by Brent McDaniel, Director of Marketing
Between our 10 million visitors each year, there are plenty of ways to experience the Great Smoky Mountains. Some experience the park by car, some by biking, hiking, or school bus on a field trip. But for the last 14 years, Experience Your Smokies has been going above and beyond to show people all the pieces and players that are critical to making the park a crown jewel of the National Park Service.
But what is Experience Your Smokies?
It’s a special program that gives you the opportunity to go behind the scenes in GSMNP and participate in hands-on, real-life resource management and science projects presented by park rangers and other experts like sampling fish populations, monitoring air quality, and learning what goes into running the busiest visitor center of America’s most-visited national park.
I had heard from some of my coworkers and other EYS alumni that the program was exceptional, so I jumped at the opportunity to join. I applied and was accepted a few weeks later.
The Class of 2015 celebrated our fun new adventure with a kick off party at Tremont, a residential environmental education center just inside the park boundary from Townsend, TN (more on Tremont later). There are 29 participants in this year’s class, EYS’s largest yet. The group covers a pretty wide range of ages and occupations including healthcare professionals, engineers, educators, and retirees. I was pleasantly surprised at the turnout of alumni, about 50 or so people from the previous 14 years of classes. Superintendent Cassius Cash was on hand as well as Elizabeth Dupree, Chief of Resource Education for the Park, Ranger Mike Maslona, and Steve Johnson, Chair of Experience Your Smokies Tennessee, who told us what to expect over the course of the program.
Superintendent Cash challenged each of us to take advantage of this opportunity. We will see get to a side of the park that few others have the chance to experience and I expect we walk away with a new found respect and appreciation for this amazing public space and its stewards. But just having this knowledge isn’t enough, we must all do something with it — share this with others, Superintendent Cash implored.
So I plan to do just that!
After each of my six programs over the next five months, I’ll plan to write a blog post here and share everything my classmates and I have learned. Here’s a quick list of the upcoming sessions to look forward to:
- Historic Preservation at Elkmont
- Sampling fish populations in Abrams Creek
- Native seed collection and wildlife management
- Air quality monitoring and exotic species
- A look at Sugarlands Visitor Center and Twin Creeks Science Center
- Great Smoky Mountains Institute at Tremont
Check back here or subscribe to our blog on the right hand side of the main blog page and we can Experience the Smokies together!