When Laurel Rematore announced she was moving to the Great Smoky Mountains, Denise Matsuoka was shocked. Matsuoka, Rematore’s close friend since high school, remembered how Rematore had described the Smokies when she’d visited a couple of years earlier.

Smokies Life has announced the publication of “George Masa: A Life Reimagined,” the first comprehensively researched biography of the visionary Japanese photographer whose dedication to art and conservation helped spur the national park movement in the Great Smoky Mountains, as well as the creation of the Appalachian Trail. 

Smokies Life, a nonprofit partner of Great Smoky Mountains National Park, is now accepting applications for its fifth Steve Kemp Writer’s Residency. The annual residency is designed to help writers of any medium connect in meaningful ways with the Great Smoky Mountains while focusing on their craft in an inspiring, retreat-like setting. 

Shadows and seasons are the main markers of time in Cataloochee Valley, a remote corner of Great Smoky Mountains National Park located more than 20 miles from the closest town and reachable only by a windy, narrow gravel road. 

Smokies Life, a nonprofit partner to Great Smoky Mountains National Park, announces Jacqueline Harp as its new chief executive officer. After a national search, Harp was selected and approved by the board of directors and will begin as CEO on Sept. 11, 2024.

Laurel Rematore, CEO of Smokies Life, will be recognized with the Excellence in Cooperating Association Partnership Award at the National Park Service’s Excellence in Service Awards to be held Aug. 21 in Washington, D.C.

Summer in Southern Appalachia affords many opportunities to watch and learn more about our diverse species of wildlife. Near the border of Western North Carolina and East Tennessee, I see migrating and breeding birds, wild turkeys rearing poults, white-tailed deer with their fawns and the occasional black bear.

Great Smoky Mountains National Park is home to an estimated 1,900 black bears — about two per square mile — with more than 14,500 of these iconic mammals roaming the four-state mountain region.

Smokies Life, formerly Great Smoky Mountains Association, received national recognition at the 2024 Public Lands Alliance Partnership Awards for its “Junior Ranger Activity Guide,” which won in a category for Outstanding Public Engagement.

One of the four nonprofit partners of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Smokies Life, now has a new home — The Great Smokies Welcome Center — a space to call its own that after recent rounds of renovations feels perfectly tailored to the organization’s mission.