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maureen2musings · 1 year

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the sun sleeps

nev.in.color

#Great Smoky Mountains #curators on tumblr

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souplover-69 · 28 days

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beech grove school built around 1901

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satakentia · 11 months

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Big Creek Autumn Cascades Great Smoky Mountains, North Carolina, USA

by Johan Hakansson

#landscape #curators on tumblr #autumn #fall #waterfall #falls #north carolina #usa #north america #long exposure #great smoky mountains #johan hakansson #cl

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chlobody · 12 days

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mountain girl, where’d you go? [ shot by @ohseephotography ]

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meadow-dusk · 7 months

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Great Smokies on a quiet September Sunday

#nature #clingman’s dome #great smoky mountains

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vintagecamping · 1 month

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A party of nine members of the Smoky Mountains Hiking Club made an eight day trek of over 30 miles along the main crest of what would later become the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

North Carolina

1932

#vintage camping #campfire light #north carolina #great smoky mountains #hiking #history #road trips #camping #outdoors #1930s

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wildtrail · 8 months

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Southern Appalachians. Appreciation post.

📍Blue Ridge Mountains, view from VA

📍Great Smoky Mountains, view from NC

📍Appalachian Trail, TN

Remember, we have our questions open for any idea or requirement for a post.

If you want to enjoy something in particular, ask for it!

wildtrail

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tree-whispering · 4 months

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9.29.23

#mine #100 #great smoky mountains #national park #great smoky mountains national park #sky

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emilybeemartin · 6 months

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Inktober Days 28-31

Day 28: Sparkle

When people ask me which national park I've worked in is my favorite, I have a diplomatic answer. They're all different! Yellowstone is never boring, Glacier is visually stunning. But Great Smoky Mountains? Great Smokies is home. It was my first park, even before Yellowstone--I was brought on as a summer intern in 2010, and it set the course for my whole career onward.

Where other national parks trade in dramatic grandeur, Great Smokies offers a more intimate beauty. The pale pops of Catawba rhododendron blossoms in the dark forest. The squiggle of a spotted salamander in dewy moss. The first flush of red on the autumn slopes. The Christmas-tree perfume of the balsam firs at high elevation.

But some of the most special things to me are the fireflies. The secret of the synchronous fireflies has trickled out, and now people flock to see them in late spring, flashing in coordinated laser light shows. My absolute favorites are the blue ghost fireflies, which glow a moonlight-blue, without blinking, and drift a few feet above the ground. On a dark, quiet evening, it's the single most magical sight I've ever seen. So magical I built a whole fantasy system around them in my first novel, Woodwalker.

Day 29: Massive

There are so many parks whose scale simply can't be appreciated in photos. The yawning chasm of the Grand Canyon. The looming summits of Grand Teton. The plunging valleys of Glacier. And the massive span and height of sequoia trees.

Though this is a purely American tree, I've only experienced them abroad, when I lived in New Zealand. A short walk away from my student flat was a beautiful botanical garden, and I was amazed to find a grove of sequoias growing there. I greeted them like compatriots, foreigners in a faraway land. I visited them often and knew someday I needed to visit their cousins on their home turf. Like my fixation on Olympic National Park, I've frequently found myself plotting the drive from my Rocky Mountain jobs to the closest parks of sequoias and redwoods. I'll get there, one day.

Day 30: Rush

Yosemite—the rush of history toward the riches of the west, the rush of visitors in the valley, the rush of air through climbers’ ropes, the rush to protect endangered natural spaces. But to me, no homage to Yosemite is complete without rushing water. Plunging waterfalls, rivers foaming with spring melt, frigid banks piled with frazil ice--- this park sings with the power of water.

Day 31: Fire

We end Inktober 2023 in Hawai‛i Volcanoes National Park, a place where fire, earth, and water all meld together. At first I picked this park simply because it fit the prompt, but as I did some research, I realized how fitting it is to end this month-long celebration of national parks here. Built into the management policies for Hawai‛i Volcanoes is the practice of ho‛okupu, the action of creating growth through chanting or offerings. As Huihui Kanehele-Mossman, Kumu Hula and Executive Director at Edith Kanaka‛ole Foundation, puts it:

“[Ho‛okupu] is not showing gratitude… it’s a recognition between you and the place… that you are present there in order to have an exchange—an equal exchange between you and the place.”

As park rangers, we’re faced with tangible reminders of degradation every day—past, present, and future—in things like the violent history of land theft, the tenacious grip of invasive species, and the looming consequences of climate change. It’s easy for rangers to view both ourselves and the visiting public as interlopers and invaders, capable of only destruction, a force to be managed and mitigated.

But we’re not. That same force that enables us to destroy also enables us to restore, grow, and create. And as Robin Wall Kimmerer discusses in Braiding Sweetgrass, humans shouldn’t consider ourselves mere intruders in natural spaces. We evolved alongside nature. We do belong in it, and it relies on our power and gentleness as much as we rely on it.

Even beyond that, national parks are human-created spaces, with human boundaries, roads, infrastructure, and patterns. We have to be involved with them. We have to view ourselves as an integral part of their wellbeing, an equal partner, and a force for good, or we risk losing them to sheer indifference.

“If you don’t have anything else to give to a place, give your voice.”

-Huihui Kanehele-Mossman

Thanks for traveling along with me on this journey through our national parks! I hope you have an autumn full of peace and purpose!

#31 days of national parks #inktober #national parks #great smoky mountains #sequoia kings canyon #yosemite #hawai'i volcanoes

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kiiraa88 · 23 days

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