The Joyce Kilmer Forest is located near Robbinsville, NC. An excellent growth forest consisting of the states oldest and largest trees. Many of them are Poplar.

Hiking:

• We've misplaced our paperwork regarding the length of these trails, however, the park provides a short and modest, leisurely trail through the forest as well as a two mile loop trail. An excellent diversion from the Cherohala Skyway!

Getting There:

• Follow signs from Robbinsville or the beginning of the Cherohala Skyway.

Comments:

This simple biography of Joyce Kilmer is engraved on a
bronze plaque in the heart of the Joyce Kilmer Memorial Forest.

Joyce Kilmer was educated at Rutgers College and Columbia University, where he graduated in 1908. He taught high school for a year, and then launched out on his writing career. He took up editorial and journalistic work in New York City, rising rapidly to prominence as an accomplished journalist. From 1913 to 1918, he served on the staff of the New York Times and contributed  mean- while to many magazines.  (sorry y'all; we've had a typo here for at least a year.  However, Bob the proofreader will no longer be with us.  Who needs Bob's job?  e-mail us your resume)

It is as a poet, however, that Joyce Kilmer is chiefly remembered. His love of the common and beautiful things, especially in Nature, found a simple and delicate expression in verse.

Through most of Kilmer's poems and articles runs a strong religious thread. There is a deep, underlying sense of humility, and a worship of things simple and clean and eternal. He sensed the dignity and the God-given unity of all living things, whether man or tree.