she got jumper cable lips, she got sunset on her breath.

The mountains had been a natural field of activity where, playing on the frontiers of life and death, we had found the freedom for which we were blindly groping and which was as necessary to us as breath. Peter Matthiesen

Morning y'all,

It's a beautiful, cloudy day up top. The high yesterday reached 44 degrees. The overnight low was 34 degrees. It was 34 degrees and mostly cloudy at 7am observation. The mountain received .66 inches of rain yesterday evening. There is no snow remaining up top and very little ice left on the trails. Be cautious to avoid black ice, but I've had little trouble going up and down over the past few days without any traction devices. Enjoy the day!

You haven't seen the Smokies until you haven't not seen the Smokies. These cloudy days are just as perfect as the sunny days. They give your mind a chance to recharge from the unsubtle beauty of a gorgeous day and appreciate them all the more in the future. Give me the variety of the East, the play of light on fog curling up over mountain ridges, the forever verdant fauna, all kinds of mud (which we should have definitely have more than one word for, the same way eskimos have a dictionary for all different kinds of snow) and precipitation! Getting to see the sun 300 days a year out West sounds nice in theory, but this diversity in weather means that there is ALWAYS something new to see, from day to day, hour to hour. There is so much variety in every step here and despite being the most visited National Park in the country, it still feels underappreciated. Get out there and savor it.