Clingmans Dome
Tennessee
May 2013
After a good half day of hiking, Lisa and I have our sandwiches at Clingmans Dome, the highest point in Tennessee. Reminds me of another time I was here. I tell Lisa this story.
In 1998, I was in the midst of a 10-day backpacking trip here in the Great Smoky Mountains. After six days and 40 miles in the wilderness, my group of seven reached Clingmans Dome. By now, we had some trail ambiance clinging to us, if you know what I mean. The wilderness provides plenty of bathing opportunities, but no soap. We emerge from the woods at the summit with our backpacks and week-old stubble and hair on our legs. Smiling like idiots.
Tourists swarm the high point. We know these folks here at Clingmans Dome are tourists because they smell good, like soap and shampoo and cologne, and they look good in their freshly-laundered, fashionable hiking clothes. They walked up to the summit on the grueling half mile sidewalk from the parking lot. (No, it isn’t really grueling.) The trail is wide enough for them to hold hands. Several complain, “There should be an escalator.” I don’t consider this to be a valid request.
The tourists stare at us. One woman, by her accent clearly from the South, approaches us. “You been hikin’?”
“Yep.”
“Sleep in the woods?”
“Yep.”
“Wow. That’s roughin’ it.”
She paused, thoughtful. “Roughin’ it is when we stay at the motel and my daughter and I cain’t agree on which TV station to watch.”
The Japanese tourists take photographs of us. I’m not making this up.
While hanging out here today on our high point quest, Lisa and I see lots of people, all shapes and colors and accents. Two backpackers remove their stove and lunch from their packs. While one is cooking, the other is trying to charge his cell phone with a solar power unit. I wonder if those work on a foggy day like today.
I go up to him and say, “I wonder if those work on a foggy day like today.”
“Well, it kind of works but it kind of doesn’t work. It’s much better in the sunlight.”
“Worth the weight to carry?”
“Yeah, when it works.”
At this time, a woman with her dog on a leash reaches the summit. You are not supposed to bring your dog to the summit, there are rules. As she approaches, we notice that she is talking to her dog. Maybe that makes it okay. Every so often she looks back and shouts, “Daisy! Daisy, come here!”
Daisy, we assume, is her other dog but Daisy is nowhere to be seen. As she walks by us, we hear her turn to the dog on her leash and say, “That Daisy is such an asshole.”
Wait a minute. Did she just call her dog an asshole? She called her dog an asshole! Right to her other dog’s face! What happened to treating your children with respect?
We stay at the summit for a while, The fog comes in, the fog lifts. It gets cold, it gets warm. Folks come and folks go, including the solar powered backpackers, including the tourists, including Daisy the asshole. We eat our lunch, we do our high point dance. We go up the tower and hope for a view. We hang out, we leave. Two minutes back to the A T junction, turn right and continue on.