Check out this great article that Dolly Parton wrote for Guideposts Magazine about her love for the Smokies!
"Did you hear? I got a new job this year, one I'm thrilled to pieces about. It's the 75th anniversary of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, and they've made me their ambassador.
Don't look so surprised! I know I don't seem like much of a nature girl and, okay, I probably won't be going hiking in my heels anytime soon. But the Smokies...they touch my soul. Let me tell you why.
All that I am comes from those mountains where I was born and raised.If I close my eyes, I can see the mist on the peaks, the bluebirds on the fencepost, the meadows filled with purple ironweed and wild daisies.
I remember chasing butterflies and hummingbirds and tying June bugs to a string to make what we called 'lectric kites (don't worry, we released them). I loved running barefoot in the hills, my feet tender in the spring then brown and tough by summer's end. Just hearing the word "barefoot" still conjures up a sense of wonder and freedom for me because that's what I had growing up. Not that life in the Smokies was easy by today's standards. I was the fourth of 12 children of a sharecropper and his wife."
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