Featured Photographer

My first journey to the Smoky Mountains lives in memory like an old photograph, softened at the edges but still bright with color. I was a child then, traveling without car seats, nestled among pillows and scratchy wool blankets on the back seat and the warm car floorboards, looking through the window as the road curled upward into hills that seemed enormous and mysterious. My siblings and I were still school age, so our travels occurred during the summer months; everything was green, rain-washed, and fresh. Ferns crowded the roadside, and the air smelled of damp earth, pine needles, and sun-warmed leaves. The cool, gurgling streams beckoned a swim partner, and we gladly obliged, wading over slick stones until the icy water stole our breath and made us squeal. Autumn was just around the corner, waiting to lay its richest colors across the slopes, but for now green covered everything in every shade imaginable, from pale new leaves to deep hemlock shadow. One day I would see those majestic fall colors everyone talked about. Even in summer, mist drifted through the valleys and clung to the ridgelines; through the open window I could feel its coolness and hear cicadas buzzing beneath the steady rush of water. It gave the mountains their smoky name and made the landscape feel like a place just beyond ordinary time. It was the trip I remember best with my family as a child.

My husband and I, along with our sons, visited the Smoky Mountains when they were adolescents. Again, it was summer, an easy, relaxing trip with the windows down and warm mountain air moving through the car. Our days were spent eating from a packed ice chest beside every stream we could find. Water tumbled over dark rocks while our sons skipped stones and tested the current with bare feet. They watched the forests with the same wonder I had once felt. Evenings were spent in Cades Cove, where the fields turned honey-colored in the sinking sun. We listened to insects hum and leaves rustle as we waited for a bear to appear, or for deer and other wildlife to stir at sundown. The air cooled against our skin, shadows lengthened across the road, and still there were no fall colors.

Fast-forward almost fifty years after my first trip with Mom and Dad, and we returned to the mountains again. This time I traveled with my siblings, our now-adult children, and my aging parents. The mountains were familiar, yet the people beside me changed the way I saw them. My grown children watched the forests for their next great adventure or the next cliff to jump from, while their grandparents recognized turns in the road, distant peaks, and small mountain towns from years gone by. Three generations stood beneath the same forest visited decades before. Sunlight streamed through the canopy in shifting ribbons, warming our faces before vanishing into shade, and danced like scattered coins on the sparkling streams. The water smelled clean and mineral-cold; beneath its rush came the crunch of gravel underfoot and the rise and fall of familiar voices. In that brilliant light, the years seemed to fold together. I could almost see my younger self walking beside my children, while the voices of those who had guided me through childhood mingled with the laughter of a new generation.

At last came a quieter journey: a trip with my husband to drive through the mountains on the Blue Ridge Parkway. With no calendar restraints, autumn was ours for the taking—the long-awaited blaze of color. We lacked the happy bustle of a family caravan, but that allowed us to linger at overlooks, breathing in the sharp scent of fallen leaves and woodsmoke as we followed the long blue folds of the mountains into the distance. We walked trails that led to the most breathtaking waterfalls. Their roar grew louder before they came into view, and cool spray settled on our cheeks while wet stones gleamed beneath our shoes. The water was too cold for swimming, but its chill brought back every summer plunge. The trees towered around us in waves of amber, burgundy, russet, and flame, with red maples glowing like stained glass against the dark green firs. Sunlight moved across the ridges, brightening one hillside until it seemed lit from within while another slipped into purple shadow. Fallen leaves whispered beneath our steps and spun behind passing cars; every curve opened onto another view that seemed both new and deeply known.

The scenery carried me backward through bygone years. A patch of golden light recalled the excitement of my first mountain road and the warm vinyl seat beneath my knees. A mist-filled hollow, smelling of rain and pine, brought back voices no longer heard every day. The distant thunder of a waterfall returned me to numb toes, dripping hair, and my children's faces bright with wonder. The mountains had witnessed every version of us: spring—the child I had been; summer—the mother I became and the daughter traveling beside aging parents; and now autumn—a wife sharing a peaceful road with her husband, our hands wrapped around warm cups as leaves tapped softly against the windshield. Now only the colorless winter remains.

Perhaps that is why autumn in the mountains feels so moving. The colors are glorious because they are brief, a final blaze before the quiet of winter. Every click of the camera shutter is an attempt to freeze those luminous reds and golds as if they will never be seen again. The air tastes cold and clean; dry leaves scrape and skitter across the pavement, and the last sunlight lingers on the ridges like a warm hand reluctant to let go. But beneath the fallen leaves, the mountains remain, making ready the ground for the next burst of fall color. They remind me that time changes the travelers and rearranges the generations, but love leaves its own trail through the years. Along the Smoky Mountains and the Blue Ridge Parkway, the past does not disappear. It rises again from season to season—in a different color, still wrapped in mist, with the scent of pine in the air and a memory waiting around every bend.                                                                     -Susan Webb Freeman