The Joyce Kilmer Forest.

A wilderness memorial dedicated to the soldier-poet who left us "Trees."

AT TWILIGHT the air was thin and like a knife. The sky overhead had donned a cloak of flat, drab gray, against which the ridges at the head of the valley stood bold and black. Along the stream, in the coves, not a breath of air stirred, but from high on the bleak ridges came the roar of wind against rocks and barren tree branches, like the sound of heavy seas on flat sand beaches.

Hour after hour Warner and I had followed a frozen trail into a wilderness that was ice-bound and stark. Leaves of laurel and rhododendron had curled up from the cold. The earth under our hobnails had a dull metallic ring. Since noon we had seen no road, no house, no sign of a human. In places the trail had been dim and hard to follow. Across the spur of a ridge it had led, then sloped downward again to skirt the edge of the stream, through thickets that were barbed and dense, through open forest where dead leaves crackled underfoot.

For hours we had not spoken, and had seen no sign of life except a flock of chickadees and a few juncoes.

We crossed a tiny stream. Warner stopped and slid out of his pack.

"I think that we are in a mess," he said slowly--and I could detect a note of grimness in his voice.

I was not alarmed. I was too cold and tired to be alarmed, but I remembered that we had left our blankets in the automobile. We had been told that food and lodging were available in the home of Brownlow Blevins, and Warner had brought along only the bare necessities--his camera equipment, flashlight, and two bars of chocolate.

"We're lost," he said. "We are on the wrong trail, or have passed Blevins' place without seeing it."

"Okay," I replied, "so what?"

Warner knocked out the pipe ashes against the heel of his hand. "We go until we find a supply of wood where we can build a big fire and bed down for the night. Our supper will be hot chocolate, made from the candy in my duffel."

He swung the pack to his heavy shoulders, and we moved on into the gloom.

As we walked, my thoughts raced back across the past 24 hours. I had almost forgotten that this was the first day of a new year. The night before, when we had sat and waited for the clock of time to tick one more year, seemed far away. While we watched the old year out, the forest supervisor had told us about the finest stand of hardwood timber in eastern North America. He said that this forest of trees, giants all, was soon to be sold as lumber. He said that feeble attempts had been made to save them, but that the lumber had been contracted and logging crews would soon begin operation on the headwaters of Santeetlah.

At midnight, when the old year, vanished, Warner and I forgot to celebrate. We had a complete file of information--how to locate the timber stand with reference to roads, towns, and streams. We had collected camera equipment, maps, and a compass. Warner believed there was no time like the present, and daylight found us rolling swiftly northward for a glimpse of the magnificent forest.

My thoughts were still tracing the events of this day when Warner came suddenly to a halt. There in the dim light, so close we could almost touch it, stood a rough picket fence. Beyond it and some rows of broken cornstalks appeared the outline of a hewn log cabin with yellow windows. Warner's sigh of relief did not go unnoticed. Zero weather had caught him in the woods before.

"Must be Blevins'," he said.

The gate creaked when I opened it, and we were immediately attacked by a pack of lean, hungry-looking hounds. They seemed to come from all directions at once. I raised my arms to save them from being tom out of their sockets.

"Aw, shaddup!" Warner said. "Save your growls for the revenooers."

The hounds quit barking and crowded around him, wagging their entire extremities. That boy could make friends with a pack of wolves.

Although the commotion created by our approach must have been audible for miles, we could hear no movement inside the house until I rapped on the thick log door. My knock was answered by a scraping of chairs, and the door was opened against the golden interior. A man stood silhouetted against flickering firelight.

"I'm looking for Mr. Blevins," I said.

The bright eyes did not miss a trick of my apparel or equipment. In a flash they examined me from head to foot without seeming to see me at all. "I'm him."

"They told us at the road we could spend the night with you," I said.

"Come in," he replied.

The blazing logs sent a radiant glow all through my body. By their light I could not tell whether Mr. Blevins was young or old. His face was unwrinkled, his expression as placid as an unrippled mountain pool. There was no sign of years upon this man who had lived his life in the wilderness. The foolish troubles of a foolish civilization had passed him by.

I do not know what arrangement Warner had made, but Mrs. Blevins was in the kitchen, humming snatches of an old hymn. Presently the sweet aroma of coffee and the satisfying sizzle of ham came to us through the open door.

That night, while wind howled through the frozen wilderness and sleet rattled against the roof and window panes, we sat in comfort beside the open fire and listened to stories of this big land of Santeetlah and the Snowbird Mountains. Few persons passed by Blevins' door. The "revenooers" raided him for several years, but they were unsuccessful and finally left him alone.

Some years earlier a movie company had come into the Snowbirds and established headquarters at the junction of Big and Little Santeetlah creeks. They built a typical mountain cabin, planted a garden, and employed every mountain man, woman, and child in the cove for the unheard-of sum of $10 a day, and the company had made a picture.

The country was full of turkeys and deer, and occasionally a big cat came out of the Smokies.

The forest of big trees? Oh, yes, Blevins said, those were them biggest trees in the East. They had been just like that as long as Blevins could remember. There was one, if we could find it--just the remains of a stump now. . . . His brother-in-law, he told me, had cut the top off that huge stump, put on a "shake" roof, floored it with rough boards, and brought his bride to live there until they could afford a better house. He never found time, or was too lazy to build another house, and raised his family in that tree. Some of the boys were still living--and doing well.

Colorful, captivating stories, told against the background of golden firelight until the fire died and it was time to say goodnight. We followed Mr. Blevins into a small room. From the low roof hung an assortment of winter supplies--strings of peppers, hams, and skins of raccoon, wildcat, and skunk drying for the market. Our own nest was a bed made from goose feathers Mrs. Blevins had saved over a period of years. The mountain man raised one end of the thick mattress tick and whacked it several times with his hand.

"What's that for?" Warner asked.

"We don't use this bed much," Blevins said, "and sometimes we find snakes hibernating in it."

Warner grinned at me wryly, but we crawled in. Before we closed our eyes, we lay and listened to the patter of sleet and the roar of wind, which by all laws of the righteous should have been beating down upon our half-frozen bodies.

Dawn was bright and cold. It found us on Little Santeetlah above the junction of two streams. The ground was gray with sleet, and now and then we caught the bright eyes of a squirrel watching us from some high limb.

The beauty and size of those trees had not been exaggerated. The forest was virgin in every respect. Great gray trunks came out of the ground and soared to unbelievable heights. Poplar and oak, buckeye and cherry, ash and hemlock--forest monarchs all, lifting their leafless arms toward the sunlight of the heavens, praying for the coming of another spring; thrusting their roots into virgin soil; ageless in their dignity, timeless in their splendor. Warner's eyes were wistful.

"What a pity," he said, "that these giant living creatures must be made into lifeless boards of lumber. What a shame that feeble human beings should be allowed the brain and the power for such destruction. I wish I had the money. . . ."

His voice trailed into silence, for we both knew it was useless. It would not be long--a couple of months perhaps, a few years if the gods were kind--before some other seeker of wilderness would find in this once elysian spot acres and acres of slashings, brush, and stumps.

I find pleasure and satisfaction in thinking that the prayer which originated in Warner's heart was heard that New Year's day. At the 1934 encampment of the Veterans of Foreign Wars, the Bozeman Bulger Post of New York petitioned "That the government of the United States examine its millions of forested acres and set aside a fitting area of trees to stand for all time as a living memorial to a man who, though he lived only 31 years, rendered his country distinguished service through his genius and patriotism."

Out of all the forested areas of the United States, the tract finally selected was the forest Warner and I saw on that bright, frozen New Year's day. There, on the headwaters of Santeetlah, 3,800 acres of virgin forest were set aside as a memorial to Joyce Kilmer--soldier, scholar, poet--who gave his life on July 30, 1918, on the battlefields of France. For his deed, he was awarded the Citation of Valor and the Croix de Guerre.

The Joyce Kilmer Memorial Forest was dedicated on July 30, 1936.

When he died, Joyce Kilmer left behind him a record of courage and literary beauty, including many poems--notably "Trees." Every intelligent American knows at least some of that poem.

The living memorial to Kilmer, tucked away in the heart of North Carolina's Nantahala National Forest, lies under the shadow of the Snowbird Mountains of the Unicoi Range.

Unbroken virgin forest; a land of hushed treed aisles; a dank, lush, green, sun-dappled land; a land of woodland monarchs and tiny flowers, where one feels a close kinship with all living creatures, and a deeper understanding and appreciation of our Creator. A living, magnificent memorial to a great man and a great lover of trees.

Dear Bill:

I do not know how well it is documented, but one of the major accomplishments of American Forests was the hand it had in the establishment of the Joyce Kilmer Memorial Forest in North Carolina. I remember writing a story on this back in the late 1930s, but have no idea how well I covered the role that editors Ovid Butler and Erle Kauffman played in saving this magnificent hardwood stand.

If you are not familiar with this special feather in the organization's cap, I'll try to fill you in as briefly as my garrulous tendencies will allow.

In 1932 or thereabouts, Warner Hall, president of the Georgia Appalachian Trail Club, and I attended the New Year's party of the Great Smoky Mountains Hiking Club. During the evening, one of the club members told us about the most superb stand of hardwoods still in existence in the southern mountains.

"If it was ever harvested," he said, "there is no record of it. By all the rules, that area is virgin timber. You won't believe the size of the trees. But if you want to see it, you had better hurry--the U.S. Forest Service has already contracted to have it cut by one of the big timber companies, and in a few months they will start logging."

He gave us the location, near Robbinsville on Santeetlah Creek. it was only an hour or two out of our way on the route back to Atlanta, so we decided to visit it. I had no idea then what we were getting into.

The very next day after our wild trip in there, described in my story, I made a long-stance phone call to editor Ovid Butler to report what Warner and I had discovered, and to ask what steps we could take to save this magnificent forest.

Over a number of years, Ovid and I had had enough dealings so that he apparently respected my judgment. He did not wait to see my photos or written report, but he and Erle Kauffman began procedures immediately to save those trees. They knew who to contact and how. I'm sure it wasn't easy for them: The big lumbermen were a powerful factor in what was then the American Forestry Association and were often the lads who called the shots.

Back in the early 1930s there were few national, dedicated organizations of citizens such as exist today, and most of those were too small and ineffectual to have much influence.

Both Warner and I made as many contacts as possible to find support, but I always felt that the main burden of promotion and support was carried on by Butler, Kauffman, and AMERICAN FORESTS. My story in American Forests came too late to have any influence.

THE WILDERNESS THAT ALMOST WASN'T

Joyce Kilmer Memorial Forest is a 3,800-acre wilderness where a visitor can simply wander in peace amid one of the few old-growth stands left on the East Coast. Centuries-old sycamore, red oak, yellow poplar, and red maple grace this site, some reaching heights of 100 feet or more and girths of 20 feet. Below these ancient giants lies a tapestry of hemlock, dogwood, rhododenrdron, and azalea. Remnants of the American chestnut, which succumbed to the blight disease brought from Asia in the 1930s, stripe the forest floor.

Over 60 miles of hiking trails cross through and around the wilderness. If you are lucky, you might catch a glimpse of wild turkey, ruffed grouse, or even black bear along the way. You'll have to stifle any ideas of taking any of the gorgeous wildflowers home, because no plants, living or dead, may be cut or removed.

The timeless beauty and pristine condition of the forest belie the fact that it was almost logged--twice. Once owned by the Gennett Lumber Company, this area escaped the company's first attempt to log when a dam operation flooded the only access route to the wilderness. Financial difficulties forced Gennett to give up on a second attempt. In 1935, the U.S. government purchased the area from Gennet, dedicated it to Joyce Kilmer, and preserved it forever in his name.

Joyce Kilmer, killed in action in World War I at age 31, spent most of his life as a journalist and essayist for the New York Times. It is for his poetry, specifically "Trees," that he is best known. "Trees" professed a deep love of nature that won the hearts of people around the world. A bronze plaque was embedded in granite in the forest to commemorate the man and his contributions to society.

The Joyce Kilmer Memorial Forest is only a small part of the 515,000-acre Nantahala National Forest in North Carolina. Sites of linterest include a 411-foot waterfall and another wilderness area, called Citico Creek.

To reach the Joyce Kilmer, use U.S. Highway 19 and then U.S. 129 to Robbinville, west of Asheville. Following 129 one mile north of town, and turn left on NC 1116. Go 3.5 miles to NC 1127, turn right, and go 12 miles to Forest Service Road 416. Turn left, and follow that road one mile to the picnic area. For general information, contact: Cheoah Ranger District, Route 1, Box 16A, Robbinsville, NC 28801; 704/479-6431.