Gone in the Evergreen

"Of all the unexplained disappearances I have read about, I think Trenny Gibson’s may be the fastest vanishing I can recall. In just the time it took for someone to turn their head, Trenny was gone."

- Post by MozartOfCool, Reddit

Before she opened the passenger-side door and headed towards the school building, 16-year-old Trenny Lynn Gibson tugged gently at the bottom of her blue, striped sweater, pulling it snuggly down over the waist of her denim jeans. Her all-blue outfit was completed with a matching blue pair of Adidas sneakers, an apt choice of color palette for the cold, rainy Friday morning in Knoxville, Tennessee. It was October 8, 1976, and for some of the students at Bearden High, this meant today would be a special day filled with travel, fun, and adventure.

A sophomore at Bearden with a budding interest in all things nature: plants, animals, and trees; Trenny had joined a horticulture class to begin exploring the possibility of a future working in landscape architecture with the hopes of attending higher education, possibly the University of Tennessee. Nurturing her love for living things and approaching a time in life for self-discovery and development, Trenny had already taken on a part-time cafeteria job at the mall to save for and invest in the future she was beginning to imagine for herself.

Today’s adventure-filled plans included Trenny, who was meant to join her horticulture classmates and their teacher, Mr. Wayne Dunlap, for a field trip to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, but glancing out the window from inside her mother’s car, she watched the swirl of brewing storm clouds with some apprehension. To her relief, Trenny spotted a classmate walking within earshot of where their car was parked in the student drop-off area. Hastily rolling down the window, she caught his attention just in time to ask if the field trip would be canceled, but despite the darkening skies and bite of chill in the air, he was confident that the class would still be making the 50-mile trip to the ancient mountain range. Satisfied with his response, Trenny chose to leave her textbooks and purse behind in the car, taking only her bagged lunch for the day. She said goodbye to her mother, waving from where she stood on the sidewalk as the car drove off.

Once it was time to depart and everyone had been accounted for, the class of roughly forty students piled onto a school bus bound for an area near Clingmans Dome, the highest point in the Rocky Mountain range at 6,643 feet and home to a well-known, circular observation tower that sits atop the dome’s peak. When Mr. Dunlap joined the students on the bus, it took him several moments and a raised voice to quiet the students’ excited chatter and bubbling laughter. Once the bus was relatively silent, he informed the class that they would be spending the day on a 1.8-mile hike across Forney Ridge Trail, which leads to Andrew’s Bald Mountain just south of Clingmans Dome, and the students should use their hiking time to observe the flora and fauna along the trail.

Sitting near the back of the bus, Trenny had chosen to take the inner, window-side seat while her friend, Robert Simpson, sat next to her on the outside. Robert’s hair was grown out into the classically rebellious, yet fashionable, mid-length style trademarked in the 1970s by musicians like The Beatles. Though he had a bulky frame, it didn’t bother Trenny, who was a mere 5’3 and easily could squeeze into a smaller space on the inside of the bus seat. It wasn’t by chance that Robert and Trenny had come to sit together. In fact, since Robert was a high school senior and close friends with Trenny’s older brother, he had been tasked with looking after Trenny on the field trip as a courtesy to her brother. Once the bus had started rolling away from the school parking lot, Trenny gave Robert a curious look and asked why he was “keeping watch” over her today, but all he knew was that Trenny’s brother had simply been worried about her being away on her own all day for the first time.

Trenny intently watched out the window as the bus neared the area surrounding Clingmans Dome. The scenery during the nearly two-hour drive had pleasantly transformed along the way, from the suburban sprawl of neighborhoods and 19th century brick buildings in Knoxville, to gradually more remote backcountry towns, until finally they reached the winding, forest-lined road leading up to the parking area. By the time the driver had carefully pulled in and parked the bus, all the students were recharged with lively energy and anticipation for the day ahead. Before he let them off the bus, Mr. Dunlap reiterated to the group that they should only observe, but not touch or take, the plant life they find along the hiking trail. With final instructions for everyone to hike only as far as the Andrew’s Bald mountaintop and to regroup at the bus by 3:30 p.m., Mr. Dunlap freed the excited students who hurried off the bus and headed towards the Forney Ridge Trailhead at the far side of the parking lot.

The winter of 1976 was unseasonably cold, with the first snow forecasted to fall in just a couple days despite it still being early October, and when Trenny took her first step off the bus, she was met with a frigid gust of wind. Noticing her discomfort, Robert slipped out of his brown and orange plaid jacket and handed it to her. She gladly accepted the wool jacket and with her bagged lunch in hand, the two set off. At first, the class of forty had moved as one large mass through the parking lot and towards the trailhead, but as they reached the narrow, rocky entrance, the students began to separate into smaller groups, leaving slower hikers towards the back of the pack. Following along, Mr. Dunlap walked among the students to chaperone the 1.8-mile hike, which at the time was designated as moderately difficult.

The Forney Ridge Trail, between Clingmans Dome and Andrew's Bald, is a popular trail in Great Smoky Mountains high country. The trail was in need of significant reconstruction work to create a sustainable path that would provide a safe trail for park visitors. Over time, the trail sustained major trail erosion and the resources surrounding the trail were being impacted as visitors attempted to find a way around puddles and deep trenches.

- The National Park Service

Forney Ridge Trail is a precariously steep, downhill hike beginning at its descent from the Clingmans Dome parking lot. After they broke away from their classmates, Trenny and Robert eventually found a mutual stride along the trail, their shoes slapping the well-worn path as the sharp decline urged their footsteps forward at a swift pace. The deep spruce-fir forest, still wet and moss-covered, surrounded them in an insulated quiet—a labyrinth of green leading them through the Smokies floating whisper of clouds. The two happily bantered, slowing their pace at times to carefully pick their way across loose gravel on the trail’s uneven surface. Though the brisk chill of autumn’s arrival meant the plant life wasn’t blooming in full glory, with her affection for animals and all earth’s life, Trenny had developed a keen eye for spotting hidden beauty, and she often paused to linger and appreciate what gifts nature had to offer.

Roads go ever ever on,

Over rock and under tree,

By caves where never sun has shone,

By streams that never find the sea;

Over snow by winter sown,

And through the merry flowers of June,

Over grass and over stone,

And under mountains in the moon.

Still 'round the corner there may wait

A new road or secret gate;

And though I oft have passed them by,

A day will come at last when I

Shall take the hidden paths that run

West of the Moon, East of the Sun.

- J.R.R. Tolkien

. . . . . .

An expanse of grassy meadows met Trenny and Robert where the trail opened near the outskirts of Andrew’s Bald. A small number of their classmates had already made it to the mountaintop, and they were now enjoying their lunches in small groupings that dotted the grassy area like mushrooms that had freshly sprung after a summer’s rain. Typically, visitors flock to Andrew’s Bald thanks to its vibrant display of flame azaleas flecking the verdant fields in bursts of fiery blooms, but the plant life of summer by now had wilted and disappeared. Still, the view from the national park’s highest bald was well worth the 1.8-mile hike. Offering to share the sandwich she’d brought for lunch with Robert, Trenny beckoned for him to join her, and they both sat for a while, their cheerful voices carrying through the thin mountain air and mingling with the other students’ chatter.

Not too long after they’d started to eat lunch, intermittent raindrops began to fall, warning everyone that a storm was on the way. The group of students, including Trenny and Robert, scattered to find shelter beneath the scrubby trees on the bald, huddling beneath the low-hanging limbs and watching as the storm’s wall of churning clouds easily overtook the peak with bursts of cold wind and steady rainfall.

“Heavy rains are common at Andrew's Bald and make for a creek bed rather than a walking trail. While the trail maintenance by the Friends of the Smokies has improved the situation, you’ll want to steer clear on days following heavy rains or when the forecast is wet.”

– SmokyMountains.com

. . . . . .

Trenny was walking swiftly and alone now. After the storm blew in, she’d decided to part ways with Robert after telling him they had better start the hike back to the bus, but Robert wasn’t quite ready to return yet. Unlike the journey up to the bald, Trenny was not relishing in the surrounding nature as she trekked past sporadic groupings of her classmates who were also making their way down the trail, but at a slower pace. Though she exchanged brief greetings as she overtook them, Trenny did not stay for long. By about 3:00 p.m., Trenny was nearing the end of Forney Ridge Trail with just a half-mile left before she would reach the Clingmans Dome trailhead entrance. Though she had been fixated, it seemed, on making a swift return to the parking lot, a small group of students sitting down to rest saw Trenny walk by them, continuing steadily down the trail and into the distance, before stopping suddenly to observe something off to the right. Trenny crouched down to have a closer look, then stepped off the trail and into the forest’s thick growth of shrubs and evergreen.

This was the last known sighting of Trenny Lynn Gibson. Though one of the girls in the group went to look for Trenny shortly after they saw her step off the trail, calling her name at the point where she disappeared, there was no reply and no sign of her in the forest. She has been missing for 45 years.

Afterword

As this is an unsolved disappearance, the truth about what happened to Trenny Lynn on October 8, 1976, remains a mystery. Based on true events, this is a fictional retelling of that day, and is not intended to endorse or denounce any theory but is most importantly meant to bring awareness through the description of one of the many possible ways Trenny may have vanished that day.

Whether the truth has been withheld maliciously by someone or multiple individuals, or the only witness to the truth was Mother Nature, indifferently keeping Trenny’s whereabouts concealed all this time—we still do not know.

Details of Disappearance

Source: The Charley Project

Trenny accompanied 40 of her classmates from Knoxville, Tennessee on a field trip to Great Smoky Mountains National Park on October 8, 1976. The students were hiking to Andrew's Bald on the trip and separated into small groups when they arrived at the trails.

Trenny apparently hiked with several different sections of her classmates at different paces during the day. She was last seen at approximately 3:00 p.m. near Clingmans Dome, walking on a moderately steep trail with sharp drop-offs and dense undergrowth on both sides.

Extensive searches of the park continued until the end of October 1976, but Trenny has never been located. She was a sophomore at Bearden High School at the time of her disappearance. Her case remains unsolved.

• Missing Since: 10/08/1976
• Missing From: Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Tennessee
• Classification: Lost/Injured Missing
• Sex: Female
• Race: White
• Date of Birth: 08/17/1960 (61)
• Age: 16 years old
• Height and Weight: 5'3, 115 pounds
• Clothing/Jewelry Description: A blue blouse, a blue and white striped sweater, a borrowed brown plaid heavy jacket, blue jeans, blue Adidas shoes and a diamond and star sapphire ring.
• Distinguishing Characteristics: Caucasian female. Brown hair, green eyes.

Additional case details: https://www.canadiangurl77.com/

Hiking Safety Tips

Karen Chávez, The Citizen-Times

• Don't hike alone. You are safest with a group.
• Leave your hiking plans with someone at home and check in frequently. Establish a time you will check in upon completion of your trip, as well as a procedure to follow if you fail to check in.
• Be wary of strangers. Be friendly, but cautious. Don't tell strangers about your plans. Avoid people who act suspiciously, seem hostile, or are intoxicated.
• Bring a map and compass and know how to use them.
• Carry a cell phone.
• Bring extra food and water.
• Bring extra layers of synthetic clothing. Avoid cotton, which doesn’t dry quickly and can lead to hypothermia when it’s wet.

In dedication to Trenny Lynn, gone in the evergreen