cnd, the job I had in the Smoky Mountains was an afterthought; I'd turned down an offer, then the one I intended to go to fell through, so I called them back and told them I was available. They had a job for a guy who was barely ambulatory, all visitor center stuff, that needed filling when his doctor told him that was even too much. I was given a couple of popular trail tours to do each week, but no exploring. I was given a book some years later by someone from that area, and it describes one of the oldest cabins in the mountains, built of yellow poplar (tulip tree) that was missed when the NPS folks went in and foolishly removed all of the human habitations in park lands in Tennessee and North Carolina. This might be on the Blue Ridge Parkway. If I find the book I'll PM a few details.

I'm sharing the above somewhat off topic because I actually had an article to come back and share this morning. Let's see if it goes through as a gift.

Dad treks 27 miles on Helene-flooded roads to get to daughter’s wedding
‘I just kept putting one foot in front of the other,’ said David Jones, who trekked more than five hours to walk his daughter down the aisle.

“By the grace of God and a lot of work, I was able to get my right leg out of the mud but it sucked my shoe off and I knew I wasn’t going to make it without shoes,” Jones said.

When both legs were freed, he managed to dig his shoe out and proceeded to crawl on his hands and knees over the debris until he made it to solid ground. He then continued with his trek.

Since there was no cell service, Jones — who moved about a month ago from Johnson City to Boiling Springs — did not have GPS to guide him.

“I was familiar enough with the area, I knew that I needed to stay on that road,” he said.

Gnu would have loved this story. A bonus - the father and daughter are both engineers.