Six decades ago, she lived on the North Shore. Our route across the lake will come close to passing over the remains of Vance's childhood home. We are waiting for a ferryboat to carry us over to the North Shore. Low clouds obscure the sun and shroud the mountains that rise from the opposite shore. THIRTY MINUTES LATER we arrive at the edge of Fontana Lake, parking in the gravel lot of the Cable Cove marina. Why, then, does she want a road built on the North Shore? We tried to do things that wouldn't destroy the land." At certain times of the year, our brothers were taught that they weren't allowed to hunt because the squirrels were having their young. "Our family had to learn to live with the land and off the land. We like the peace and the quiet." She calls herself an environmentalist. "We don't want Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge over here because it's just too much commercialism. She looks out the window as we speed over a sparsely developed mountain byway. Some have suggested that a wave of Tennessee-style development could follow. If the North Shore road is built, nearby Bryson City, N.C., will become an eastern gateway into the national park. That's not the case, however, on the Tennessee side of the Smokies, where the towns of Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge, abutting the national park, attract millions of visitors with arcades, bumper cars, water slides, jamborees and Dollywood, a theme park named after Dolly Parton. Traffic is already backing up - it seems that tiny Sylva wasn't meant for crowds. On the way out of Sylva, signs advertise "Mountain Heritage Day," a festival that includes fiddle-playing, clogging, and a beard and mustache contest. In Vance's handbag I spot a bouquet of brilliant flowers: a reminder that for her this trip is sanctified. The women greet me in the accent of Southern Appalachia, where the vowels are swallowed, like an Irish brogue crossed with a Southern drawl. Vance is riding with one of her younger sisters, Eleanor Rhinehart. In fact, today we're going to make a brief excursion to the North Shore, and Vance has offered to take me along. Since my solo trek is a couple of days off, I have time to spend with Helen Vance, a 77-year-old great-grandmother who is an ardent supporter of building a road on the North Shore. Eric Rudolph, who pleaded guilty to setting off a bomb at the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta, managed to evade the FBI for more than five years by hiding in these mountains. The prevailing ruggedness of this region hasn't always been put to noble use. ![]() The town of just a couple thousand residents is about a half-hour drive from the national park and is surrounded mostly by the Nantahala National Forest. ![]() ![]() Meanwhile I'm sitting on a curb in Sylva, N.C. In other words, the wilderness I'm about to visit may soon, in one sense, cease to exist. The timing of my trip is key, because a 62-year-old dispute is going to be settled in the next year, perhaps allowing a road to be built on the North Shore. Starting two days from now, I plan to walk it end-to-end, covering about 40 miles of trail, and with any luck I won't see another soul for the better part of a week. The North Shore forms, in part, the southern boundary of Great Smoky Mountains National Park on the North Carolina side, and it is one of the biggest pieces of roadless land in the Eastern United States. I figure that I can hike across the North Shore of Fontana Lake in four days and three nights, as long as I stay close to the water, where the elevation doesn't change much. But by then I should also be out of the woods. The night after that there's freeze-dried beef stroganoff. ![]() I'm looking forward to dinner number one, freeze-dried lasagna.
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