The best reason
to live in the South is March. While it can be fickle, by the end of March
we’ve traded our house slippers and our ice scraper for T shirts and lawn
mowers.
The fact that
the Smoky Mountains are several thousand feet higher than the surrounding countryside
means that their temperatures are more like Boston than Knoxville. So to get a
good taste of springtime in the mountains in March you must plan your visit
carefully. It’s best to visit the park at a time when the sun has been shining
for several days, so the cold front that blew through has time to melt into the
warmth of several days of sunshine.
It’s also wise
to focus on low elevations and south facing slopes that get more sunshine than
north slopes. This makes Cades Cove a good springtime destination because the
road is about 1,800’ in elevation – only about 700’ higher than my home and
3,200’ lower than Newfound Gap. Of course, as the name “cove” implies, it’s
relatively flat and open as well, so it gets lots of sunshine.
Phyllis and I keep an eye on the Daffodils in our
yard. Once they begin blooming, we’ll wait about two weeks and head to Cades
Cove. While daffodils are not a native, mountain flower, they are scattered throughout
the park because the families that used to live in the park loved Daffodils
growing outside their homes. The roadsides and trails of the park sparkle with
Daffodil yellow, giving evidence of the spots where mountain families raised
kids, corn, hogs, and flowers.
Even the CCC workers loved Daffodils. There’s a
spot in Cades Cove (about three miles from the start of the loop road, across
the road from Cades Cove Missionary Baptist Church) where the Daffodils sprout
in a pattern that outlines the location of the old CCC camp site, including a
patch that spells out a yellow-green “Company 5427”. It’s a pleasant little detail that few people
notice because it lasts for only a few weeks, and it’s just far enough
off the road to be out of the way. (To see it, cross the road from the white
frame church building, find the small CCC plaque on the knee-high rock, then
walk about 50 yards toward the lone cedar tree in the field. The Company 5427
site is just beyond the cedar tree.)
 |
| Cades Cove Daffodils, Company 5427 |
The park’s black bears also get the urge to get outside sometime in March, especially if March is acting more like April and less like February. Most den up (most of us would call it hibernation, but the biologists say that, technically, it’s just a very deep sleep – metabolism slows to about 50%) in hollow spots in trees above the ground – warmer and safer than under rocky overhangs. When cubs emerge with their mothers they weigh about five pounds – so to see a tiny cub, go out in the warm, late weeks of March. The sunny, low terrain of Cades Cove is a good spot to get an early season glimpse of these iconic, Smokies inhabitants.
There are also
numerous nooks and crannies in the park which, because they face south, will
warm up much sooner than their north-facing cousins across the valley. On
south-facing slopes and valleys, March looks and feels like April. On
north-facing sites, March resembles February.
One particularly
good stretch of south-facing slopes that get plenty of sun is the stretch of
Newfound Gap Road between mile markers 7 and 8. As you drive up this road (toward North Carolina) the
left side of the road has numerous rocky slopes and valleys that absorb the
sun’s warmth, so even though 3,000’ to 3, 500’ is a bit high, this piece of the
landscape bursts into bloom in March. Spring Beauties, Hepaticas, and Yellow
Violets decorate the ground. The annual Reawakening that really hits its stride
in April begins showing itself in March. It happens in fits and starts, but it
does happen – March finally begins acting more like April and less like
February, and the on-again, off-again mood swings of March finally settle into
the warmth of April.
One particularly lovely, south-facing slope is Fort Harry Falls…
[To be
continued]
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