he C t a n n i o e py f i x L
It was a frigid October morning on Clingmans Dome. The concrete ramp up to the observation tower was slick with patches of ice. Crusty lichens on the trunks of the trees were draped with icicles. Clouds raced overhead, raking the spiked tips of the spruce. People were zipping up their coats and pulling on stocking hats and gloves. One woman, apparently by Rose counting on a balmy fall day, was swaddled in a beach towel emblazoned with a brightly colored map of Florida. We lingered only long enough to soak in the hawk’s-eye view from this high platform—at 6,643 feet above sea level Clingmans Dome is the highest peak in the Great Smoky Mountains, and
offers an unfettered sweep of the ridges and mountains and valleys. In every direction too is an impenetrable fortress of green, an extravagance of trees covering nearly every square inch of Great Smoky Mountains National Park. The Clingmans Dome observation tower bestows a rare above-the-treetop look at the Smokies. Most of Houk the time we earthbound beings must crane our necks up rather than down into the trees. This top-down perspective gives rise to questions: What goes on in the uppermost layers of this forest? Does anything live up there? What creatures big or small live in what’s called the forest canopy? And what is the canopy anyway?
Smokies Life
SL_issue_vol9#2indd.indd 16
v
PHOTOGRAPH BY BILL LEA
Creatures great and small living in the uppermost layers of the Great Smoky Mountains
16
10/2/15 5:38 PM
