Dolly Parton on What Makes the Great Smoky Mountains So Special
In a 2022 interview with National Geographic, the iconic country singer urged her fans to pay more attention to how we're treating the natural world.
Perhaps nobody loved the Great Smoky Mountains of Tennessee quite like country music icon Dolly Parton, who died on August 25 at age 80.
“The Smokies just have a heart of their own. It's just the way the water flows, the way it sounds when it flows, and the way it feels when you get in it,” Parton told National Geographic in a wide-ranging 2022 interview about the Tennessee mountain home where she built an enduring music career and a hospitality empire.
In the interview, Parton shares how she learned to appreciate the natural world and all the creatures in it and reveals her biggest hopes for the future of our planet—and “for all things living and all things good.” That hope, she continued, is for everyone to “pay more attention to how we’re treating our mountains, how we’re treating our world, how we’re just treating everything.”
It was that big heart which made Parton so beloved in her lifetime.
