On a recent summer morning a group of middle schoolers joined Cassius Cash, superintendent of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, for a short hike along the Porters Creek Trail in the park's Greenbrier district about six miles east of Gatlinburg.
It was a gentle trail - at least by Smoky Mountains standards - that allowed plenty of opportunity to savor the surroundings. The clear, rushing waters of Porter Creek were close by, and beside the trail there was ample evidence of the families who farmed this narrow valley until the mid-1930s, when the federal government purchased their land for the new park.
The outing was part of the Junior Naturalists program hosted by the Smoky Mountain Field School. Among the participants was Katie Gibbons, an eighth-grader from Knoxville who was visiting the Smokies for the first time.
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