A Trip to Gatlinburg with Mom

A year or so after Dad passed, I got to thinking that it was high time to get Mom out of the house. Grief has a way of settling into the corners of a room if you sit still too long, and truth be told, both of us were due for a change of scenery. A few days looking at the Great Smoky Mountains seemed like just what the good Lord ordered.

Now, I had an ulterior motive tucked into my pocket for this trip. Word had gotten out about that brand-new suspension bridge they’d just opened up on top of the mountain in Gatlinburg. The Gatlinburg SkyBridge. At the time, folks were bragging that it was the longest pedestrian suspension bridge in North America. The kicker? Right smack dab in the middle of it, they installed about thirty feet of glass panels. You walk out on solid wood, and then suddenly you’re standing on nothing but thin air looking hundreds of feet straight down into the holler.

Anybody who knows me knows my philosophy on high places: the good Lord put my feet on solid dirt for a reason, and dangling off a cable strung between two ridges ain’t natural. But every once in a while, a man has to look his own sheer stubbornness in the face. I put it on my bucket list. Come hell or high water, I was going to cross that contraption. So I talked Mom into the idea, packed the car, and we pointed the front bumper toward Pigeon Forge.

In the past, I always rented a cabin. But the prices they’re asking for cabins these days have gone clear out of their minds. By the time they tack on the cleaning fee, the convenience fee, the fee for looking at the porch, and the fee for having fees, it doesn’t make an ounce of sense unless you’re staying a week or better. For a couple of nights, forget it. We checked into the Holiday Inn Express instead. I’ve always had good luck with them—clean sheets, neat rooms, decent breakfast, and they don’t try to rob you blind. They even had a nice fire pit out to the side where you could sit in the cool of the evening and look out toward the mountains.

The only beef I had with the entire hotel was an engineering marvel in our bathroom. The toilet sat along one wall, and whoever mounted the toilet paper dispenser put it about seven feet away on the opposite partition. I don’t know who drew up the blueprints for that layout, but they had to be an Auburn graduate. There isn’t an arm in the state of Tennessee long enough to reach that roll without pulling a hamstring. It took me about two seconds flat to unhook that paper and set it right where common sense intended it to sit.

The next morning, we set out to see what was what. We went by Santa’s Claus-et, which was neat—pure Christmas wall-to-wall in the middle of the year. From there, we figured we’d check out the local artisan trail. Well, that turned out to be little more than an overpriced junkyard filled with cheap knickknacks masquerading as mountain craft. We didn’t spend a dime.

Next up was a quilter’s shop Mom wanted to look into, advertising genuine “handmade” quilts. Mom has quilted real fabric by hand her whole life, so she knows the craft inside and out. We weren’t in that store three minutes before she spotted a girl feeding fabric through a big computerized quilting machine. Mom took one look at that racket, turned to me, and said, “I’m ready to go.” To make matters worse, they had bundles of leftover scrap fabric tied together in little stacks with price tags that made you think the thread was spun out of twenty-dollar bills. Just plumb ridiculous. We walked out.

We made up for it by going over to Paula Deen’s Lumberjack Feud, and let me tell you, that was worth every single copper penny. Good, comfortable grandstand seating, and those boys put on a real show. They had log rolling, speed chopping, crosscut sawing, and guys scurrying eighty feet up those slick wooden poles like squirrels with fire on their tails. Good, honest entertainment. I give that one high marks.

Then came the hour of reckoning: the bridge.

We pulled into the parking area downtown, and before we even unbuckled to head for the chairlift, I stepped out, pointed way up to the top of Crockett Mountain, and said, “There’s where we’re going. We’re going to walk across that.”

Mom stood there, looked up into the clouds at that thin little thread swinging between the peaks, and looked back at me with a face as straight as a pine board.

“I’m not walking across that,” she said, calm as Sunday morning. “You can if you want to, but I’m not.”

Now, she knew full well I’d planned the whole trip around that bridge. She knew every single string to pull, and right then she gave that string a yank with both hands just to watch my stomach turn inside out. For about five seconds my heart sank right into my boots. Then she cracked a grin. “Just kidding,” she said. It wasn’t funny—not to me right then, anyway—but she had me good. With that settled, we headed toward the lift.

What they don’t emphasize in the brochures is that the only way to get up to that bridge is riding the SkyLift. I had never ridden a chairlift in my life. I had no earthly desire to ride a chairlift. Dangling from a metal cable with nothing but a little metal lap bar between you and kingdom come didn’t sound like a good idea. But it was the only way up, so I squared my shoulders, bought the tickets, ushered Mom into position, and plopped down.

Going up actually wasn’t half bad. You’re facing the mountain, so the dirt and trees are right there in front of you the whole way. Naturally, about halfway up, they had one of those automated cameras perched on a pole snapping flash photos to sell you down at the gift shop for twenty bucks. I stared right past it. Nope. Not buying it.

We got off smooth at the landing at the top. Mom went to locate the facilities, and I found one of those big Adirondack chairs sitting along the deck overlooking the whole town of Gatlinburg. It was a million-dollar view, no two ways about it. Once she was set, we tackled the three flights of wooden stairs up to the bridge entrance. We caught our breath at the platform, took in the scenery, and stepped out onto the span.

The bridge itself was stout. It had a little bit of a sway to it, and when somebody heavy-footed walked past, you’d feel a gentle bounce in the cables, but nothing that made you feel like you were fixing to meet your maker right that second. Step by step, we made our way out to the center span. And there it was: thirty feet of clear, thick glass.

I didn’t let myself hesitate. I walked right out on top of it and looked down. The world didn’t end. The glass didn’t crack. I stood right in the middle of the sky.

Looking down through my boots into that deep mountain drop, an idea hit me. I told Mom they were missing a golden marketing opportunity. If they were smart, they’d haul a couple of plastic skeletons down into the ravine and leave them tangled up in the brush right underneath the glass. That way, when tourists walked out and looked between their shoes, they’d see the bones of the folks who didn’t quite make it. Mom didn’t think that was nearly as funny as I did, but I still say it would’ve added some character.

We walked all the way across to the other ridge, took our time turning around, and crossed back over. Bucket list item: checked off.

Getting back down, however, was another matter entirely.

We made our way back down the staircase to the chairlift station. The young fella working the platform saw that Mom moved a little deliberate, and he stepped right up, held the chair steady so she could sit, and eased the bar down. As our chair swung out, we heard him call into his radio: “Slow 21.” Chair 21 was ours. That meant the operator at the bottom would slow the machinery down so Mom wouldn’t have to jump off like a track star. I appreciated that. That was pure mountain hospitality.

Then we swung out over the drop.

Going down was not like going up. Going up, you have the dirt slope right in your face. Going down, there is nothing in front of you but empty mountain air, a steep drop, and the toy roofs of Gatlinburg way down below. You feel every inch of the height.

We were almost to the bottom—just crossing over the creek that runs along the base of the terminal—when suddenly the cable groaned, shuddered, and stopped dead.

There we were, suspended in midair, hanging directly over the creek bed. One minute passed. Then five. Then ten. Not a whisper from the speakers, just the wind blowing through our shirts and the water trickling down below us.

Sitting there, my mind naturally started turning over escape plans. I looked over the edge trying to gauge the distance to the water. I figured the creek was about ankle-deep, which meant if I had to jump, it wasn’t going to break my fall—it was just going to break both my legs and get my socks wet. Not to mention I can’t swim a lick anyway. Just as I was calculating whether we could slide down the support pole, the machinery gave a loud metallic clank, the cable jerked, and we started rolling again. We drifted into the station, the attendant had the belt slowed down just like they promised, and he helped Mom step out neat as you please.

We spent the rest of the afternoon driving the loops through Cades Cove and creeping along the Roaring Fork Motor Nature Trail, watching the sun cut through the hemlocks and listening to the mountain streams rattle over the stones. We found some good, greasy country food before calling it a night.

Losing Dad took a heavy toll, and the house gets awfully quiet after something like that. But sitting out on that Holiday Inn patio with Mom, looking out at the ridges while the fire crackled, I knew we’d done the right thing. It did us both a world of good just to get out, breathe the clean air, and prove we could still cross a bridge when we came to it.