finding ourselves and nature

 

of Mynatt Park, then and now

when the Great Smoky Mountains National Park

first coalesced from acquired land,

it began where Airport Road merged with Cherokee Orchard Road,

and then the Methodist Church held title

to where the Sugarlands Visitor Center, the Park headquarters,

and housing for Park employees is now,

somehow an exchange was made

and the national park's boundaries

moved upstream on LeConte Creek, a.k.a. Mill Creek,

and the Holston Assembly Grounds came into being,

sort of like a halfway house between private and public,

there the Methodist Church felt and acted upon a calling

to have a camp, a facility,

where young people could reside for a time

in basic, rustic cabins,

and enlarge themselves through immersion in nature and camaraderie,

using well the proximity to the natural world recovering itself,

these camps encouraged young people

to exercise both body and spirit,

to ground themselves in natural truths

our headlong rush toward the future might forget,

my mother oversaw that camp till 1947,

building and using a house up against LeConte Creek,

bordering on the Park on two sides,

my father often commented that our backyard

encompassed hundreds of thousands of acres of Park,

before bear proofing, bears would every night 

find the food in our trash cans

and allow us to marvel at them

as emissaries of the wild world 

rebuilding itself as the national park,

it is wonderful that Gatlinburg found the vision and wherewithal

to conserve much of the land as a city park

where visitors can picnic by the dropping creek,

kids can fish,

where visitors can exercise with tennis, pickle ball,

playground, and local youths enjoy baseball,

visitors also find their way up trails

into the resurging natural world,

on our land we have posted signs

welcoming visitors to pass through, to and from the Park,

for we planted our house right in the middle of the old road,

on our land we talk of Jean's Dream

and work to keep it alive so that generation after generation

can find nature and ourselves, and be true to both,

our time here on Earth is best used 

in service to seeing and appreciating

that which God makes every day,

when the natural world is allowed to be, to do,

to let the glory inherent in the world

reach up and out, 

like the great mountain, LeConte, 

towering above us.

by Henry H. Walker

July 26, ‘26