Middle Prong of Little River in the Tremont section of Great Smoky Mountains National Park is one of the most beautiful streams on the planet. It is a boulder-strewn paradise of water, rock, and life that in late-August begins its preparations for the coming of autumn. It is some of the best evidence around for the resilience of Nature in the face of human devastation, for between 1925-1930 Tremont was extensively logged by Col. W.B. Townsend’s Little River Lumber Company , which had a logging community located at the confluence of Thunderhead Prong and Lynn Camp Prong, the very headwaters of Middle Prong. The resilience of Middle Prong is by no means an argument for unbridled development, rather to the contrary, it is a call for restraint and preservation in the face the onslaught that threatens so many of our beautiful public lands.

A focal length of 19mm, very wide-angle to be sure, gave me the angle of view I wanted. My primary concern here was the height of the camera above the beautiful mat of the somewhat rare dwarf bristle fern (Trichomanes petersii). I saw that being lower would impede the view of the water from upstream, so I chose to make the ferm a bit less dramatic as a foreground element by being about 3.5′ above the plants. An aperture of of f/20 provided depth-of-field and at ISO 100 a shutter speed of 13.0 seconds was required for an overall medium exposure.  An ISO of 400 would have reduced the shutter speed to 3.25 seconds, which did not seem to offer much of an advantage under the circumstances.

The wonderful world of Tremont has always offered me a respite beyond imagining. If you have a favorite Tremont story, I’d love to hear it.