BCQ | SHANON ADAME Hints of fall colors come through on the Spruce Flats Falls trail. this spectacle is especially visible in September at high ridges and lookouts like Clingmans Dome or Look Rock. Warblers and thrushes slip quietly through the canopy, pausing to refuel on berries before continuing journeys that may stretch to Central or South America. Even monarch butterflies, delicate yet determined, funnel through the Smokies on their improbable migration to Mexico. Each movement is part of a larger choreography – survival, preparation, and the unbroken continuity of ancient rhythms.
The cycles even extend into the air. As nights grow colder, cool, dense air slides into valleys and hollows, trapping moisture that condenses into fog. By morning, ridges rise through layers of mist, their slopes veiled in the blue-gray haze that inspired the name“ Smoky Mountains.” This daily breathing of the mountains influences more than scenery – the shifting moisture nourishes fungi, mosses, and soils, the unseen foundation of the forest’ s health.
What falls now will feed what rises later. Every acorn cached by a squirrel, every leaf broken down by soil organisms, every berry fueling a migrating bird is part of a web of dependence and response. Nothing in autumn stands alone.
For most of us, autumn is a season of looking. We drive to overlooks, snap photos of ridges set aflame, and marvel at the spectacle of color. But the Smokies offer a deeper invitation: to notice. To pause long enough to hear the slowing cadence of insects, to watch the nervous energy of chipmunks as they stuff their cheeks, to kneel beside the leaf litter and imagine the unseen work of microbes and salamanders beneath.
When we look closely, autumn becomes more than scenery. It becomes a reminder of the cycles we are part of, of endings that are never final but always folded into new beginnings. The quiet turning of the season is, in fact, a story of resilience and renewal.
And if you stand still long enough, you may just feel it: the whole mountain breathing in, preparing for the long exhale of winter, and already holding within it the seeds of spring.
20 | BLOUNT COUNTY QUARTERLY • FALL 2025