WHEN I PULLED UP TO THE TRAILHEAD, I was dubious. On the tailgate of a pickup parked in the middle of the road next to the wilderness gate sat a man decked in camo and blaze orange eating Spam out of the can with a Buck knife. "You goin' hikin'?" he asked, with a friendly, brown-toothed grin. I nodded. "Be careful with them bear hunters up there."

Though I kept a close watch for gun-toting Tennesseans, I didn't see a soul on my eight-mile jaunt. I followed the new Appalachian Trail—this portion was recently rerouted for better views—which lumbers over rocky, airy Firescald Ridge, tracing the Tennessee–North Carolina state line to the Jerry Cabin Shelter. I was only out for a day hike, so on the way back to the car I traveled the old decommissioned section of the AT, a fast dirt track just below the ridge. I cruised through tunnels of rhododendrons, ogled at the blue-hued Smokies from Big Firescald Knob, and savored the blissful isolation. This was the Appalachian Trail at its finest.

Conceived in the 1920s by forester Benton MacKaye as an ambitious scheme to connect the highest peak in the Northeast, New Hampshire's 6,288-foot Mount Washington, with the highest peak in the South, North Carolina's 6,684-foot Mount Mitchell, the AT has since evolved into a 2,175-mile thread of wilderness that crosses 14 states, eight national forests, and six national-park units, including Shenandoah and Great Smoky Mountains. Along the way, a through-hike from Georgia's Springer Mountain to Maine's Mount Katahdin has also become a rite of passage for many an eastern outdoorsman.

Growing up hiking in New England, I was long entranced by the ubiquitous white blazes. But while walking the entire AT appealed in a theoretical sense, I wasn't exactly mixing tubs of gorp: The trip generally takes four to six months, approximately five million footsteps, and more than anyone's fair share of long, lonely days. Instead, I hatched my own plan: I'd experience the Appalachian Trail the easy way. I wouldn't hike it in one continuous slog, and I certainly wouldn't hike every last yard. I'd take a lazier, downright pleasant approach, tracing roads nearest the trail by car, from the backwoods hollers of North Carolina to the historic battlegrounds of West Virginia, then hiking the most scenic sections of trail by day and bedding down in snug lodges by night.

The day before Firescald Ridge, I hiked a plum five-mile section of trail from Lemon Gap to Max Patch, a large, flat, grassy bald with panoramic views of the Smokies that made me want to stretch out and nap. Ascending gently through sparse forest and blackberry brambles, I met an entertaining cross section of the trail's devotees: a family out to take their Christmas photo, a white-bearded through-hiker whose trail name was Wildcat (he handed me his card with his trail-journal Web address), a couple snoozing in the grass, and a 60-year-old hiker whose trail name was Buttons; he'd once been a clown. On other days, as on Firescald, I had sections of the trail all to myself.