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Amy Clark is a professor of communication studies at the University of Virginia’s College at Wise, where she is a co-founder and director of the Center for Appalachian Studies. She is author and co-editor of the book “Talking Appalachian: Voice, Identity, and Community (University Press of Kentucky, 2013).
The Cherokee people called the southern Appalachian mountains “shaconage” (sha-con-oh-hey) or “place of the blue smoke.” One year ago, the name seemed prophetic as deadly wildfires swept through the mountains surrounding their neighbors in Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge, erasing homes, buildings, and nearly 18,000 acres of old-growth forest. Fourteen people lost their lives in a perfect storm of wind, flame, and drought.
But one year later, Gatlinburg’s capacity for not just healing, but thriving, is as clear as its horizon on a perfect autumn day.
For nearly 50 years, my family has vacationed in this little mountain town. My growing-up years are earmarked with memories there. Coming around the bend from Pigeon Forge, Gatlinburg might as well be Vegas to a child’s eyes, with its shimmering lights and teeming streets.
There were summer weekends with high school friends, wearing our airbrushed tee-shirts as we zoomed to the top of the Space Needle, and winter treks to Ober Gatlinburg with my husband, holding hands as we skated on ice. There was a late night walk after live music, when we saw a couple, she in her wedding dress and he in his tuxedo, dancing in the foggy glow of a street light. We took our children to trick-or-treat for the first time in the Village where machines still stretch taffy in the Ole Smoky Candy Kitchen and pumpkin spice coffee fills the air.
Every night, the dark erases the mountains’ scars.
If you remember those images of boiling smoke, scorched trees, smoldering buildings, and the interviews with people desperate to find their loved ones, what remains of those awful days can be found deep in the new forest growth. There are skeletons of homes, their chimneys stubbornly standing amid empty foundation, and patches of brush and dead trees like healing scabs on otherwise healthy mountains.
As nature restored itself, so did this little town. Homes reappeared, businesses were rebuilt, and a new treetop attraction, Anakeesta (a Cherokee word meaning “the place of the balsams”) has just opened, complete with a Chondola that takes its passengers to the summit of the mountain and Firefly Village.
The Cherokee legend of the First Fire describes a group of animals who try to capture a bit of flame from a burning sycamore to heat their world, which is growing ever colder. As they battle the heat and smoke, each animal is forever marked: the owl by his white-ringed eyes, the snake by his darkened skin, the raven by her blackened wings. Only the water spider proves brave enough to carry the hot coals on her back, but she is forever imprinted with the color red where she is burned.
Gatlinburg and its surrounding communities may be forever marked with a horrific memory. But after several seasons, evidence of the fires will be erased to all but those who suffered the most because of them.
