(Editor’s note: This is the first part of a two-part Back Then series on Arthur Stupka’s life and work.)

Who was the finest and most influential naturalist yet produced in the Smokies region, in regard to fieldwork, teaching, and writing? I employ the term “naturalist” here to describe non-academic practitioners. If academic biologists were considered, the names of Western Carolina University botanist J. Dan Pittillo and University of Tennessee botanist A.J. Sharp would also have to be thrown into the hopper. But if we apply the non-academic criteria, Arthur Stupka easily emerges as the finest and most influential.

Some readers of this column will recall that Arthur Stupka was the first naturalist in the National Park Service in the eastern United States. That was at Arcadia National Park in Maine, shortly before he became chief naturalist in the newly-founded Great Smoky Mountains National Park in 1935. He held that position for 25 years before becoming the official park biologist for another four years. Upon “retiring,” he continued to conduct natural history “workshops” (his uniquely-styled, leisurely-paced but intensely-informative walks, talks, and tours) until his death in 1999.

It was my pleasure to have first met Arthur in the early 1970s at the Hemlock Inn near Bryson City, where after his “retirement” he spent parts of every year as the guest of innkeepers John and Ella Jo Shell. (The other part of the year was spent in Gatlinburg or Florida). At the inn he was a magnetic draw for those interested in the natural history of the park. His slide programs, nature walks, and motor tours were legendary.

Arthur was a “peculiar” fellow in the best sense of the word “peculiar.”

That is, he could be most affable and confiding if he liked and trusted someone. But he was rather formal and of the old school in most matters — especially those pertaining to natural history — and he didn’t tolerate fools. If for whatever reason he didn’t take to someone, his conversation quickly dried up and before long he would disappear.

I was one of the lucky ones. Arthur and I got along from the moment of our initial introduction by John Shell. We didn’t become close friends, but we always had things to talk about whenever we met. And on several occasions we went for little nature walks in the park area near the Hemlock Inn.

Like all close observers of the natural world, Arthur didn’t hurry. He sort of moseyed along, almost at a snail’s pace. He was interested in just about everything that came into view, from lichens and liverworts to toads and hawks.

Unless asked about them, he never had a lot to say about such entities. Then he became an unforgettable source of information delivered in a crisp, exacting manner. From this listener’s point of view, he tended to talk too little rather than too much.

I knew that I was OK with Arthur the day he led me to the most luxuriant stand of walking fern I’ve ever encountered inside of the park. In a remote, shady ravine leading up from Deep Creek, a colony of dainty, outreaching, lance-shaped blades covered a huge boulder in an intertwined mat of emerald-green fronds.

“Now, isn’t that something?” Arthur exclaimed, his eyes twinkling. “Walking fern is my favorite fern. Promise that you won’t ever bring anyone here that you don’t trust. They might want to come back and steal them.”

Arthur was especially protective of the park’s flora. He once summed up the lure of the park’s annual Spring Wildflower Pilgrimage in these words: “Vegetation is to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park what granite domes are to Yosemite, geysers are to Yellowstone and sculptured pinnacles are to Bryce Canyon National Park.”

On the one hand, Arthur didn’t want native plants extracted from the park; on the other, he didn’t want plants introduced that weren’t a part of the original Smokies flora — not even plants that were showy and famous. He was rightly a purist in that regard. Accordingly, he became infuriated when a botanist at the Highlands Biological Station offered him a stand of oconee bells (Shortia galacifolia) to transplant into the park, where it had never originally been.

One of the last times that I saw Arthur — at a science conference held in the park headquarters building near Gatlinburg — I started quizzing him about the dates of arrival and departure for migrant birds in the park. After all, he was the first authority on the avifauna of the Smokies, having maintained detailed field notes on such matters year after year.

I could tell that he didn’t have his heart in the conversation. After awhile, he looked at me and said, “Since I can’t hear them anymore, I can’t enjoy the birds so much as I once did.”

In this column, I’ve tried to give a sense of Arthur Stupka as a person. Next week, I’ll detail his remarkable career as a nature writer and as the pioneer park naturalist in the eastern United States.

George Ellison is a writer who lives in Bryson City. He wrote the biographical introductions for the reissues of two Appalachian classics: Horace Kephart’s Our Southern Highlanders and James Mooney’s History, Myths, and Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees. Readers can contact him at P.O. Box 1262, Bryson City, N.C. 28713, or at ellisongeorge@cs.com.