“Take a
guess. What’s that thing for?” Joel
asked while pointing to a telephone- pole-size, wooden post shaped like a giant
7 stuck along the gravel road in the Nantahala
National Forest . “A nesting place? Maybe a roosting spot?” I guessed. “No, the park service built if for flying
squirrels to cross the road.” From
anyone else, this tidbit would have made us skeptical. We’d have asked how the squirrels knew to
cross at that particular place. And why
do they need it since there’s almost no traffic at all? Also, flying squirrels? Really?
But hiking with Kathy and Joel Zachry is like having translators in a
foreign country. They speak forest
fluently. You could attribute it to his
30 year career as a college biology teacher or their 50 years of combined
experience hiking and leading trips. But
it’s their passion for the natural world that really distinguishes them.
When Joel
retired in 1999 he anticipated missing the field trips he’d taken with his
students. So he and Kathy, a medical
products company vice president, started their company GOAT (Great Outdoor
Adventure Travel). Its name refers to
the couple’s pet fainting goats. “They
just pass out and fall down when they’re scared,” Kathy explained with obvious
amusement. It also refers to the
animal’s sure-footedness. Each year the
couple leads hikes and workshops at a variety of venues including at J.C. Campbell
Folk School ,
The Swag Country Inn, the Arrowmont School and even to Alaska where they've been over 25 times. They also lead multi-day hikes on the
Appalachian Trail and are particularly proud of their work with the Smoky Mountain
Field School . That 30-year old, award-winning program
offers one-day and longer programs on various aspects of nature within the Great Smoky
Mountain National
Park . As
the program directors, the Zachrys help arrange the 60 classroom and field
offerings taught by a diversified host of experts serving over 700 students a
year.
“Look at
the hillside,” Joel said while gesturing across a steep slope. “Notice there
are no tall trees. They were all
harvested 50 to 100 years ago.” He led
us to imagine how that was accomplished in those days: miles of cables strung across the rocky
terrain, mammoth rolling logs careening to the river, the impossibly strenuous
work and the arduous lifestyle it required.
Another stop was along the gravel forest road that had recently
collapsed and been repaired. He wanted
us to admire the engineering work. They
are thrilled with the emerging trillium that are sprouting despite the recent snowfall. “There is a greater diversity of plant life in North Carolina
than in all of Europe ,” Joel pointed out. They seem to know the name and medicinal uses
for most every one of them.
They make us stop to examine
droppings. “Notice the hair in it,
“Kathy says as she prodded the poo with her walking stick. “What animal was it and what did it eat?” They
point out the symptoms of the disease challenges facing the piney forest and
the Joyce Kilmer nearby.
I joined their
entourage during my stay at Snowbird Lodge in Robbinsville , N.C. It’s one of several places where the Zachrys offer
daily hikes and evening naturalist talks as an amenity. I was surprised to learn that many of the inn’s
guests had come not knowing about the free hikes. For me it was the selling point. Their promise of safety, maximized enjoyment
and minimized worry had attracted me. Their familiarity with the dozens of
hiking trails eliminated my having to do any research or to bumble around
looking for trailheads. The March
weather varied like a light switch:
spring to winter, warm to cold. This
early in the season, trails were obscured by leaves and not recently used. I would have thought we were lost without
their confident strides ahead of us as we walked across the frosty, rocky
terrain one day and to the sunny foot of a waterfall the next.
The Zachrys are also experts on bears. In fact they've written a book about it, Bears We’ve Met . Although there are about two bears per square
mile in the Smoky
Mountains , “Black bear
rarely attack humans with fewer than 60 human fatalities within the last 100
years …” Joel writes. When they’re
startled, they chomp, huff and snort which are merely anxious blusterings and
not signs of imminent attack. So he
advises to make yourself as large as possible by spreading your arms, to back
away slowly and to not run which triggers a pursuit response. “They have very
little interest in eating us…of course there are always exceptions to that.” Fortunately the only anxious blusterings I heard were the hikers trudging uphill as we marveled
at spring emerging in one of the most beautiful parts of our country.
If you Go
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