The Adventures of Bubba Jones Time Traveling Through the Great Smoky Mountains

by Jeff Alt

  The Colonel thought Hug-a-Bug was pulling his leg, because no car that he knew of could go faster than his Model T. He looked at Papa Lewis with a smile and said, “Your granddaughter has quite an imagination.”

  “She sure does,” Papa Lewis replied. “We should get back to our hike while we still have plenty of daylight.” We set down our empty glasses and stood to go.

  “Sounds good. Have a great hike,” the Colonel said, with a wave goodbye from the Appalachian Clubhouse porch.

  When we got out of earshot, Papa stopped and said, “I probably should have told you before I took you time-traveling that you need to blend in as much as possible. We don’t want to disrupt the past. That’s why our clothes change to the time period we travel to. It’s best not to mention things from our present.”

  “Got it!” I said.

  “Sorry about that, Papa,” Hug-a-Bug said. “It’s just hard to imagine traveling at such a slow rate of speed.”

  “That’s okay, Hug-a-Bug,” Papa Lewis answered. He continued sharing his vast knowledge: “Colonel Chapman and Mr. and Mrs. Davis were pioneers in advocating for a national park. They went on to convince others to support their cause. Colonel Chapman partnered with Arno Cammerer, associate director of the National Park Service, and persuaded one of the richest men in the world, John D. Rockefeller, to donate five million dollars to help create the park.”

  “That’s a lot of money,” Hug-a-Bug said.

  “It sure is, but it took a lot more than that. North Carolina and Tennessee—the two states in which the park is located—each contributed two million dollars. All in all, it took over twelve million dollars to create this park. In 1924, W.B. Townsend, the owner of the Little River Lumber Company, sold seventy-seven thousand acres of land to the National Park Service. Thousands more people donated cash or sold off their land. Highways as you know them were not yet built in 1923, Hug-a-Bug. But, one of the reasons the Great Smoky Mountains is now the most visited national park is because it’s within a day’s drive of the most densely populated parts of our country.”

  I glanced down at the date on my digital watch to see whether we had returned to the present. Yep, 2014! I looked back towards the cottages and they had lapsed back to their dilapidated state.

  It’s kind of eerie and amazing all at the same time to relive history, I thought, as we continued hiking along the Little River Trail.

  “Papa, how did the loggers get the trees they cut down off the mountain?” I asked.

  “Mostly by train, Bubba Jones. Several of the trails in the park, including the Little River Trail that we’re walking on now, were once lined with railroad tracks,” Papa Lewis replied. He put his hand on his cargo pocket. Hug-a-Bug and I stayed close to Papa, knowing by now that this meant we were going to time-travel again.

  “Let’s go back to 1903 and take a ride,” Papa said.

  The sound of the rushing river was suddenly drowned out by a loud whistle, the chugging of a steam engine, and the metallic clank of a train moving along the tracks.

  The ground beneath our feet was replaced by the floor of The Little River Lumber Company train engine. Our hiking poles vanished and Hug-a-Bug’s and my fingers were now wrapped around shovel handles instead.

  The engineer controlling the throttle levers shouted, “We need more coal.”

  Realizing he was talking to us, we quickly dug our shovels into the pile of coal and pitched it into the fire of the engine as we chugged along the Little River. All the while, Papa Lewis stood out of the way in the corner of the engine room with a smile. The engineer looked over at us and then did a double take, apparently a bit surprised to see three of us on board. Typically, only one person—the fireman—accompanied the engineer to shovel coal. Before the engineer could question our presence, the shovel handles turned back into hiking poles and we were walking once again alongside Papa down the trail.

  “Wow, this is unbelievable! I know this was our third time-travel experience today, but I still can’t believe that we just rode on a train, in the past, over a hundred years ago,” I said.

  Hug-a-Bug was speechless, her mouth open in amazement. She looked at me and then at her hiking poles to be sure this was real.

  “Bubba,” Hug-a-Bug whispered to me. “Did we just ride a train in 1903?” I nodded a yes.

  “Papa Lewis, why did the loggers choose the Smokies to cut trees down?” Hug-a-Bug asked.

  “Before they began cutting in 1902, the forest was much different than it is today. It was untouched forest jam-packed with massive, primeval trees. Let’s travel back in time to 1897, before the lumber mills had set up shop, and take a look,” Papa said.

  Papa Lewis placed his hand on his cargo pocket; once again we all stood together. As we traveled back to 1897, we were suddenly surrounded by humongous trees towering over us—the biggest trees I had ever seen! The trees were so thick and massive, I felt like I had shrunk to the size of an ant! All around us in every direction were trees as wide as five feet. Hug-a-Bug and I tried to wrap our arms around a chestnut tree but it was too large.

  “Look around. You have American chestnut trees, tulip poplar trees, buckeye trees, basswood trees, magnolia trees, white ash trees, pine trees, and more. This is why the lumber mills moved in. These trees were so big, that an entire home could be built from just one of them,” Papa Lewis said.

  “Now, let’s travel a few years forward to 1905, when logging was in full operation along the Little River, and see what this area looks like then,” Papa said, once again clutching his cargo pocket as we stood next to him.

  A few seconds later, we found ourselves still standing in the very spot where the majestic, uncut forest had just been towering over us; only now we were all squinting from the bright sunlight streaming down unimpeded. All the huge trees obliterating the sun just moments before were gone. Nothing but massive tree stumps were left, scarring the ruined earth as far as the eye could see. It was a wasteland. We heard what sounded like sawing in the distance, as well as the echo of an ax chipping away, followed by a sharp crack as a tree tilted slowly before crashing down, shaking the ground where we stood. Piles of logs lay stacked along the railroad tracks and men were hoisting logs up onto railroad cars using a crane-like machine.

  “That machine they’re using to load the logs onto the train? It’s called a skidder,” Papa said softly.

  A feeling of loss came over me as I stared in horror at the mowed-down mountain, which only moments before, had been a thriving forest of magnificent trees. The loggers had completely razed this place.

  “I feel like I’m in the Dr. Seuss Lorax tale,” I said, thinking of one of my favorite cartoons, where a strange creature speaks for the trees because “the trees have no tongues.”

  “Why would you want to cut down all the trees and leave nothing?” Hug-a-Bug asked sadly.

  Papa Lewis responded, “Cutting everything down is known as clear-cutting, and it was the way logging was done at the time. The logging brought jobs and money to the locals. It went on for more than thirty years.”

  “What stopped the logging?” I asked.

  “Tourists, who rode the Little River Lumber trains into the Smokies, and locals, who saw the thick, beautiful forest turn to barren wasteland. They grew concerned that the area might be ruined forever if the loggers kept cutting the trees down. Today, all but five percent of the Smokies is forested and twenty-five percent of that is original old-growth forest. In spite of the heavy logging, the Smokies now has the largest remaining percentage of old-growth forest. One man in particular who became angry about the logging of the park was Horace Kephart. He had moved into the area and lived deep in the mountains on the North Carolina side of the park. When he saw what the loggers had done to the raw beauty, he became an outspoken advocate to create a national park because he knew national park status would not allow logging,” Papa explained.

  “I’m sure glad the logging stopped and this is a national park now,” Hug-a-Bug said.

  P
apa Lewis continued, “To be fair, it wasn’t just the logging that wiped out the giant trees. A fungus made its way over from Asia from imported chestnut trees, and completely devastated the American chestnut trees. It became known as chestnut blight. Not just in the Smokies, but everywhere in the country. That fungus eliminated even more trees than the loggers.”

  “Wow, that’s awful,” I said. Hug-a-Bug stood listening to Papa, hanging onto his every word.

  In a flash, we returned to the present, and were once again walking in shaded forest beneath the tree canopy. After witnessing firsthand how big and thick the original forest was, it was obvious we were hiking through secondary regrowth.

  “Time-traveling to the past is way better than sitting in Mrs. Beasly’s history class!” I said. “Seeing that forest firsthand was so much more powerful than looking at a picture in our history textbook.”

  We continued walking along the Little River for several miles. By lunchtime, we arrived at Backcountry Campsite #24, our home for the night.

  CHAPTER 4

  THE LEGEND UNFOLDS WITH

  SPARKLES IN THE NIGHT

  Hug-a-Bug and I dropped our packs, leaned them against a tree, and sat down on some rocks surrounding a fire pit. It felt good to give our feet a rest. We sat sipping water from our Nalgene bottles and watched Papa Lewis show off his outdoorsman skills. In one fell swoop, he released his pack, swung it to the ground, unfastened two straps opening up the main compartment, and pulled out a rolled-up tent. This had been his lifestyle since he was a teenager. We helped him assemble the simple two-pole tent. Then we put all of our food and other scented items (toothpaste, deodorant, Chapstick, etc) in a bag, clipped that onto a pulley cable, which ran between two trees, and hoisted it twenty feet into the air—far out of reach of a bear’s paws. We gathered some water from the nearby stream and ran it through our pump filter to purify it for drinking. We cooked dinner over a one-burner hiking stove, then gathered up some firewood and placed it next to the fire ring. Our adventure so far was the most amazing event Hug-a- Bug and I had ever experienced, but what happened next was even more unbelievable.

  As the sun set behind a distant mountain, the forest began to darken. Papa Lewis insisted that we hold off on the fire, even after it was completely dark. We found out why a short while later. We began to see lightning bugs flicker all around us. Then, all of the sudden, thousands of fireflies lit up at the very same time. They stayed lit for a few seconds and then all would go completely dark. We’d seen lightning bugs before, but never lighting in synchronicity, like blinking Christmas lights. At first, we thought this had something to do with Papa Lewis and his magical ability, but Papa had never said a word or laid a hand on his pocket. This was completely amazing. How could all these fireflies light up at the very same time?

  “Papa Lewis, is this really happening or are you using your special talents?” I asked.

  “No, Bubba Jones, I don’t have anything to do with what you’re seeing. This is one of the reasons I wanted to bring you and Hug-a-Bug here. It’s also one of the many reasons the Great Smoky Mountains are so special. What you’re seeing is a rare species of firefly, and the scientists think the males use their light to attract females during mating season.”

  We were completely surrounded by the fireflies. They were lighting up and giving us a magical light show in every direction.

  “Wow, this is like a fireworks show without the booms and bangs,” I said, settling on a log with Hug-a-Bug.

  After about an hour of watching the synchronized fireflies, Papa Lewis lit the kindling in our fire pit and got a roaring fire going. We moved closer to the fire and Papa Lewis began to tell us more stories.

  “My grandfather took me and my cousin Will to this very same campsite forty years ago,” Papa said with a smile. He continued, “We’re not going to time-travel tonight, but some characters will appear during my story I’m about to tell you. Don’t be alarmed.”

  Hug-a-Bug and I squeezed together, a bit startled when a gray-haired, bearded man resembling Papa appeared next to us on the log, and two boys appeared, sitting on a log across the fire from us.

  “Papa, this is kind of spooky to have people appear out of nowhere in our campsite in the middle of the woods at night,” Hug-a-Bug said.

  Unfazed by our visitors and Hug-a-Bug’s comment, Papa continued, “I saw the synchronized fireflies forty years ago, on a night just like tonight, sitting right here with my grandpa and my cousin. I thought for sure it was part of my grandfather’s magic. But it wasn’t. The synchronized fireflies are the magic of the natural world. On that same night forty years ago, my grandfather, the older gentleman sitting next to you on the log, passed on his time-travel and real-life-storytelling abilities to me, the dark-haired young man sitting across from you right now. You see, this is a family tradition that goes all the way back to the time of the Lewis and Clark Expedition. Bubba Jones, tonight, if you choose to accept it, you will take over my ability to time-travel and to recreate adventures from the past. Bubba Jones, as the oldest grandchild, you will be the primary keeper of the family time-travel skill until your sister is older. But, you’re a team and need to work together. You’re both still very young and this is a big responsibility. It is a family tradition to hand over these powers to the oldest grandchild who is able to read and write and is ready to explore. Bubba Jones, you are that child. These powers are meant to explore our natural wild lands. My grandfather chose this park because, as you’ve witnessed from the synchronized fireflies, it is a magical park so full of natural wonder.”

  Papa Lewis paused and then continued, “Bubba Jones, Hug-a-Bug, before you accept the family tradition to become time-travelers and keepers of our legendary family secret, there is something you must know. Having the ability to travel back in time and recreate adventures has been a remarkable experience for me. But, you need to be careful, because this ability can actually be stolen from you. If you accept this responsibility, you will have to take precautions. You will have to be on your guard at all times. Your parents and I will help you with this until you’re both grown adults and feel comfortable with your new abilities. I don’t want you to feel pressured to accept this responsibility. If either of you choose not to be part of this, that is okay.”

  An ember in the campfire popped as a log fell down into the burning red coals, breaking our trance as we hung on every word Papa Lewis said. We sat silently staring into the fire. The ghostly figures of Papa’s grandfather, of Papa, and of his cousin remained next to us, staring into the fire as well. Papa stood up abruptly, breaking the spell. His movement seemed to end the real-life storytelling, and the hologram-like figures from the past vanished.

  I looked up from the burning embers, and gave Papa Lewis my answer.

  “I’d be honored to take over, Papa.” A lump formed in my throat, making it hard to swallow. I was nervous, yet thrilled at the prospect of time-travel, and proud that Papa Lewis had chosen Hug-a-Bug and me.

  “Me too! Count me in!” Hug-a-Bug said, smiling.

  “I knew in my heart that you both would accept,” Papa Lewis said, and while his look was serious, he had a smile on his face. He sat back down next to us on the log by the fire.

  “Papa, why do you think someone would try to steal our time-travel skills?” I asked.

  “If someone sees you disappear and reappear, they could follow you and time-jump with you. If this happens, they could cause a disruption to the past, which would completely change events in the future. Our ability to time-travel is very special, and if someone else ever got their hands on it, this could be a real issue. They might abuse that power. That’s why we are so careful to guard our ability and to keep it within the family,” Papa Lewis answered.

  Papa Lewis unbuttoned his cargo pocket. As he pulled back the flap, a cloud of brilliant sparkles burst forth. He reached into the pocket and pulled out the secret contents. Ever since I can remember, Papa had always worn cargo pants with the outline of something in the
pocket clearly visible, but we never knew what it was. Finally, the mysterious contents were revealed to us. Papa was holding a tattered and worn leather-bound book.

  “Just what I had suspected, a book,” I said.

  Papa held the book out for us to see. The pages were yellowed with age, like an old newspaper, and the thick leather cover was covered with nicks and scratches. It was obvious that this book had been around for a long time. Papa Lewis handed me the book and said, “This is a very special journal. It is our family history dating back to the Revolutionary War. There are many family stories in here. It will be up to you and Hug-a-Bug to keep this journal updated for future generations as I have done for the past forty years. In forty years, you will hand it off to the next family member in line. There is also a mystery that I’ve been unable to figure out, and it looks like that mystery will not be solved on my watch,” Papa said.

  “Mystery? What kind of mystery?” I asked.

  Papa took the book back from me, carefully opened it, and turned to a page marked with a red ribbon. A wrinkled and torn scrap of paper was folded and tucked into the spine of the page. Papa pulled the paper out and unfolded it. It was covered with letters in rows and columns, but half of the paper was missing, as if it had been deliberately torn exactly in half.

  “I’ve been trying to figure this out for years. But half of the paper is missing,” Papa explained, handing the torn paper to me.

  “I’ve seen notes like this before. It’s a cipher code,” I said confidently. “Thomas Jefferson used something just like this during the Revolutionary War, and he also used it as a way to secretly communicate with Meriwether Lewis during the Lewis and Clark expedition. We learned about it in school.”

  “What’s a cipher code?” Hug-a-Bug asked.

  “It’s a code made up to send secret messages. Our military and spies use cypher codes all the time to send secret information. Our history teacher taught us about it,” I explained.