Middle Prong Trail

After decades in northern Michigan, we were done. Snowdrifts, catastrophic ice storms, seasonal depression and gray skies that don’t let go until July. A life measured in winters wears you down. We wanted sunshine, mountains that call you so you must go, a landscape alive year-round.

So in June, Janet and I packed up and moved to Tennessee. Empty nesters with no friends or family within a thousand miles. Just us. And I guess that’s the point. After raising kids and decades of schedules and obligations, this is the life we’ve been waiting for. Time together, exploring, living.

Labor Day was my 45th birthday and we celebrated the way I wanted, boots on and trail underfoot. I chose the Middle Prong Trail, a hundred-year-old logging road turned footpath. It doesn’t make the Top-10 GSMNP YouTube videos, but we’d heard it had waterfalls, rhododendron tunnels, and a softer grade than most Smoky Mountain trails.

The day felt made for us. Cool, clear air scrubbed clean by the mountains themselves. The trail gave us quiet, the kind where a broad-winged hawk’s cry cut through the gurgle of a stream and the buzz of cicadas. A flash of yellow songbird wings darted past, too quick to name. These little glimpses feel like gifts.

We heard the bear first, rocks turning over in the river like some giant flicking marbles. This was our first bear encounter while hiking. No teeth clacking. No bluff charge. No being stalked. Twenty yards off, it ignored us completely, flipping stones and plunging its nose underwater, hoovering up whatever lived beneath. We stood together and watched for a few moments until deciding we shouldn't push our luck. I could have taken it, but who wants to fight a bear on their birthday? A half mile earlier, I wondered if I’d be one of those people who spends decades hiking without ever seeing one.

The old CCC camp still lingered, a fallen brick chimney covered in moss. I thought about the men who built these trails for a dollar a day, and how their work carried us here 100 years later.

The Top Tier of Indian Flats Falls

Indian Flats Falls was the headline act, a tiered cascade wrapped in rhododendron, impossible to capture in a photo, and not even mentioned in the guidebook. I left Janet there. Moving at her own pace, she took her socks and boots off to soak her feet in the icy water while I chased covering the full length of the trail.

Past the falls, I snuck up on two deer eating akerns. They let me closer than I thought they would before vanishing down a cliff as if gravity didn’t apply to them. At the trail’s end, I read the navigation signs telling me where Greenbriar Ridge Trail went and resisted the temptation to keep going before turning back towards Janet.

We ate peanut butter and jelly in the middle of a waterfall we had to ourselves on a holiday weekend. We had logged miles, seen countless unnamed waterfalls, crossed paths with deer and bear, and stood on the shore of the Sea of Rhododendron. But more than that, we had lived the day the way we’ve always dreamed, together, out there, free.

Most people would call it just another trail. To me, it was a reminder that this is the life we’ve waited for. Around 850 miles of GSMNP trail we ain’t seen yet still ahead.

Me

The MIddle Prong

Hearts-a-Bustin’ (Euonymus americanus), also called strawberry bush or bursting heart. When ripe, the capsule splits open to reveal those bright orange seeds. It’s native to the southeast, and you’ll often find it in shady woods and thickets. Wildlife eat the seeds. In large amounts, it’s toxic to humans.

Salamander

Appalachain akerns

I don’t normally like strangers in my photos, but sometimes they offer scale

Cardinal Flower (Lobelia cardinalis)