But before we make the final ascent, let’s take a short detour to a nearby knob, which promises a spectacular view, a welcome visual release after being shut in so long by foliage. Going up the side of the knob, we quickly leave the forest and begin tunneling through dense thickets of rhododendron and mountain-laurel. Trees don’t grow here at all. On top, the shrubs become smaller and we can look out over them. Perched on the end of a spur from the side of a giant valley, we look up to high ridges on both sides and down to a stream far below. Is it our imagination, or do we really hear that stream whispering to us of the humid, secret world way down there under the big trees? For many minutes we are lost in contemplation of the Smokies’ green-blue spaces. The crack of thunder suddenly wakens us from our reverie. A bank of clouds, dark underneath and contorted with churning air, is rolling over the ridges and into the head of the valley. The clouds shoot lightning toward the slopes below. Hypnotized by the spectacle we remain rooted to our rocks until the first drops fall, then we pull on our ponchos, determined to greet the storm. Soon the valley view is blotted out by boiling clouds. We and a circle of shrubs, both whipped by rain and wind, are all that exist in the world. Our foolhardiness on this exposed knob is soon revealed as lightning flashes so near that its crackling sound is almost instantaneous. We hurry down the trail, now a small torrent where it tunnels through the rhododendrons, and in a few minutes we reach safer ground. We eat our lunch under sheltering hemlocks. When we sense the end of the storm, we head toward our day’s goal, the top of the Smokies. The deciduous forest rapidly turns into a coniferous one, the beech, birch, maple, buckeye, and others giving way to a nearly solid stand of spruce and fir. This is an enchanted forest. Carpets of mosses and ferns, struggling, as it were, for growing space, make delicate patterns on the forest floor. Limber-stemmed shrubs lift round or toothed leaves to the pale, post-storm light filtering through the thick evergreen foliage of the trees above. Out of the stillness, like the voice of some tiny fairy, comes the tinkling medley of a winter wren. We stop and listen. We watch a drop of water fall from the tip of a fern. We feel the coolness, a coolness born of altitude. We have reached Maine right here in the Smokies.