From atop the Chimney Tops Trail in the Blue Ridge Mountains

Aldo Leopold wrote, “[Mountain] peaks have trails, and trails have tourists.” He was right. But what Leopold didn’t mention was that mountains have valleys and valleys have highways and highways have cars and the most visited national park in America has lots of cars – especially on a Saturday in the middle of summer tourist season.

I hiked over two miles and climbed 1,700 feet up this trail in an effort to escape the crowds. All I found at the summit was a dozen tourists and the sound of the highway below.

I understand especially well now what Leopold meant when he said, “I know of no solitude so secure as one guarded by a spring flood.” I’ll admit this is a neat experience and the view is almost breathtaking. But the highway in the valley and the tourists around me only serve to solidify my appreciation and love of the Mississippi river, its backwaters, and the oft-forgotten rural Midwest.

I close my eyes and try to pretend I’m a Native American arriving at this place for the first time. I try to pretend I’m alone and there is no highway below. Oh what this must have been like! Soaring over the valley (at a lower altitude than my current perch atop this rock) I see a hawk and can only imagine the degrees of solitude he knows here in the mountains. Surely there is at least one peak far removed from humans. I wonder how far he must soar to escape the sounds. I look at the map and question whether he even can at all. I watch him soar effortlessly over the valley and envy such freedom as more tourists approach. “What good are forty freedoms without a blank spot on the map?” I cannot help but wonder if the hawk muses the same thing.

This particular peak existed for millennia without any human disturbance. At some point it awakened to a morning filled with the sound of road builders. I wonder if inwardly it shuddered at its inevitable popularity. I doubt it knew of its impending fate and stoically watched as human civilization encroached deeper and deeper into its smoky valleys. Not long after, the first few tourists tread their way across this very same rocky peak. I wonder if then it knew or could predict what was to come. How could it? Besides, what are a few footsteps to a mountain that had weathered millions of years of storms?

But today this particular peak feels millions of synthetic rubber-soled feet every year and breathes the fumes from the exhast pipes of the million-plus cars that pass through its valleys. Its rock faces are carved with hundreds of initials of people who I doubt gave much thought to the mountain’s past. And I doubt the initial-carvers, in their effort to leave a timeless mark on this peak, gave any thought to the fact that, millennia from now, these same rocks will lie in creek bottoms thousands of feet below here. I can’t help but find a touch of humor in this, the mountain’s version of poetic justice.

I am jostled from my introspective musings by an inordinately shrill voice. I hear the newly-arriving teenage tourist say breathlessly to who I suspect is her mother, “We climbed all the way up here for this?” then proceed to open her cell phone to text message someone who I suspect is every bit as ecologically illiterate. The mountain is indifferent to the remark but I shudder. Maybe that is the way my species is – Irreverent, unappreciative, and uncaring. I imagine that these same people will go spend a month’s salary in nearby Gatlinburg on the human-created tourist attractions – none of which will be here in a hundred years, let alone a millennium. Maybe an appreciation for the natural, more permanent things is missing from society today. I’m glad that in such matters, I’m different from most. I must agree with Leopold, “For us of the minority, the opportunity to see geese is more important than television, and the chance to find a pasque-flower is a right as inalienable as free speech."