[Illustration: _For sheer numbers and diversity of trees and flowering plants, the park is a botanical showplace. Its varied elevations telescope together nearly all forest types found from Maine to Georgia. Hiker and motorist alike may see wildflowers from March through October._] A One-day Walk to Maine Every spring a number of enterprising people set out to walk more than 3,000 kilometers (2,000 miles) on the Appalachian Trail from Georgia to Maine. Those who finish typically arrive some four months later. You can experience nearly the same thing—in terms of the natural history and particularly forest cover—in a single day by hiking from the lowlands to the crest of the Smokies. Because of the climatic change accompanying this gain in altitude, as much as 1,500 meters (5,000 feet), such a walk can take you, as it were, through the oak and pine forests of northern Georgia, the oak-hickory forests of central Virginia, the northern hardwoods of Massachusetts, and into the spruce-fir forests of Maine and Canada. And along the way you get many glimpses of the natural processes that shape and control the national park’s marvelous assemblage of life. If you’re not quite ready for such a long, hard climb, why not join me for an armchair ascent of the mountains? It’s early on a summer morning and the sky is clear, but knowing the frequency of rain in the Smokies, we tuck ponchos into our packs. As our boots crunch pleasantly on the gravel of an old mountain road, we listen to the neighboring stream and look at the forested hollow it drains. Just a few decades ago farm children played in the stream, and cornfields bordered the road. Now we can enjoy the stream in the shade of yellow-poplar trees that now stand thick and straight where the grain once did. Around a bend the stream gradient steepens and so does the road. We are still in young forest; here it grows where cattle formerly grazed or lumbermen felled its giant ancestors. For some time we labor upwards, the road becoming a trail and a few big trees appearing along the tumbling creek. Then, rather suddenly, there is a striking difference in the environment. We have crossed the line into primeval forest, into territory where the axman has not been and most of the trees are big. This is Great Smokies virgin cove forest, a type unrivaled in the northern hemisphere for combined variety and size of trees. Here it is cool, shady, and moist. The tree trunks shoot high above into the canopy, which intercepts most of the sunlight and seems to enclose us in a private world. The ground around us is covered with the greenery of small plants. We hear bird songs but cannot see the singers.