"Wild America" by Peterson

[Jenny]

A book mostly about birding by the illustrious Roger Tory Peterson and his English travel companion James Fisher in 1955.

There were a few paragraphs by Fisher about hiking in the Smokies.  Is it still like this? Sounds really wondrous. (And there's a place called Pigeon River!)

If you have the time/interest here are some excerpts:

"May 1

...We drove up the middle prong of the Pigeon River, swollen with rain from the Tennessee slopes of those great wooded hills, Le Conte and Chapman. Led by Arthur Stupka and his wife [she gets no name!] and the Gliddens Baldwins, who are authorities on the big trees of the Smokies, we left the cars near the meeting of 2 streams which had cut down to staircases of smooth, pebble-worn rock, all overhung by the forest hemlocks, and giant shiny-leaved rhododendrons...To our north rose Greenbrier Pinnacle, to our south all 6340 ft. of Mt. Chapman.  As we took the trail up the Ramsay Prong the valley closed in, and the forest grew bigger, and wilder. I began to feel that I was walking in one of those dreams, down interminable corridors, between infinitely high pillars - those dreams in which proportions inexorably change.

...The bushes were trees and the trees were emperors; even the shadbushes seemed 40 ft. high. ...a tulip tree towered higher than any tree I had seen in Britain; and from then on big trees of at least 6 kinds thrust up from the tangled forest floor for about a hundred feet or more. ...Every now and then we paused like dwarfs at the foot of some great bole: a Canada Hemlock 8 ft. or more across at the roots and five at a man height; a tremendous silverbell; a pair of yellow buckeyes, each nearly 100 ft. high; vast smooth trunked beeches; the biggest maple tree I had ever seen, a sugar maple; and a 70 ft. wild pincherry whose top was lost in the canopy and whose lowest branch, a geat horizontal arm, must have been 40 ft. above us....."

Just was really pleased that this Birding Englishman took so much time to discuss the trees and vegetation. They are on to the Okefinokee Swamp next.

Jenny

[tomhoward]

Jenny,

I have this book and it's really fabulous! Peterson and Fisher had a gift for describing the wondrous natural world of North America. The descriptions of California - the redwoods, Monterey area, Yosemite with its magnificent valley, waterfalls, giant sequoias (especially the tree called the Grizzly Giant) are truly glorious. Years ago I went to those places in California and they are as wonderful as Peterson and Fisher said. I still have to get to the Great Smokies, but their descriptions echo the ENTS reports of that place that has the East's finest forest.

Tom Howard

[Jenny]

Tom,

I'm in Texas with Peterson and Fisher and can't wait to get to California!  Traveling vicariously with these 2 is wonderful, especially since it was written in 1955 and many of the landscapes have changed so much.  I want to post an excerpt of their trip north from Miami to the panhandle of Florida.  Hard to believe Florida was once like this...

It may be sobering, but there is a book I ordered called "Return to Wild America" written in 2005 which retraces their trip.

Jenny

[dbhguru]

Jenny,

   The magic that Fisher describes on his and Peterson's Smoky Mountain treks is still very much present in the non-hemlock areas, and would still be there in the hemlock zones were it not for the fact that those magnificent hemlocks are mostly gone. They stand now as the ghostly skeletons of what were once the mightiest eastern hemlocks on the planet.

   In Fisher's description of tree heights, read his account as impressionistic. One hundred feet is largely symbolic of a tall eastern tree to many folks. In ENTS, we would hardly pay attention to a 100-foot tall tree for a couple dozen species in the Smokies. Depending on the species, we begin to take notice at between 130 and 150 feet. We now have tree heights in the Smokies confirmed to about 188.5 feet in the white pine and 187.5 feet in the tuliptree. The tallest hemlock was the Usis Hemlock, climbed by Will. It was slightly over 173 feet. Still, the actual numbers do not detract from the description of the magic experienced by Fisher and Peterson.

   If you haven't seen the Smokies, there is no other eastern forest I would rate higher. They stand supreme. They are a must to visit. But you need to see them with someone who intimately knows those mountains and most importantly the tree species and where to find them at their best. Of course I speak of no then than Will Blozan.

Bob