Last night almost didn’t happen.

And I thought doing my video work was hard!

With over 1,600 flowering plant species, including 100 species native trees, the Smoky Mountains are a great place to be during the fall.

Today was a nice break from the busyness I’ve been experiencing lately. I headed to the North Carolina side of the park without much of a plan, and that let me focus on actually enjoying myself.

I have been admittedly absent from both this blog and the twitter recently, but with good reason. My time has been equally consumed, I would say, by both working out in the field and doing all sorts of research at the library and archives here at park headquarters.

Two days ago my attempt to catch sunset was thwarted by massive clouds engulfing the mountaintop, but I had a feeling things would be different today…