Every morning, Kimberly Baxter leaves her home in Pigeon Forge long before most of its residents have hit their first snooze button. She’s on the road toward Cades Cove by 5 a.m., reaching her first stop of the day in the Cable Mill area by 6:30 a.m.

“I feel like I’m doing something that’s important, you know?” she said. “I just feel like I’m helping people.”

Bill Lea says he’s not a morning person. Yet many days, he’s up before the sun, hurrying toward the western portion of Foothills Parkway to catch its first rays as they light up Rich Mountain and swath Townsend in golden beams.

“This is what I love doing: chasing the light,” Lea says, easing his Subaru into park at one of his favorite overlooks. “All the subjects we shoot, everybody shoots — the only thing that makes the subject different is the light that you capture.”

Who’s in charge of the chickens at the Mountain Farm Museum in Great Smoky Mountains National Park? According to the National Park Service, it’s Interpretive Park Ranger Michael Smith. But the chickens themselves recognize the authority of the large, golden rooster that struts among them — the unchallenged leader of the Oconaluftee flock.  

Bill and Alice Hart know each other’s stories by heart, have been known to finish each other’s sentences and share an obvious trait — the calm satisfaction of having led purpose-filled lives. 

The seeds of that satisfaction began the old-fashioned way — through courtship. William “Bill” Hart, of rural Buncombe County, met Alice Huff, of Sylva, 67 years ago at Western Carolina Teachers College.

Crystal Wilkinson has always known she was a writer. But it wasn’t until well into adulthood that she realized she could make a living at it.

“I was always writing,” she said, “and at some point I remember saying to myself, ‘Well, the literal definition of being published is ‘to be made public.’ So what does that mean?’”

With striking white-and-gray plumage, yellow beaks and talons and powerfully compact bodies, peregrine falcons (Falco peregrinus) are beautiful birds in any posture. But they’re downright magical in the air — aerial acrobats capable of reaching 200 mph as they dive down onto their prey. For Johnson City, Tennessee, ornithologist Rick Knight, such sightings are especially rich in meaning. 

Charlotte Rollman swears she used to be shy.

“I did art so that people would like me,” she said, telling the story of how, as a fourth grader, she once drew money and passed it out to her classmates, who then “really liked me.”

But when John Adkins met the woman who would later become his business partner, shyness was nowhere to be found among his first impressions.

With spikes on his shoes, a helmet on his head, a rope on his harness and a chainsaw on his belt, Ken Gragg starts to climb. He moves easily up the red maple tree, pausing as he reaches a Y in the trunk. Balancing on his spikes, he assesses his surroundings, draws his chainsaw and cuts away the smaller half of the Y. It falls to the ground with a crackle and a thump, and Gragg continues climbing. 

From bears and bobcats to eagles and elk, 22,893 species have been documented so far in Great Smoky Mountains National Park — and nearly half of them are insects. Becky Nichols, the park’s long-time entomologist, has dedicated her career to learning about and protecting lifeforms like bees, wasps, moths and butterflies. 

As a child in rural Washington state, Nichols gravitated toward nature and animals of all sorts. She knew from a young age that she wanted a career related to the environment. 

From George Masa’s 1915 arrival in Asheville until his death in 1933, the trailblazing Japanese photographer explored the Smoky Mountains, mapping trails and capturing the region’s grandeur and beauty in photographs that helped make the case for the creation of Great Smoky Mountains National Park. But Masa’s friends — and the researchers who followed — have long wondered: where did Masa’s love of the mountains originate?