her father,” told law officers where to look for the money. When they were unsuccessful, Ella told them: “Well, I guess I can find it. I didn’t put it there, but I’ll see if I can find it.” She led them to the place, took a mattock and dug it up. Then she was arrested!

Ella tells of her imprisonment like this.

“So, about eight or nine that night, they took me to Knoxville and put me in jail. So, [the] jail was full. There wasn’t but one cot, and it didn’t have a mattress, it just had a few pieces. Somebody had cut the mattress all to pieces and crammed it down the toilet, stopped up the toilet, and the whole place was flooded. And everything was in the worst mess that anybody could imagine, and there I was, locked in there with all that mess and no bed and no place to lay down.

So, I sat there on the cot that night and the next morning they came and told me I could make my bond. I said, ‘Make my bond? If I can make my bond this morning, I could have made it last night,’ I said. ‘No, I’ll not make my bond. I may never see the inside of a jail again and I’m a staying awhile.’”

On Wednesday, June 29, 1938, The Newport Times under the headline “Ella Costner Makes Bond” reported that “Ella Costner had made bond in the sum of $2500 in the United States Court and came home from Knoxville a few days ago.

She was arrested with her father on a charge of concealing money taken in the Charlotte $105,000 mail robbery. Her brother, Isaac Costner, is serving a term of 30 years at Alcatraz Prison. Another brother, Rufus, is to be tried at Asheville on July 5.” Apparently, Ella landed on her feet.

Although Ella had her difficulties during the Great Depression, she also had her successes. She was able to purchase four houses in Newport in addition to her business in Cosby.

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Moonshine would play a prominent role in one of Ella’s many adventures. Two youngsters minding a moonshine still near Cosby, TN.

T h e War Y e ar s War clouds were forming when Ella returned from a nine-month private nursing assignment in Philadelphia in the spring of 1940 or 1941. In May 1941, she received “Greetings” from Uncle Sam and on May 12, 1941 in an “impressive moment” she was commissioned second lieutenant in the Army Nurse Corps. Although she was almost fifty years old at the time and too old to enlist, Ella, in her where-there’s-a-will-there’s-a-way approach to life, escaped notice by reducing her age by twenty years.

Her first few months involved training and nursing work in the United States; however, the bombing of Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941 created a call for volunteers to go to Hawaii. Ella, facing the decision to volunteer or not, turned to her Bible for guidance. She opened it at random and read, “For it came to pass” but found no verse to inspire a decision. Then she read, “They shall all lie down in the dust together and the worms shall devour them.” Following this, she told the Chief Nurse she would volunteer, later writing, “1 could not let a worm stop me.”

Ella reached Honolulu, Hawaii and began her military nursing duties in March 1942, treating victims of the attack on Pearl Harbor.

Nursing was more than a job to Ella. She showed love and caring for her patients. When she made the rounds

checking temperatures, giving medications and treatments, she talked with them about their loved ones, families and homes. She writes of this, “...pretty soon I have shared their world and once more it has been born anew for them.” Sometimes she read poetry and other works to her patients and recorded this: “I came up with that little gem of Leigh Hunt’s. Here were a dozen or more big men listening while I did my utmost to put love, harmony and life into the words...” At other times during emergencies, the hospital wards could change in an hour from the treatment of ambulatory cases to the treatment of surgical and critically injured litter patients, requiring Ella to exercise differing nursing skills. Of these cases Ella wrote, “Most of them bear their pain in frank silence, but sometimes they too weep, not because of their pain, but because of the great emotion in their souls for the hour they were living through, and for the memory of their comrades who gave their all...” This is the true reflection of Ella Costner, the nurse. Later, she was transferred to Guam, landing there December 28, 1944, where she treated casualties from Iwo Jima. She served five months in Guam in a location where a few Japanese soldiers still lurked about her camp. Ultimately, she was sent home to recuperate from a head cut and a fractured skull suffered

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in a jeep accident in May 1945.

At the end of the war, Ella retired as a second lieutenant. Ella enjoyed an active cultural and social life during her time in the service.

Additionally, she was featured by the Honolulu Star-Bulletin in a series of “Pictures of Women in Uniform.” Following this, she expressed her always-present creative desires and became a weekly feature writer for the Honolulu StarBulletin after submitting several of her poems to the editor. Ella had expressed her creative instincts since youth and this was a natural outlet for her talent as well as an indication of things to come.

Various photos showing Ella in uniform during the time she served as an Army Nurse. The building is Colon Hospital.

A Time Of New Pursuits Ella V. Costner was a life-long student who sought knowledge and beauty throughout her life. Great literature, poetry, music and art were her muse and soothed her soul. At a time when many people were considering retirement, Ella,

who was now almost sixty, went to Carson-Newman College in Jefferson City, Tennessee from 1951-1955 and graduated in 1955 earning a BA Degree in English. She didn’t limit herself to educational pursuits, however. During the

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1970s and 1980s, Ella traveled to Washington, DC to lobby for women to be admitted in the Veterans of Foreign Wars Organization and reportedly was the first woman admitted to the Tennessee organization. She was also a member of the Disabled American Veterans.

In other respects, Ella, who lived in Newport, Tennessee, was as independent as ever, a lesson well-learned from her parents. When the city chlorinated and charged for her water supply, Ella had a well dug on her own property. This led to an administrative visit from one of the town officials who told her she couldn’t dig a well. Ella’s response was, “Don’t tell me that, I just did. I’m tired of paying for something that should be free as the air we breathe.” According to a relative, Edna Costner, a lawsuit ensued with the City of Newport and Ella won. In discussing this, Mrs. Costner said, “She (Ella) had a heart of gold but would fight tooth and nail for what she believed.”

On another occasion, Ella, who lived near the town’s

center, hung out a large sign advertising “Palm Reading,” resulting in a second official visit. The visitor told her that she couldn’t read palms. Ella, never at a loss for words, responded, “Do you want me to prove it? Hold out your palm and I’ll show you. Otherwise, you just go back downtown and do your business and I’ll remain here and do mine.” That was Ella!

Lee Schilling, an acclaimed Cosby musician and instrument maker, also a relative of Ella’s, described her this way: “She was intelligent and had a sense of humor. She could be direct and if she didn’t like something she would let you know. She had a great presence. She strode toward you—she was of the earth and it was hers.”

Claudia Konker, a historical researcher who spent years pouring over Ella’s papers and interviews, sums her up this way; “I’ve never seen a woman as interesting as Ella Costner. Few people have accomplished as much as she did {and displayed} the willingness to talk about these things.”

Au t ho r an d P o e t L au r e at e Beginning in the late 1960s and continuing to the late 1970s, Ella devoted herself to writing and publishing works—six in all—works that reflect her talents and creativity. She kept journals from the earliest years in which she documented the most intimate details about her life, travels, relationships, and events. Also, she kept letters, invitations, photographs, poetry and other ephemera that supported her journals. Finally, she had an excellent memory and flair for creating an appealing story or poem. It was as if she knew from the very beginning that she would share her life and talents with the world and create “something of beauty.”

Careful reading of her work is required to piece Ella’s life together because she does not always write chronologically. Also, she sometimes substitutes another name for her own and sometimes not, and, on occasion, there appears to be conflicting information. In the end, the reader recognizes that Ella’s life story has been told (with perhaps a bit of mystery remaining). Her’s is an intriguing story, one that must be unraveled like the plot of a compelling book. Following is the sequence of Ella’s books.

1967 - Lamp in the Cabin: Poetry generally about the Great Smokies and related subjects.

1968 - Poems of Paradise: Poetry about Hawaii.

1969 - Barefoot in the Smokies: Poetry relating to the Smoky Mountains and other locations.

1971 - Song of Life in the Smokies: Stories about Ella’s life and recollections with “Genealogical Record and Historic Notes” about the Cosby area.

1979 - Love Affair Around the World–Volume I: Stories about Ella’s life and loves.

1979 - Love Affair Around the World–Volume II: Stories about Ella’s life and loves, mainly during her military years.

Ella received public acclaim for her poetry. The Board of Editors of the International Who’s Who in Poetry, in London, England, awarded on December 31, 1969 the Certificate of Merit to Ella for “Distinguished Contributions to Poetry.” In 1971, Ella was named “Poet Laureate of the Smokies” by Joint Resolution #108 passed by the Tennessee legislature following publication of her book, Barefoot in the Smokies.

Ella possessed a keen sense of humor and quick wit, combined with a touch of the mischievous. These attributes come to play in several of her stories. While on vacation from nursing in Panama, Ella visited Roycraft, New York and told this story. “One evening as we sat on the veranda after dinner, an elderly lady not far from me held up her lorgnette, took a good look at me and asked, ‘Are you traveling alone?’ Suddenly all was silent.

“I answered (I knew I had to say something to save myself quickly), ‘Yes, I am traveling alone. When I first started out I was cautioned to be very careful, or I might be kidnapped. Now I am afraid I won’t be.’ Everyone laughed, and all was well.”

In her “Genealogical Record and Historical Notes” Ella provides an interesting story about a woman nicknamed “Dumps” (Dumpling).

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Ella in later years.

“Dumps could not talk plain, bless her sweet soul, we all loved her. Back before WWI telephones were installed in several homes in our village, and John (Dumps’ husband) had one put in. A few people might call Dumps just to hear her talk; no doubt she had been bothered.

There was someone visiting her and the phone was ringing and ringing, so they called her attention to it.

She said, “Let it ying, ying and go to hell yinging.”

Later, when Ella was in her 80s, she “found fame and happiness as a storyteller at the Cosby Folk Life Festival...and regaled listeners with folklore and tales of the Smokies.” As Ella’s health began to fail, she resided for one and one-half years with relatives, Victor and Edna Costner, who loved and cared for her. Ella once told Edna that she hoped Edna would someday receive the same level of excellent care that she had received from Edna. This was the ultimate compliment from a woman who had devoted the major portion of her life to caring for others. In May 1982 she was treated at Oteen Veterans Hospital in Asheville, North Carolina be-

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fore returning home again at the end of June. She died of cancer at the age of 89 on July 9, 1982 and was buried in Great Smoky Mountain National Park in a shaded cemetery near the place of her birth. v Author’s Note I am especially indebted to Claudia Konker, whose generous sharing of her knowledge, materials, and contacts made this article possible.

Likewise, I want to express sincere thanks to Victor and Edna Costner and Lee Schilling for their invaluable assistance. Finally, thanks are also due to Annette Hartigan, GSMNP librarian, for her assistance, to Glenn Cardwell, former Great Smoky Mountains National Park ranger, and to Duay O’Neil, columnist for the Newport Plain Talk, for their written information about E.V.C., and to Kent Cave who first mentioned the subject of this article to me. These people have been responsible for keeping Ella V. Costner’s memory alive.

William A. Hart, Jr. is author of 3,000 Miles in the Great Smokies and co-author of Hiking Trails of the Smokies. His last article for Smokies Life was on photographer George Masa.

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Her Poetry Poetry soothed Ella Costner’s soul and she devoted a lifetime to writing verse. The following from Barefoot in the Smokies, presented as she wrote it, describes the sentiments of a mountain farmer who is losing his land for the creation of Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

EXODUS (abridged) The hills! the hills! How can I leave the hills From whence cometh my strength?

My hills, you have been used and abused, But you remain, you stand inspite of all, Inspite of fire, and wars, and the logger, Inspite of the destroyer, you are everlasting, You remain, but I must pass, I must move on, I must leave you.

Oh! How can I leave the hills?

Oh! The stream, the stream, the stream, How can I leave the stream?

How can I leave the cool waters, the clear waters, The singing waters, The waters that sing the song of my soul The waters wherein I must cleanse my body, The sacred waters of baptism, to make me whole, How can I leave the sweet waters of the Spring Without the spring my days will be shortened, How can I leave the cool sweet water.

Oh! The forest, the forest, the forest, How can I leave the forest?

The cool, the clean, the living forest, The forest that sings the song of my soul, I have felt its enchantment, I know the haunts of the animals, I know were the wild orchid grows, How can I leave the forest?

Oh! These stones, these stones, these stones, How can I leave these stones How can I say farewell to these stones, These stones that have been such a burden to me, But I learned to use them,

Now they are a burden no longer, They serve me as a fence, a wall, They even have beauty, and the passerby Will possess that beauty, the beauty Of the work of my hands, in these stones.

Oh! How can I leave this tree?

This tree that was like a brother to me, This great beech tree, it was an altar In the forest for me, I came to it with my sorrow and it comforted me, When I was weary I rested here, Here I communed with my Maker, and my burdens fell from me How can I leave this sacred place? This tree.

Oh! How can I leave this house?

This house I built, it is the work of my hands, To it I brought my bride, In it my children were born, And in it one of them died, How can I leave this house?

And the graves of the dead, Of those who came before me And made here their lowly bed.

How can I leave this house?

Oh! The Happy Hunting Ground, How can I leave the happy hunting ground, The haunts of the wild, The trail, the Indians Happy Hunting Ground, Now I know how he felt, when he gave it up, Now it is my turn, all things return to The Giver, to Him that gave it, with love, Every good and every perfect gift is from above.

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CHILDREN OF THE NIGHT (AND SOMETIMES DAY)

BY SUSAN SIMPSON-EHRENCLOU PHOTOGRAPHY BY PAUL BANNICK

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Above: A young Eastern Screech Owl in a cozy tree cavity that was once home to a Northern Flicker.

Right: In the Smokies, gray phase Screech Owls are much less common than the reddish phase.

“There’s the mystique that they’re wise and allknowing——maybe because their eyes are so large and on the front of their face like ours, and they seem to be always watching.”

It’s hour three of a fall hike through a remote valley flooded with fallen leaves. Conversation has dwindled and you concentrate on the spot where your ankles disappear into oak and hickory debris. And then you realize that it is quiet—you can feel it even though you are making a rustling racket through the leaf litter—and you know you are being watched. Looking up, you gasp when you see him: an imposing, perfectly oval owl, feet tucked under and invisible, perched on a jutting branch. The owl’s head is cocked and his yellow eyes hover, unblinking, in a velvet face. Almost always, the bird is impossibly close. You can pick out the intricate checkering of feathers on his breast, the glean of his hook beak, the twitch—maybe— of a feather as he calibrates the distance between himself and you. Neither of you moves as the moments tick by,

and then finally, reluctantly, the owl hoists himself with muscled wings to a higher branch, and you pass, chastened, through his woods.

Owls High and Low In Great Smoky Mountains National Park we’re lucky to have four species of permanent or breeding owl residents: the Eastern Screech Owl, Great Horned Owl, Northern Saw-whet Owl, and Barred Owl. Slide down the mountain slopes into the surrounding valleys and ridges and you may find another species, the Barn Owl. “We have a diversity of owls,” Supervisory Wildlife Biologist Bill Stiver said, “because of the diverse [mountain] habitat we have.” The daytime owl on that brown fall hike was likely a Barred Owl (Strix varia), one of two species that

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regularly hunts during the day. It’s a congenial bird that investigates fellow forest-dwellers and visitors, including hikers whom it hears crunching along for miles. A permanent resident at all elevations in these mountains, the Barred Owl’s familiar call sounds to some like, “Who cooks for you? Who cooks for you-all?” With a face of fine graytipped creamy feathers framed in a heart, and a breast and tail sporting perpendicular black bands, the Barred Owl looks woven from a tapestry.

The Eastern Screech Owl (Otus osio) may be the most abundant (both it and the Barred Owl are listed as “fairly common,” on the park’s bird checklist), but is much less often glimpsed because its body—and call—are diminutive. This owl is tiny, as owls go, at just 8.5 inches tall, not counting its pointed ear tufts. It spends its days in tree cavities and haunts these woods almost exclusively at night. Camp in a lower-elevation spot—below 4,000 feet or so—and you may hear the sweet, descending warble of the Screech Owl as it calls to a mate. It’s a haunting sound someone with a healthy imagination might attribute to a spirit.

The largest of the owls, the Great Horned (Bubo virginianus), has a four-foot wingspan and is a permanent but uncommon resident of the park. Paul Super, Science Coordinator at the Appalachian Highlands Science Learning Center at Purchase Knob, and the “de facto park bird expert,” said he’s heard them all the way up at Purchase Knob at 5,086 feet in North Carolina and down to Sugarlands Visitor Center at 1,462 feet near Gatlinburg, Tennessee. They “seem to like woodlots with old trees,” he explained, and old settlement clearings that have grown up with tall grass and are home to rabbits.

Almost never seen are the Northern Saw-whet and Barn owls, although for different reasons. The Northern Sawwhet Owl (Aegolius acadicus), a Tennessee threatened species and a bird that has been the subject of many a study here in the Smokies, got its name because its whistle-call sounded like the sharpening (whetting) of a saw. This 7-inch-tall owl lives in the spruce-fir forests at the highest elevations in the Smokies, from 4,500 feet and up, and is very elusive. Paul Super said researchers found breeding pairs at high elevations, and two were caught, weighed, and released during MAPS (Monitoring Avian Productivity and Survivorship) project netting sessions in the high, remote mountains of North Carolina. Besides that, explained Super, “we’ve had periodic surveys of…our Saw-whet Owls just to keep track of how the population is doing.”

Due to the paucity of research, no one knows if there are permanent Saw-whet residents, or if they return only to breed each year. Until the 1990s, no one could even confirm that the bird did breed here. Dr. Fred Alsop, renowned ornithologist, field guide author, and biology professor, explained that while people reported seeing young Saw-whets back as far as Art Stupka’s day (Stupka was the first park naturalist, so this takes us back to the 1930s), they still

couldn’t confirm that these birds had been born here. Since then, graduate students working with Dr. Alsop put up owl nesting boxes and were happy to find them full of Sawwhet chicks. This confirmed what many had long suspected, and led to experimental nesting boxes on other mountain ridges through the Appalachians.

As for year-round residency, well, no one knows for sure. The habitat is right for them to stay—because the highest ridges in the Smokies, with their chilly spruce-fir community, are similar to boreal forests in Maine and Canada. A flight just downslope in the Smokies would mimic the thousand-mile migration their Canadian brethren make to warmer United States ranges in the winter. Still, as Paul Super explained, “unless we catch the same bird in the summer and in the winter, we won’t know for sure.”

A young Great Horned Owl is guarded by its mother.

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Left: A Barred Owl races through the forest to confront a rival owl. Above: Barn Owls became less common in the Smokies after people (and their barns) were removed in the process of park establishment.

Barn Owls (Tyto alba) are another Smoky Mountain mystery of sorts.

The bird checklist writes them off as former park residents, but people have reported seeing owls that look like them now and then swooping into the darkened open windows of Cades Cove barns. They officially disappeared from park boundaries in 1947.

Paul Super explained that we used to see Barn Owls all over the Eastern United States, but, just as happened in the park, open farm fields, standing tree snags, and a barn at every home disappeared due to development or reforestation, and with them went the Barn Owl. Interestingly, since the middle of this century, Barn Owl populations in the West have grown; Super speculated that increased agriculture (and irrigation) have made Western lands more hospitable for these owls.

Most of our owl knowledge comes from studies conducted by local universities, or through incidental sightings. As Paul Super explained, when we do spot owls, it’s most often during

the day because that’s when people are active, or in the winter, because that’s when owls are entering their breeding season and are more numerous or just less inhibited. Super added that it’s almost never necessary to see these elusive birds to identify them, because they have such distinctive calls. Sometimes it’s even possible to tell whether you’re hearing the love song of a male or a female. “I’m famous with my inlaws,” Super said, “because I identified the gender of an owl by its hoot over the phone.” If you’re hiking and a duet (what biologists call “counter-calling”) of amorous owls echoes through the trees, listen for their different pitches. A male Great Horned Owl, for example, has a deeper hoot than the female.

Dr. Alsop claimed the Barred Owl as one of his favorite birds in the Smokies, “because it has so many variations to its call. When some of them get together they do what’s called caterwauling – it’s not like any of their other calls, and it’s full of a lot of excitement and energy.” When they’re

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not crooning their sedate “Whocooks-for-you” call, Barred Owls have been said to bark, laugh maniacally, and holler in a way that makes one think of monkeys cavorting in the trees.

Part of studying owls and their calls is learning to hoot like one. “You don’t have to be particularly good,” Alsop would assure you, but you do have to be very quiet. “You learn from listening to the owls themselves. Birds produce some of their vocalizations innately – they’re born knowing how to do them—and some of them are also influenced by what they’re hearing.

There are regional dialects just like in people. If you go from one region to the next, you’ll still recognize the basic owl song, but it will sound slightly different. What you’re doing is trying to imitate the local owls.” Paul Super was quick to say that one needs to use restraint when hooting after owls: “it’s important not to disturb the birds because they’re [often in the park]…to breed,” he said.

Technology has changed the art of

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Left: A Northern Saw-whet Owl and its prey, a deer mouse. Sawwhets stand about 7” tall and are usually found in the high elevation spruce-fir forests.

Below: Screech Owls consume a large number of rodents, keeping populations of mice and other small mammals in check.

hooting. Dr. Alsop explained that you can download an app on your smartphone for a particular species and, although the regional “accent” may be slightly off, owls will understand. However, he noted, “sometimes you don’t realize they’ve responded. They may approach, but often they don’t expose themselves. . . [and] their feathers don’t make a noise” as they swoop in closer to satisfy their curiosity.

“I take my ornithology class to west Tennessee,” Alsop continued, “and we listen for Barred Owls. We call them, and then wait, and the students giggle because they’ve never seen a person hooting before. But then the owls start calling back. Once you get responses from birds, every kid in the class is practicing their own calls. It’s pretty neat to engage with a wild animal in the dark—to have an animal respond to you. You don’t have to be really good at it,” he repeated. “As long as the pattern is right, you’ll fool them sometimes, and you’ll fool yourself.”

good luck owls, bad luck owls Perhaps because we only sometimes hear, and rarely glimpse, owls, sightings of these predatory birds have long been omens, both fortuitous and ruinous. Their elusive character may add to the tingle of conflicted excitement and terror we feel when these large birds swoop and startle us in the woods. We can pick out the wide-eyed faces of owls in prehistoric paintings—although we can’t be sure what the birds meant to these ancient painters—and find owls winging their way through folklore and myth. For the ancient Greeks, an owl sighting meant good luck; for the

ancient Romans, impending disaster. Owls are celebrated in some cultures symbolically: for American Indians in the Southwest, the Burrowing Owl represented the god of the dead and deserved reverence. For other native populations, the owl’s nighttime cry meant death itself was on the way, and the bird tainted the thoughts of the living, especially children.

Here in the southern Appalachians, owls also have a mixed legacy, due in part to the cultures that have come together in these mountains. As in other myths, the owl’s significance can be tied to the situation and time of day (or night) when one sees or hears the bird. Daytime owl sightings prove more troublesome than nighttime ones, perhaps because the “natural order” of things seems out of whack.

The Eastern Band of the Cherokee, for example, regarded a daytime owl sighting as an omen of death. At the same time, they formulated a system of “Owl Medicine” to harness this dark power and influence patients’ passage from one world to the next. And owls in general were seen as diligent, clairvoyant creatures: according to Cherokee legend, these birds, along with the panther, were some of the only animals able to stay awake and watchful through the long night, and were rewarded with extraordinary nocturnal hunting skills. In stories, the owl also displays very human emotions. In one, an owl suitor tried unsuccessfully to convince his (human) love that he could provide for her, and was found out when his hunting cry included “u’guku,” both the song of and the Cherokee name for the hoot, or Barred, owl.

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Settlers of European descent in the southern Appalachians left less of a legacy concerning their thoughts on owls, and today only snippets of myth remain: glimpse or hear an owl in the daytime, and death lurks in the forest shadows.

Yet spot an owl on your wedding day and you are bound for a life of good fortune. More often than not, owls are simply welcome guests; the dogfight between the soaring cluster of crows and the lone owl hardly ever elicits cheers for the crows. It is the stately, solitary, and silent owl that we want to prevail.

We feel that we know owls well, even though we rarely glimpse them during the day and their owl habits remain a mystery to most of us. Yet owls feel familiar, perhaps because they are so integrated into our past and in popular culture. As Dr. Alsop explained, “There’s a mystique about owls that carries way back in our literature from many cultures. They’re a nocturnal species, and there’s mystery about being a successful predator in the dark when we as humans don’t do so well. There’s also the mystique that they’re wise and all-knowing – maybe because their eyes are so large and on the front of their face like ours, and they seem to be always watching.” Those eyes look so large because they are: an owl’s skull has huge eye sockets to accommodate mega-size eyes, and the eyeballs themselves are conical (shaped like a sugar cone with a single eyeball scoop on top) to pack more optical nerves into a narrow point in its otherwise unremarkably sized head.

Still, an owl’s most attuned sense is its hearing: an owl is a pro at zeroing in on the shiver of a mouse under leaf litter or snow. Dr. Alsop explained that “an owl’s ears are asymmetrical, and its facial disk [the surface of its face, off of which sound bounces] is too. They’re amazing in taking prey they can’t see.” He described watching a Great Grey Owl, a northern arboreal forest resident, hunting in the cold of a silent winter day: “You see [the owls] turn their heads, lay down on the snow, and reach under to bring out a mammal. That shrew or mouse never had any idea there was an owl coming.”

Because of their success as stealthy hunters, owls of all species are valuable players in a complex ecosystem. Found on every continent (except Antarctica), in forests and fields, wilderness and urban development, these hunters dine on rodents, and, if they belong to the larger species, also on smaller birds (even other owls). “It takes a top predator [such as an owl] to keep the food chain going,” Dr. Alsop explained. “Think about prides of lions on the Serengeti Plain… . [Owls] are widely distributed because it takes a big food base to support a single animal. They also [eat] a lot of animals that are often detrimental to human health or agriculture.”

Owl diet varies by the size of the bird, too. As Paul Super explained, “A Great Horned Owl typically eats rabbits or large birds. Barred Owls [eat] more small birds and rodents. The Saw-whet and Screech owls are eating small rodents and moths.” This not only matters for overall owl

understanding, but also for bird enthusiasts. “If you’re trying to call in owls, which you can do on private property, but which is discouraged in the park,” Super said, “you want to start with [calling] the smallest owls first—you’re never going to call in a smaller owl if they hear the larger owl’s call.

Sometimes you can get a larger owl in by making the call of a Saw-whet or another small owl, however.”

In the Smokies, owls supplement their rodent and bird diets with other mountain delicacies. Paul Super poetically explained that owls sometimes come head to head with one of the most beloved Smokies species, the salamander.

“Some owls probably do take advantage of the spotted salamanders that are stampeding across the forest floor to rendezvous at the forest pond by moonlight,” he speculated.

“There’s [also] a time in spring when a type of red crayfish hangs out in seeps. The males go to the seeps to find a mate on certain wet nights. And around that time you’ll find lots and lots of red crayfish exoskeletons in Barred Owl pellets—even at [high elevation] Purchase Knob.”

hunters and the hunted If this top predator has its pick of things to eat, what eats owls, you might ask? While adults have few predators—save “murders” (flocks) of crows, large eagles, and larger owls—their eggs and chicks can be gulped by climbing serpents or snatched from a nest by quick raccoon hands.

The biggest threat to owls, however, is the human.

While deliberate hunting of owls accounts for relatively low numbers of owl deaths, and very few people in the United States eat owls, we inadvertently kill the birds along our roadways. In the Smoky Mountains, as Paul Super explained, “several species forage close to the ground. . . [and fly across roads] right at grille level.” The Eastern Screech Owl, for example, hunts along roadsides, and the Barred Owl, in turn, may lurk there to prey upon this smaller bird.

As a result, these two species are most often found dead on the roadsides come morning. Wildlife biologist Bill Stiver also pointed to cars as the biggest threat to owls in the park. He estimated that each year, visitors brought in six to ten owls they had hit along park roads. This probably represents a fraction of the birds that people hit overall; some birds fly away after a collision to nurse hurt wings or succumb to injuries later.

Owls have a much better chance of recovery if people call the park’s communications center (865-436-1230) to report when and where an owl (or other bird) has been hit, because biologists can transport raptors to the University of Tennessee Veterinary School. Bill Stiver explained that this is a great local resource; if the bird is not fatally injured, the school does any surgery or repair necessary at no cost, and rehabilitates the owls for release back into the park. “Just this past spring,” Stiver said, “there was a Girl Scout troop that came up and released one of the owls” that had been hurt in the park. If a longer rehabilitation is required, the

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University sends an injured owl to a regional wildlife rehabilitator. In some cases, the owls are too injured to survive and have to be euthanized, but contacting the park gives them a chance. “Whether it’s a bear or a deer or an owl” in the road, Stiver emphasized, “by reducing your speed you’ll be less likely to have a collision.”

A secondary threat to these great predators is habitat loss. “Most owls will try to roost in fairly dense conifer areas,” Paul Super explained, because “the last thing an owl wants is to be found by a bunch of crows. Other birds— chickadees, crows, blue jays—will make their lives miserable. Screech Owls like hollow trees and probably roost there as well. Bigger owls are in dense areas of hemlock or spruce or pine.” Their preferences prove problematic when we look at Smoky Mountain forest health over the past two decades. High elevation spruce-fir forests have been hard hit by the Balsam Woolly Adelgid (BWA); dense stands of Fraser firs have died or been thinned so there are fewer hiding spots for Northern Saw-whet Owls. As many of the park’s hemlocks succumb to another type of invasive insect, the Hemlock Woolly Adelgid (HWA), some owls may lose a roosting or nesting spot at lower elevations, as well. Although hemlocks have never been studied in terms of providing owl habitat, these trees, with their “ladder” of dense branches, offer shelter to many species, especially in winter. Paul Super explained that as we inevitably lose many of our hemlocks, there “will be one less type of roost habitat. I think of low elevation habitat [which includes many hemlock stands] as being a great place for [potential] overwintering

Two fledgling Northern Sawwhets cling to a lichen-covered snag.

Saw-whet Owls, although there’s no quantitative data to back that up.”

The future of forests—their health and what species thrive—is in question as we experience some degree of climate change. While local valleys are expected to heat up considerably over the next few decades, models show that both climate and precipitation may vary quite a bit in the mountains. What happens will depend on whether cloud cover increases, if humidity increases or decreases, and how more severe storm and wind events—one of the more certain outcomes of climate change—impact forests. As Bill Stiver explained, “obviously if climate change changes the forest, it could change certain species such as the Saw-whet Owl,” as well as others.

news flash: owls doing fine Despite threats, scientists and managers who work with owls would say, as Paul Super did, that “most owls are doing quite well, [although statewide] a few that are habitat specialists are not.” Great Smoky Mountains National Park does not monitor owls specifically, but, as Super continued, “There’s nothing we envision that we’d do differently in terms of habitat management. It’s. . . important to focus on the broader issue of keeping the Smokies safe.”

Park visitors can play an important role in managing owls by helping spot rare species. For example, said Paul Super, “we have an unconfirmed record [of the Long-eared Owl] from May 1989—and several for Jackson County south of the park over several different winters.” People are “encouraged to send observations of Short- or Long-eared Owl roosts in the winter if they’re hiking in the park so we have a better idea of how common they are and where they are. The Short-eared Owl is likely nesting out in the fields—not in any kind of hiding area. They tend to like open habitats. We have a single record [of a Short-eared Owl] from Christmas Day 2002 in Cades Cove.”

Despite an overall focus on habitat protection to help species, there has been one case of park intervention for a single type of bird. Remember the Barn Owl that disappeared from the park? In 1998, some 49 years after the last confirmed sighting, the park, in cooperation with the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency, Friends of the Smokies, and the Knoxville Zoo, brought them back. It was an experimental effort—done with the help of a very prolific pair of breeding Barn Owls at the Knoxville Zoo, Stiver explained—and lasted three years. The first year, seven owl chicks were banded and “hacked” into Cades Cove. “Hacking” is a term (often used with falcons) for reintroducing a predatory bird back into the wild. “You have to get the young owl out in the environment so they get used to it,” Super said, “and feed them with tubes so they don’t associate food with people. You give them a cage so they can get used to going out and exploring and coming back to the safe roost box you set up for them.”

In 1999, five more chicks were banded and placed in a

PHOTOGRAPH BY BILL LEA

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An attempt has been made to re-establish Barn Owls in Cades Cove where the Park Service maintains several historic barns.

barn. Four of them were fitted with radio transmitters, and researchers followed their movements through the summer.

The transmitters were very temporary, Stiver explained, so after about a month, they stopped giving information on the birds’ whereabouts. In 2000, the last year of the project, six more owl chicks went to Cades Cove. “We got reports [of sightings] for about a year after that,” Stiver said, “but we haven’t had any recent reports.”

What happened to the Barn Owls? Stiver said that he wasn’t sure; Barn Owls lived in the area long before widespread human settlement, so presumably habitat would still remain. Whether they didn’t make it through the winter, were preyed upon by other wildlife in Cades Cove, or simply moved out of the park to more open farm fields and developed areas outside the park, no one knows.

suburban owl sprawl Like many people, and maybe like the Barn Owl, many species of owls are moving out of the country and into developed areas. The only time many of us glimpse the thick wingspan of an owl is in an urban area, as owls swoop and dive to duck the attacks of crows. In fact, this aerial combat is likely a coordinated defense against the owl’s initial attack: owls are one of the main predators of both crow nestlings and adults. Some research suggests that crows adapt by choosing less stable nesting spots on the spindly twigs of branch ends, so heavier owls will not be able to perch. In urban areas, some scientists think that crows prefer to nest near lit areas (streetlights or bright buildings), because owls are less likely to enter—or be able to stealthily swoop—in these halos of nighttime light. Dr. Alsop credited hospitable urban areas with some owl settlement patterns: the birds enjoy the heat stored in cities’ concrete

and asphalt habitats and find plentiful food in the mice, rats, squirrels, and other rodents that civilization fosters.

Regardless of the reason, in some ways we’re fortunate to share this space with a top predator. “We’re in an atmosphere where we still have these wild animals,” Dr. Alsop said, his voice tinged with wonder. From his own porch, he can watch owls climb into the duck nest boxes he installed, and as dusk falls, listen to owl conversations echoing from tree to tree.

Thus is our shared life with owls: common though most of these birds are, and prolific in forests and cities alike, they still instinctively startle us and raise our hackles with their cry or swoop of wings above. Owls are unlike almost any other top predator, and perhaps this explains our paradoxical ideas about them, even after we have discounted most myths: owls are both familiar and haunting, omnipresent yet awesome. Owls thrive amongst human habitation, where other species dwindle to tiny habitat fragments.

And, as our Barred Owl above, some even seek out people, watching and waiting above as we scurry beneath their perches. Whether in the woods or our own yards, an eerie owl song still draws us into the night, making us acutely aware that we are not alone, and assuring us that someone is keeping watch beyond the circle of campfire—or streetlight—glow.v Susan Simpson-Ehrenclou has an MA in Geography and an MFA in Creative Writing, and will soon be an elementary school teacher. She has previously worked and written for environmental organizations and is the co-author of the Geology of the Ice Age National Scenic Trail with Drs. David Mickelson and Lou Maher.

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PhotograPh by bill lea

ALL THE TRAILS IN THE SMOKIES

FOR ALL TIME‌ Trails Forever is a lasting gift that will benefit the Smokies’ 800 miles of trails and every hiker who will use them for countless generations. Through the generosity of The Aslan Foundation of Knoxville and the help of more than 900 donors in 37 states, Friends of the Smokies established a $4 million endowment to fund the Trails Forever program.

Do you hike? Do you have great memories of seeing the fall colors from the mountaintops? Do you hike to spend time with friends and family? To stay in shape? Do you have a favorite waterfall or other beloved place

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Be a part of this lasting legacy for the Smokies. To receive more information, please call us at (800) 8455665, visit our website at www.SmokiesTrailsForever.org.

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—Arthur Stupka

volume 6 #2

“So ancient are these Ocoee rocks that they contain no fossils of plants or animals, having been formed before life was abundant on the earth.”

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