A Journey to Remember: For the First Time, Dolly Parton Opens Her Heart About the Most Memorable Trip of Her Life
For someone who has traveled the world, played to countless sold-out arenas, and stood on stages from Nashville to London, you might expect Dolly Parton’s most memorable trip to involve glittering lights and roaring crowds. But when she speaks about it now — in a voice softened by time and memory — it becomes clear that her answer lies far from the spotlight.
“It wasn’t about the place,” she says, smiling the way only Dolly can, equal parts mischief and tenderness. “It was about the people. It was about the feeling.”
The trip she’s talking about didn’t begin with an award show invitation or a tour itinerary. It began with a phone call — one that pulled her away from the relentless pace of her career and back into the arms of home. Back to the Smoky Mountains. Back to the winding roads and front porch steps that built her, long before the rest of the world knew her name.
She had been away for too long. The whirlwind of music and fame had carried her across oceans, but it had also pulled her from the quiet hills that had shaped her songs. So when the chance came to spend a few days back in Sevier County, she took it without hesitation.
The journey there was unassuming — no private jets, no flashing cameras. Just a long drive through familiar landscapes that changed and stayed the same all at once. Every mile felt like peeling back a layer of time. Barns she remembered still stood, weathered but strong. Trees she’d known since childhood now towered over the road. And with every turn, her heart softened.
When she arrived, the air itself felt different — thicker with memory, laced with the scent of pine and the distant smoke of wood-burning stoves. Neighbors came out to greet her, not with starstruck awe, but with the easy familiarity of people who’d once known her simply as “little Dolly.” They didn’t ask about the charts or the tours. They asked about her mama, about old friends, about how she’d been eating on the road.
It was, in every way, a homecoming.
The most vivid part of that trip — the moment she calls unforgettable — came on a quiet afternoon when she wandered into the tiny church she’d attended as a girl. The building was much the same, its wooden pews polished by years of use, its walls lined with sunlight streaming through plain glass windows. She sat in the front pew, closed her eyes, and listened. It wasn’t to a sermon or a choir. It was to the silence — the same silence that had once wrapped around her when she was just a girl dreaming of music.
Then, almost without thinking, she began to hum. Just a few notes at first, then words. A hymn she’d sung here a hundred times before. Her voice was softer now, weathered by years and miles, but it carried the same truth it had when she was young. And in that moment, she felt connected to every version of herself — the little girl in hand-me-down dresses, the young woman chasing dreams, the legend who had carried them to the world.
That trip wasn’t about nostalgia for her. It was about gratitude. Gratitude for the roads she’d traveled, yes, but also for the roots that had kept her grounded through it all. Gratitude for the people who had loved her before the rhinestones, who had known her when her only stage was a front porch and her only audience was family.
When she left, it wasn’t with the sadness of saying goodbye. It was with the certainty that she could return anytime — maybe not in person, but in heart. And in the years since, she’s carried that trip with her the way she carries a song: close, cherished, always ready to play when she needs reminding of who she is.
“It was a journey,” she says now, “but not the kind you take to get away. It was the kind you take to come back.”
And perhaps that’s why, out of all the glamorous destinations and milestone moments in her life, this is the one that lingers. Because it wasn’t about where she went — it was about what she found there: herself.