The Joyce Kilmer Forest - Joyce Kilmer Memorial Forest in North Carolina - Nuggets From Our 100 Years

American Forests, July-August, 1994 by Charles Newton Elliot

A wilderness memorial dedicated to the soldier-poet who left us "Trees."

AT TWILIGHT the air was thin and like a knife. The sky overhead had donned a cloak of flat, drab gray, against which the ridges at the head of the valley stood bold and black. Along the stream, in the coves, not a breath of air stirred, but from high on the bleak ridges came the roar of wind against rocks and barren tree branches, like the sound of heavy seas on flat sand beaches.

Hour after hour Warner and I had followed a frozen trail into a wilderness that was ice-bound and stark. Leaves of laurel and rhododendron had curled up from the cold. The earth under our hobnails had a dull metallic ring. Since noon we had seen no road, no house, no sign of a human. In places the trail had been dim and hard to follow. Across the spur of a ridge it had led, then sloped downward again to skirt the edge of the stream, through thickets that were barbed and dense, through open forest where dead leaves crackled underfoot.

For hours we had not spoken, and had seen no sign of life except a flock of chickadees and a few juncoes.

We crossed a tiny stream. Warner stopped and slid out of his pack.

"I think that we are in a mess," he said slowly--and I could detect a note of grimness in his voice.

I was not alarmed. I was too cold and tired to be alarmed, but I remembered that we had left our blankets in the automobile. We had been told that food and lodging were available in the home of Brownlow Blevins, and Warner had brought along only the bare necessities--his camera equipment, flashlight, and two bars of chocolate.

"We're lost," he said. "We are on the wrong trail, or have passed Blevins' place without seeing it."

"Okay," I replied, "so what?"

Warner knocked out the pipe ashes against the heel of his hand. "We go until we find a supply of wood where we can build a big fire and bed down for the night. Our supper will be hot chocolate, made from the candy in my duffel."

He swung the pack to his heavy shoulders, and we moved on into the gloom.

As we walked, my thoughts raced back across the past 24 hours. I had almost forgotten that this was the first day of a new year. The night before, when we had sat and waited for the clock of time to tick one more year, seemed far away. While we watched the old year out, the forest supervisor had told us about the finest stand of hardwood timber in eastern North America. He said that this forest of trees, giants all, was soon to be sold as lumber. He said that feeble attempts had been made to save them, but that the lumber had been contracted and logging crews would soon begin operation on the headwaters of Santeetlah.

At midnight, when the old year, vanished, Warner and I forgot to celebrate. We had a complete file of information--how to locate the timber stand with reference to roads, towns, and streams. We had collected camera equipment, maps, and a compass. Warner believed there was no time like the present, and daylight found us rolling swiftly northward for a glimpse of the magnificent forest.

My thoughts were still tracing the events of this day when Warner came suddenly to a halt. There in the dim light, so close we could almost touch it, stood a rough picket fence. Beyond it and some rows of broken cornstalks appeared the outline of a hewn log cabin with yellow windows. Warner's sigh of relief did not go unnoticed. Zero weather had caught him in the woods before.

"Must be Blevins'," he said.

The gate creaked when I opened it, and we were immediately attacked by a pack of lean, hungry-looking hounds. They seemed to come from all directions at once. I raised my arms to save them from being tom out of their sockets.

"Aw, shaddup!" Warner said. "Save your growls for the revenooers."

The hounds quit barking and crowded around him, wagging their entire extremities. That boy could make friends with a pack of wolves.

Although the commotion created by our approach must have been audible for miles, we could hear no movement inside the house until I rapped on the thick log door. My knock was answered by a scraping of chairs, and the door was opened against the golden interior. A man stood silhouetted against flickering firelight.

"I'm looking for Mr. Blevins," I said.

The bright eyes did not miss a trick of my apparel or equipment. In a flash they examined me from head to foot without seeming to see me at all. "I'm him."

"They told us at the road we could spend the night with you," I said.

"Come in," he replied.

The blazing logs sent a radiant glow all through my body. By their light I could not tell whether Mr. Blevins was young or old. His face was unwrinkled, his expression as placid as an unrippled mountain pool. There was no sign of years upon this man who had lived his life in the wilderness. The foolish troubles of a foolish civilization had passed him by.

I do not know what arrangement Warner had made, but Mrs. Blevins was in the kitchen, humming snatches of an old hymn. Presently the sweet aroma of coffee and the satisfying sizzle of ham came to us through the open door.