A Prairie Home Companion from American Public Media: First Person

The Blue Ridge and The Cherokee
By Alan Platt
Email: plattdujour at gmail dot com
(above email address formatted to reduce spam)
July 31, 2008

In the town of Cherokee, in the Great Smokey Mountains, in North Carolina, in snowy deep midwinter, I was sitting in a diner, surrounded by unsmiling Cherokee.

I was picking at one of the most heart-clogging, pork-themed mega-breakfasts ever seriously offered to people who actually wish to live. Intermittently, I would glance through the window, through heavy, slow-falling snow, towards the Southernmost on-ramp of the legendary Blue Ridge Parkway, at this moment entirely snowbound and entirely deserted. I was also drinking quarts of free-refill coffee and reading a little pamphlet about the Trail of Tears.

Like most white folk who prefer to change the channel, I had never really sat down and digested the tragedy of those Cherokee from right here and from other spots hereabouts, where Carolina meets Georgia and Tennessee, who were forced to march in their thousands all the way from here to Oklahoma for no good reason and who, tough as they were—men, women, kids and grandparents—were basically murdered, slowly, by being made to walk 1,200 miles of hard trail, in weather not much better than this, until 4,000 of them were dead.

There's a museum right here on the Cherokee Reservation, a beauty, that tells you all about the Trail of Tears in compelling fashion. I had just spent a few hours there, waiting on the weather, and had even bought a hand carved stone pipe, a fine bear's head, lovingly rendered. The thing never did draw, though. I wonder where it is now? I don't even remember losing it. Anyway, after the museum, the pamphlet and the breakfast, I had a much better grasp of why the Cherokee were unsmiling, friendly as they were when we got to talking about the chances of my driving "America's Favorite Drive" anytime soon. Pretty slim, they said.

But the sun finally came out and the snow-plough rolled off the ridge around noon just as I rolled onto it, in my big black V8— Cherokee.

Europeans—yes I am one—famously love to bitch about driving in America. It's so dumbed down. No stick, no torque, no traction, soft shocks, straight roads, bad drivers, bad manners, cruise control, 55 mph limit, cops, cops, more cops, blah, blah, more blah.

But there are roads in North America that take your breath away, drives that you talk about misty-eyed, and I've been lucky enough to make a few of them. The Bear Tooth Highway in Montana (twice a day for a week), Pacific Coast Highway around Big Sur, Glacier National Park in the Canadian Rockies, all classics, and there are hundreds more, little known, hilly, winding drives where state troopers will give you a break and you can— express yourself.

But—so they say—nothing compares with the Blue Ridge Parkway, and here I was finally on it, all alone, driving slowly, with extra special 4X4 icy, slippery care up the very first hillside on my way up to a switchback that was about to take me along the rolling crest of an unbroken ridge that goes from here in the Smokeys all the way up to Skyline Drive in Virginia, 470 miles north, a finale that has you looking down at the great Shenandoah Valley, which looked magnificent to me even from an airliner, years ago. I couldn't wait.

One always mutters about tourism being spoiled by other tourists and, wherever possible, one likes to travel in low season. But this was so low it was a joke. I was entirely alone. There was not one other vehicle on "America's Favorite Drive" for over an hour. This was impossible. I was ecstatic. And as the miles began to spool off, with John Lee Hooker on those good Cherokee speakers, I started to get dreamy. Yes, this really might be the most beautiful road in America. And under snow, with the trees on either side white and leafless, all the hewn rocks and boulders visible, I could see around corners and for miles, unobstructed, over white meadows and farms and crags and deep frozen creeks, as if the whole 50-year, billions-of-dollars project had been done for me alone. Well, at that moment, it really had.

There's a 45 mph speed limit on the Blue Ridge, and on some stretches, it's even lower. I had inwardly rolled my eyes at what sounded like a ridiculous restriction. But here I was, all alone on a snow ribbon in the sky, miles from anyone, with 4X4 grip but no snow chains, driving as carefully as I have ever driven, convinced that even in the best conditions, you should be forced to drive this slowly, damn it. That's how pretty this road is. If you miss one view, one turn, one rock, one stream or one moment, you should be arrested for ingratitude.

There are roads that beg you, some that even dare you, to put your foot down, and of course you do. But the Blue Ridge Parkway is not that kind of road at all. It is a road that never stops turning, while always going up or down. It is a feat of intensely detailed artistry. There are so many beautiful stone walls and bridges, so many turn-outs and overlooks, quite apart from the endless natural scenery, that you realize right away that this road was made to be savored. This is wine, not beer. This is to be sipped, not chugged. You find yourself wanting to drive ever more slowly on this road. You want to back up the traffic. You want to just stop and gawk. Men stood with picks and shovels for fifty years right here where you are driving, figuring out how they could make that turn, that one right there, just as pretty as possible, which trees to cut, which to plant, in order to make every moment just so. There was no hurry. This was federal money. This was a WPA project. Roosevelt. Depression. This road was begun in order to make work for guys who wanted to work and who took pride in their work. To race through all this would make you such a Philistine, it doesn't bear even thinking about.

And get this. It's just a little two-lane blacktop. The most famous road in America is only two lanes wide. There's two-way traffic and no divider. It's an old-fashioned road like Grandpa used to drive, like you'll drive in the south of Spain or the west of Ireland, everybody very close to each other, mere feet apart. It's petite. Its turns are very tight. It's wiggly and wriggly, and the scenery is right on top of you. You can reach out and slap five with the branches of trees on either side. It's— OK, I admit it — it's cute!

Now, my automotive ecstasy might have been tempered somewhat if I'd been here on, say, a typical Sunday afternoon in summer when this thing is bumper-to-bumper for 500 large, which I'm afraid it is on every hot weekend. But I don't know, I really don't.

Maybe not. Maybe the intimacy of the thing actually favors slow-rolling logjams of cars, cruising happily like Henry Ford planned it, a car in every garage and everybody out on the road smiling and waving and making him richer by the minute. Yes, I'll go so far as to say that this road probably feels just fine when it's full. It probably turns the surliest mood affable. If there's one road that can make the typical American driver (don't get me going here) a little more awake, and maybe even into the romance of the road, for heaven's sake, well, this is it.

There are nearly 500 miles of it from north to south. If you're within cruising distance, cruise it for a while. You can get on and off all the time. If you're driving across country and a detour is not too onerous, make it. You'll be so glad you did. This road was built with love. The least you can do is take the time to love it back a little.

About the author:
I'm a writer whose appalling work ethic has resulted in a limited output, some of which been published in quite fancy places.