Great Smoky

Today is a special day for me. My love ‘letter’ to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park is being released. It’s filled with passion, adoration, and love. 

As a child my family would come here on vacations and I never wanted to leave. In fact, I’d get emotionally distraught when it was time to go home. It felt like roots grew from my feet and like the high elevation fir trees, I was anchored here.

I grew up on the Alabama coast and moved to North Carolina when I was in my early 30’s. But that was the Piedmont area. I eventually moved to Asheville, but it still wasn’t the Smokies, even though it’s just an hour or so away from the park. I moved back to the coast for a while but the mountains called me home. 

I spent over a year looking back in Asheville and the surrounding area but found nothing. Then, on a trip back up to Asheville, I got to the intersection coming out of Dillsboro where you go right to Asheville and left towards Cherokee and the national park. I stopped in the ‘V’ and heard very clearly: Where have you always wanted to live? Search there! My answer was near the national park.

So, just before I turned 60, I moved to a beautiful little mountaintop that has a winter view of the ridge that runs through the national park. I didn’t know this when I purchased the home, but after the leaves dropped I got out my big topo maps and was astonished to see I landed in the middle of exactly where I’d wanted to live my entire life. It’s never too late to follow your dreams. 

After living here over six years, I’ve had amazing adventures and experienced unimageable beauty in the park. While composing the music for this album, I closed my eyes and imagined the places for which the songs are named. I hope it in some way honors these places as the gems they are and the beauty, majesty and magic they are.

Thank you mountains, trees, rocks, wildflowers, wildlife and stewards who protect this amazing biosphere.

You can listen to Great Smoky on all streaming platforms and on YouTube. Just search Simone Lipscomb and look for Great Smoky.