People of Big Creek - Ranger Heath Soehn

As an introduction of sorts, I'm posting pictures I have taken over the years of people we met in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. These are the "characters" in my book, Big Creek - A Closer Look at a National Park, in order of appearance.

Actually, we met his wife Dana first.  She and their son Garrett had been swimming at the Midnight Hole when a park visitor got hurt. She came down the trail to call for help. I had met her by phone even before we got to Big Creek.  Dana was the park's volunteer coordinator and recommended Big Creek when I called.  Later, she moved to the Public Information Officer position and was named the park's 2014 Employee of the Year.

Heath brought us the car battery jumper/compressor to use with park visitors with car problems.  He and Andy opened the package and studied the instructions intently.

He studied every page of the manual before playing with the machine.

I did convince him to look up and smile for the camera.

We had a cookout at the end of our stay in 2011 so our daughter Jennifer and her husband George could meet Ranger Tim and his wife Kendra.  Ranger Heath came in and crashed the party with his ranger truck lights flashing.  If the picture is not clear enough for you to see, here Heath has two marshmallows on the skewer stuck into his holster with the gun.

Heath and Tim transformed into eight-year-olds toasting marshmallows and eating S'mores.

Always thoughtful, Heath never forgot Andy's monthly birthday cake.  His favorite was Key Lime Cake, but as you can see, he also enjoyed Fudgey Chocolate Cake.

He almost always stopped in to say hello when he was in Big Creek and let us know how much he appreciated us as volunteers.  When I say park rangers are the Park Service version of Boy Scouts, this is what I'm talking about:

The values and virtues we all admire and strive for, are wrapped up in a great big National Park Ranger package.  You are not likely to meet many people who love their job as much as Heath does. Nearing 50 now, he still approaches his job with the enthusiasm of a kid.

One day, on his day off, Heath brought his son Garrett to swim in the Midnight Hole. They posed for a picture before heading up the trail. Note that Heath is wearing a Boy Scout t-shirt.

One day, after responding to a missing hiker incident on Big Creek Trail, Heath leaned against the trailhead sign while chatting with us.

I told him that we call him Rescue Ranger Heath because we heard him on the radio so often participating in rescue missions.  I also told him that my other name for him is Dudley Do-Right. Here is a picture of Dudley in case you missed the Rocky and Bullwinkle show in the 1960s.

So Heath struck his Dudley Do-Right pose for us.

Heath had to go up to one of the backcountry campsites on Mt. Cammerer to close the campsite due to bear activity. I heard him asking some other rangers for a ride back to his truck in Cosby when he was done.  I got on the radio and volunteered to take Heath back, rather than have two rangers waiting around for him to come off the trail.  He accepted that offer and the other two rangers headed back to their area of the park.

Of course, there was a monsoon rain falling that night. I had a pot of coffee ready. Heath arrived about 11:00 p.m. soaking wet. I put a towel on the sofa and there was still a river of water flowing across the floor.  His boots were full. Here he is with Walt, one of the campers he had evicted from the backcountry site. We put him in the group site for the night with the gracious campers already there. It was a rainy, foggy drive back to Cosby where we dropped Heath off at the trailhead. Then, it was 1:00 a.m. before we got back to Big Creek.

Heath lives in Gatlinburg and very close to the Mellow Mushroom pizza restaurant we love. One evening, shortly before we left the park for the year, Andy and I drove to his house for pizza. His son Garrett had made a cherry pie with the cherries from a tree in their yard. Heath's mother lives next door and came over to supervise the crust making. Heath made sure to let us know that he was the one who pitted all the cherries.

 This was the first time we got the opportunity to talk with Dana at length.  She is the go-to person if you want to know something about the park. We had a wonderful evening with the delightful family. Looking at the photo now, I think Garrett got his father's smile and his mother's hair.

I don't remember when this picture was taken, but it is representative.  It's Grandma Dorothy's blueberry cobbler recipe.  Heath told me to thank her for giving me the recipe, which I passed on to him.  When I told him that Grandma Dorothy had been dead for years, he responded with, "Then I'll thank her myself when I get to heaven". He does love her cobbler.

 And, if you can't tell by now, I love Heath. From my sampling of park rangers, it is safe to say that there are probably dozens more rangers in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park who are just as lovable if I met them.  And there are hundreds more in the rest of the park system just as competent, charming, and lovable as he is.  But Heath is the one we know and love the best.

June 28, 2015 - Preparing to Leave Big Creek

I could not figure out what the emergency rescue was that was going on this morning. There was an extraordinary amount of talk on the radio for that hour.

We ate half of the cantaloupe that Boss Larry brought us yesterday. It was cantaloupe perfection. Andy raved about how it tasted like cantaloupe to him. He was thrilled and talked about it the rest of the morning. I guess taste buds do gradually recover from radiation. Thanks again Larry.

The morning campground walk went well. People were looking for sites and the campground was full before we left. I don’t think dispatch heard me when I gave the morning vacancy report.

We did a lot of talking with campers, but I was anxious to get back to the motorhome to prepare for leaving tomorrow. Andy packed up all the exterior things, except the folding chairs. I did laundry all day, including all the park shirts and fleece jackets.

We ate our meal earlier than normal and then I started making a batch of pecan praline cookies. I’ve made this same stupid mistake before, but was in a hurry and did it again. I toasted my pecans in the oven, but did not let them cool before adding them to the cookie dough. The hot pecans melted the butter and made the dough too soft. I suppose I could have put the dough in the fridge to firm up, but was in a big hurry. The cookies were flat and crispy. They were also delicious.

Spence and Linda arrived with a trailer carrying a Gator from Cosby. I hope that means they will take Spence’s Gator back to Cosby with them to get a new muffler. They used it to clean the ashes from the fire rings in the campground. With Spence spending so much time in Cosby this week, the fire rings were quite full. He is supposed to clean them out when the campsites are empty, however, the sites are only empty for a short time before new campers come in. They enjoyed some cookies before they left.

I packed up my camp host office and put everything into the car to take to the ranger station. Then I packed all my nature books (birds, trees, mushrooms, wildflowers) and park books (waterfalls, day hike, trails) back into the cabinet.

Rangers Heath and Will were supposed to come here to pick up money envelopes, but Will got diverted to the ongoing crisis. Heath came alone and told us the rescue on the radio all day was a girl, who is a classmate of his oldest son. Yesterday, she decided to climb up (I think Alum Cave) bluffs and, at some point, could not go up or down. She spent the night stuck up there. They got her off with a helicopter today. We had a nice campfire going even though it took us forever to get it started with the damp wood. Andy made a fire starter with some cotton balls and petroleum jelly wrapped in a paper towel.

We had heard Heath on the radio before he arrived. Some hikers had called the park to report that a horse, without a rider, had followed them off the trail. Dispatch called Heath to respond. Horse and rider were eventually reunited and then Heath called into say he was transporting some hikers to the Big Creek parking lot. We knew we would see him soon.

Andy and Heath went to the campground to get the money envelopes out of the iron ranger while I tended the campfire. Then we had coffee and cookies around the fire.

June 27, 2015 - Busy Day in Big Creek

There was a power failure some time during the night.

I don’t know what it is, but this stuff falls off the trees. Those are tiny white flowers.

There was an enormous cooler sitting on the picnic table bench in Site 1 this morning. They had wrapped tie-down straps around it, I suppose to keep the bears out. I shook the corner of the tent to ask if anyone was home, the way I saw Ranger Tim do it, as politely as possible. No one was home. I wrote up a courtesy notice and then went to get the cart; there was no way the two of us were going to carry that monstrosity.

 The dog was loose in Site 6. Andy spoke to the dog and the woman came around the tarp to grab him by the collar. I told the woman that she needs to keep the dog on a leash. She said she had to let go of him to pack something and I countered that if she had the dog on a leash, she would not have to hold him by the collar. The second woman said they know the rules. I rephrased it and said the rules are that you need to keep your dog on a leash. I must have repeated that two or three more times before I walked on shaking my head.

We finished walking around the campground and I checked my tally. I told Andy we had four vacancies.  That reminded him to turn on the radio to be ready for the morning vacancy report.  (He had it turned off to conserve the battery; the charger was not working well.) The instant he turned it on, dispatch called “Abrams Creek” and then “Big Creek”.  I responded and she announced completion of the morning vacancy report.  We made it in the nick of time.

I think the reason I have not seen any touch-me-nots, or jewelweed this year is that something had been eating the tops of the plants.  Maybe deer.

Even though it was a dark, wet morning, the leaves over the bridge were bright.

I took pictures downstream and up.

Big Creek

Big Creek

 I spotted this orange fungus along the trail to the horse camp.

I went off the trail for a closer look.

Orange Fungus

 I made a blueberry cobbler for Heath today, to make up for the peach cobbler he missed on Monday and Tuesday. Boss Larry arrived while the cobbler was in the oven, but left before I took it out. He was waiting for Heath to arrive so they could take the money out of the iron ranger, but Heath called to say he would be at least an hour and a half. We took a lot of pictures of each other. I took 15 pictures of Spence, Linda, and Larry. I loved them all because they were clowning around and smiling.

Spence, Linda, and Larry

 Spence and Linda came to clean the toilet buildings and waited for cobbler. Spence said he does not like blueberries, but was having seconds just to keep it from Ranger Heath. And, he asked me to make sure I told Heath that.

Clyde and Debbie, the Cosby hosts are going to replace us here for July.  They stopped by to check out Big Creek and we gave them what we considered good advice.  They may take it or leave it.

Ranger Heath did arrive later in the evening. I served him cobbler and gave him the rest to take home.

Ranger Heath Soehn

 We were still talking when he got a call from dispatch about hikers who had not come off the trail when expected. The caller was at the ranger station. Heath left to talk to them.

We saw Heath’s truck in the parking lot with a group of people as we walked to the campground. There was another missing hiker on the Big Creek trail. We went on to the campground.

An empty money envelope was hanging on the Site 7 clip. Andy went to Site 7 to figure out what they were doing. I was doing the evening head count at the registration board. A couple came up looking for a campsite and I directed them to Site 5. When I joined Andy in Site 7, I noticed the woman in Site 6 putting a rope on her dog. The man in Site 7 had a lot of questions. This was the first camping trip for his two boys. We said “good evening” to the folks in Site 6, but they just glared at us as we walked by. Another couple came up looking for a site as we passed Site 10. We decided to put them in Site 6 in the horse campground. They walked with us to the registration board and were filling out a pay envelope. The couple from Site 5 offered to share their site with the latest couple. They declined, thinking the horse camp sounded better. Then a man came up with two small boys looking for a site. We all decided that the man with the two small boys would fit better at the horse camp and the couple would camp with the couple in Site 5. My head was spinning and I hoped no one else came in looking for a place to camp.

Ranger Heath was still in the parking lot when we walked through. All the missing hikers had come off the trail. I said he is a hero and he struck a Dudley Doright pose. Heath says that if he takes long enough getting ready to go rescue someone, they walk off the trail before he starts out. Everyone was getting in their cars when a thin black man with very poor English walked off the trail. He said his friend was hurt up Big Creek trail. He broke his toe and the bone was sticking out. Ranger Heath moved his truck to the trail head and we walked back to Sao. We could hear Heath on the radio with dispatch. At first, the injury was worse than he expected and he wanted to get permission to use Spence’s Gator to bring the man down the trail. Then he decided that the man could walk well enough. He asked dispatch to get the phone number and address for a hospital ready for him to relay to the party when they got off the trail.

On the radio

Several rangers were looking for and finding a white jeep. Dispatch said that the tags were registered to a different kind of car and were listed as “no longer on vehicle”. Andy noted that they must be stolen tags.

There was a lot going on in the park, but I was too busy to listen to the radio most of the day.

June 19, 2015 - Ranger Heath Gives a Lecture

The morning walk to the campground was sunny and wet from last night’s rain. It is a beautiful combination here when all the wet leaves sparkle in the sunshine. The emerald boulders lining the campground road were brilliant again.

 

This is my favorite sunny branch over the campground road, taken as we walked back down toward the picnic area.

 

A small ditch runs through a culvert under the campground road. I have never noticed water in it before, but today it is a regular stream. This is where it comes back out and heads to Big Creek.

 

We walked out onto the bridge to look at the creek. The water level was only up a small amount. A woman was standing on the bridge with her dog. She had her hand held out for the small blue butterflies. I don’t know if any landed on her arm, but several took a liking to Andy’s hat.

 

These butterflies are a beautiful sky blue when they fly. When they land, they close their wings and they are mostly gray. I have yet to get a good picture of one flying. Here is a close-up I cropped out of the other picture so you can see how pretty it is.

There is a whole new patch of the slimy white fungus on the huge log in the group picnic area. I haven’t touched it to really know whether they are slimy. They always look wet and slimy even in dry weather.

 

It rained a good bit of the day so we stayed inside most of the time. I swept and mopped the floor but, this evening, you cannot even tell. I spotted this doe in the woods by the campground road as we walked up it in the afternoon. She stood perfectly still.

When some campers came down the road in their car, she carefully lay down among the boulders to hide. I don’t know why the second picture came out so blue. I took it soon after the first one.

 

We were standing at the campground registration board when a man came up and asked if we were rangers. I said, “No, but we can call if you need one.” He needed one. He lost two teenagers on the Big Creek Trail. Their group of eight was walking up the trail and the four children walked ahead. When the adults got to the Midnight Hole, only two were there. The oldest two had walked ahead of them and passed the Midnight Hole. The parents had waited for a while and then the fathers went looking for them up and down the trail. They had been missing an hour and a half at that point. I called 700 to report. (I never know which of our rangers are on duty, but know whoever is will hear me call dispatch.) Dispatch asked if Ranger Will heard and Ranger Will said for Ranger Heath to respond.

Andy finished talking to the campers who were asking him questions while I walked with the father to the trailhead. I assured him that it is very difficult to get lost in Big Creek; there are steep mountainsides on both sides. We met the mother and the other teens in the parking lot. The mother and I went to the trailhead to wait for Ranger Heath. I also assured her that they probably did not get lost. They would have to walk five miles to get to the first trail intersection and it is only 1-1/2 miles to the Midnight Hole and two miles to Mouse Creek Falls. The mountainsides are too steep to go off trail without some effort. This was our view down Big Creek Road at the trailhead.

 

One of the other teen children came up and told us she had received a text from the missing teens and they were on the way down the trail with the other parents. I called Ranger Heath on the radio and he responded that he was right around the curve. He drove up to the trailhead about thirty seconds later. When the missing teens and a set of parents arrived, Ranger Heath gave them all some education about hiking in the mountains. Have a plan. Stay together, or wait periodically for the slower hikers. Read the trailhead sign. Think. The athletic young man should have known he walked more than a mile and a half. They said they saw the Midnight Hole and Mouse Creek falls, but did not know that they were THE hole or THE falls. They are not marked with signs. Ranger Heath explained that the national park is preserved wilderness, not your state park. If someone gets hurt on the trail and they are unprepared or don’t have a plan, it could take hours or longer before help came. And it would be cold and wet spending the night up there. The parents got just as much of a lecture as the teens.

The group thanked Ranger Heath and went on their way. Heath leaned against the trailhead sign and I took his picture.

 

Then he made a funny smile face so I took another picture.

Heath said he was going to the Pittman Center firehouse for their monthly fund-raising supper. We jumped in the ranger truck with him and he took us on some back roads that we had not seen to get there. This month’s supper was chili, corn bread, salad, red velvet cake, and a drink. It was $7 a person. Judging from all the cake on the table, they were expecting a lot more people than showed up. The supper ended at 1900; we got there a bit after 1830 and only one couple arrived after us. It was good. I would go back every month if we lived here, to support the fire department of course.

 

On the radio

Laurel Falls Rover (a volunteer) reported that a woman slipped and fell at Laurel Falls. She apparently broke her ankle. Two rangers responded. They carried her out with some sort of chair that only required two people to carry. The woman did not request an ambulance; they would drive to the hospital on their own. A bear was hanging around next to the trail about half way up just to make the rescue more interesting.

A woman slipped and fell on the rocks at the edge of the water in the Chimneys picnic area and could not get up. The initial assessment was that she broke her leg. Dispatch called for a rescue squad from Gatlinburg and they took her to the hospital.

Park visitors reported that a motorhome ran into a bridge. Dispatch called a ranger to check it out.

There was a power failure in the Abrams Creek campground. They closed the campground, but I was not sure that meant they kicked the campers out or whether they just closed the toilet building for lack of water or, more precisely, lack of electricity to operate the water pumps. Some telephones lines were down too. The power company had the road torn up to fix the lines in the late afternoon and was estimating several hours to make the repair and reopen the road. It was 2105 when someone reported to 700 that the power was restored and everything was up and running.

June 11, 2015 - Little Racoon

The people in the group camp left out a lot of coolers and bins so we went over to make sure they had not left out any food. There was a huge frying pan on the camp stove that had been used to scramble eggs. They had filled it to the brim with water. A large assortment of spices and cleaning products was on the table. The only cooler we confiscated was the “kids cooler” full of juices and other liquids in plastic containers. We brought it home and kept it inside the motorhome for safekeeping.

There was a tiny camper in Site 1.

The people in Site 3 had left out a pot of dry dog food and two bags of toiletries. We left a courtesy notice and put them in the bear-proof locker.

Ranger Heath brought his son Garrett over to swim in the Midnight Hole. This was the first time we had seen Heath without a ranger uniform. He was wearing a Boy Scout t-shirt so he was still a good guy. I’m not sure of the significance of the Alabama baseball cap though.

 

When the group people returned, Andy went over to give them the bear lecture. One man came and got the frying pan, but did not take the cooler or other foodstuff. Andy went back over to talk to them, but one man said, “Not now; I’m eating my lunch”. He did not agree with Andy that they should put the coolers away when they were not being watched. Andy replied that he would get a ranger to convince him. As soon as Ranger Heath returned from the Midnight Hole, Andy took him to the group site to talk to the people about bears. Later the group campers put up a tarp between us and their picnic table and grill. There are five or six coolers behind it.

 

I asked Heath about the missing woman he found dead in a creek. The 57-year-old had been missing a week. He thought she had been swept away in high water due to the heavy rains. Heath said he stayed with body for four hours until a litter team got there to take her out. She was an author who had written about the park. She was known for hiking off trails and crossing creeks by herself. She called the ones who stay on the official trail wusses. Exasperated Heath exclaimed, “If you’ve hiked all 900 miles of trails in the park, hike them all again in the opposite direction!”

Ranger Heath told us that Ranger Chuck (whom we have not seen this year) is leaving for a job on the Blue Ridge Parkway.

Heath also told us about the 13-year-old boy asleep in a hammock. It was over in the Hazel Creek area near Fontana Lake on the far end of the park from us. A bear bit him on the head and dragged him from the hammock. The boy’s father jumped on bear and beat on him got get him off his son. Heath pointed out that they still had to hike out and ride their boat across the lake to get help. The boy had head and facial wounds, but we don’t know how serious they were. We were out with Kathy and did not hear about it on the radio. It was in the news, but we are disconnected from the rest of the world out here in the woods.

Camper Windy came to the motorhome to tell us a raccoon was being aggressive in the picnic area. I called Dispatch to report it, but have the feeling everyone with a park radio was laughing when they heard me. Bears? That’s a problem. But, a raccoon; that’s a joke. Dispatch subsequently reported the aggressive raccoon to Ranger Will, but we did not see or hear from him.

We walked to the picnic area to check out the raccoon. Windy had told us that several picnickers had told him the raccoon was climbing on them, apparently looking for food. When we got there, the poor little thing was curled up by a tree next to the creek.

 

It was trembling but looked up when I spoke to it. It did not look so aggressive to me.

 

There was a towel on the ground near the tree. When Windy picked it up, the raccoon followed him and his blanket back up to the bridge.

 

We all decided that he must have been a pet, no longer wanted, and dropped off in the park to fend for himself. When we all stood still, the raccoon sniffed legs and shoes.

 

We had no way to catch it and dared not try to pick it up. So, we left the little guy to fend for himself overnight. I took a few pictures of it from the picnic side of the creek.

 

We met Shannon (I’m pretty sure that was her name) and her boyfriend in the parking lot. She is the UT grad student who was here some weeks back with some UT students in the group site. He is a park employee who deals with fish. They said they were looking for a dog sitter. They came to the right place. She told me she knows we dog sit because she reads the log. We took Copper to the motorhome while the couple took a hike to the Midnight Hole. For a while, he sat by the door waiting. Then he watched the people in the group site.

 

Finally, he came to stay close to us. He lifted his head for a picture.

 

He seemed a bit restless, so I decided it must be time for a walk. When I picked up the leash, he came to me to get in on. We were only a few yards away from the RV when we saw Shannon and the tall, good-looking, red-haired boyfriend coming off the trail. Darn, I should pay closer attention to names when I am introduced. I should have taken their picture for the log too.

On the radio

“Seven hundred, Clingman’s Dome. It’s raining up here, so we are going home. Bye”. That must have been a volunteer.

There was a bear at the Cosby Knob shelter and the reporting party could not chase him away.

For the first time, I heard Dispatch tell a ranger calling in a traffic stop, that he was third in line and there might be a delay in getting his information. Another ranger called in a traffic stop and Dispatch said, “You’re number four”.

A thirteen-year-old boy had fallen in a creek and hit his head. Later we heard that he was taken to the hospital.

One ranger called another to be on the lookout for a group of motorcycles. The last one in the group had “dogged” him by going below the speed limit while the rest of the group took off and got far ahead, presumably somewhat above the speed limit. The second ranger said he would take care of them.