Somewhere along this drive you cross an invisible line that a raindrop takes very seriously: the Eastern Continental Divide. It runs right through these mountains, and it's the ridge that decides the entire fate of every drop of water that falls on it.
Here's the magic of it. Rain that falls on one side of that divide gathers into these creeks and the Little Tennessee and the Nantahala, flows west and north into the Tennessee River, then the Ohio, then the mighty Mississippi, and finally pours out into the Gulf of Mexico, two thousand miles away. Rain that falls on the other side runs the opposite way — east and south, down toward the Atlantic. Two raindrops can land a few feet apart on the same mountaintop and end up in different oceans.
You cross that line without any fanfare — maybe a small sign if you're watching. But it's one of the reasons this country matters so much: these old mountains are the source, the place where the great rivers are born, a drop at a time, out of the rain and the rock. You're driving across the roof that parts the waters of a continent. Not bad for a Tuesday.
Photo: John Phelan · CC BY 4.0
