There are people in Arizona who have never seen the Grand Canyon. There are people in Memphis who have yet to dip their toes in the Mississippi River. There are people in Western North Carolina who don’t take advantage of the national parks, the Appalachian Trail and the Blue Ridge Parkway.

Why is it that we don’t bother to see what’s right under our nose?

I’ve lived in Haywood County for more than five years now, and I’ll admit I don’t appreciate the natural wonders that draw so many people here. Sure, I’ve been on the parkway. I’ve hiked trails on the AT. I’ve gone kayaking down the Tuckasegee, whitewater rafting on the Nantahala and tubing at Deep Creek.

But I’ve felt like an idiot for not being able to identify native trees, birds and flowers of the area. I was illiterate and felt too embarrassed to ask for help.

Until recently.

Enchanted with the poetry of the region, I found that the best writers of the South - and Southern Appalachia for that matter - were versed in the language of nature. The trees and the flowers and the wildlife that are so rich and diverse here.

So I bought a few books to educate myself on what’s what.

But I soon realized those books wouldn’t do me a bit of good until I got out into the woods and saw things firsthand.

Lucky for me I have a wonderful friend who happens to be an expert in the field of dendrology, or tree identification. His name: John Palmer. A kind-hearted man for the dendrologically challenged, John’s an encyclopedia of knowledge when it comes to identifying the flora of this region. Growing up, he and his family would hike parts of the Appalachian Trail long before it became the trendy trek it is today. Now as a dendrology instructor and campus arboretum director of Haywood Community College, he leads hiking classes on Saturday expeditions through various wilderness trails.

Two weeks ago, a few dozen students and friends met for a five-and-a-half mile day hike along the Appalachian Trail from Lemon Gap to Match Patch Bald.

John chose this particular hike on this particular day because it’s one of the best times of the year to see more woodland wildflowers than just about any place in the United States.

Riding up to Lemon Gap, we could already spot trillions of trillium, the white flower with three pointy petals that blooms around April and May. So I had my first sightings. Others called out names of other flowers we’d see later on - wild geranium, violets, and may-apple.

I was like a kid, craning my neck to see a new flower and then flipping through my wildflower handbook to learn more.

After an hour’s drive from highway to gravel road, we unloaded - some with fanny packs, other with walking sticks, most with a trusty backpacks - and gathered around John for some general information about safety and how we’d rendezvous later at Max Patch.

And then we were off.

It wasn’t long before I was asking fellow hikers, “What’s that? What’s that? And this one? What’s this?”

Painted trillium. Yellow ragwort. Indian cucumber. False Solomon’s seal. Pink lady’s slipper.

And that was just the first half hour.

We stopped at a trail shelter and came upon a pair of thru-hikers, hikers who had started traveling up the Appalachian Trail from Springer Mountain, Ga., with the attempt to cover as much of the 2,500-plus mile trail as possible.

“I’m going to walk ‘til it’s not going to be fun any more,” said one of the ladies, who identified herself by her trail name, “Hawaii,” as is the custom on the A.T. “Hawaii” was from Hawaii and her friend, “Survivor,” was from Indiana.

So far, the two had braved snowstorms and plenty of rugged terrain, but Hawaii had her biggest thrill when she awoke one day to find a bear sniffing inside her tent. She froze and held her breath until it had sniffed around enough and wandered off.

“It was exciting!” she said. “I could smell his breath.”

Like many of the thru-hikers, Hawaii was writing in a journal that’s kept at the trail shelters. She and Hawaii were stopping for lunch when we met them. Their husbands send in food along the way.

Our day hike group passed a few dozen more thru-hikers along the way to Max Patch. After awhile, it was easy to identify them by their heavy backpacks and two hiking sticks which they used like cross-country ski poles.

As the hike progressed, I continued with dogged curiosity. “What’s that? And that? And this one?”
And my fellow hikers happily obliged to help.

We came across Jack-in-the-pulpit, wake robin, showy orchis, painted trillium, squawroot, purple phacelia, toothwort, squirrel corn.

It was like I was seeing with new eyes. I suddenly began to know what was in the woods. All these years I had looked through the woods, but I had not seen. And now I was seeing. Seeing how nature had arranged herself, how this grew here and that grew there.

Referencing these flowers with my handbook, I learned that Native Americans ate the roots of trillium to ward off the effects of snakebite and that may-apple was used to treat liver troubles and warts and is now being used to treat lung and breast cancer. The rare and delicate pink lady’s slipper, a member of the orchid family, grows out of dead leaves and should not be uprooted and taken out of its natural setting since it is virtually impossible to transplant.

By mid-day, the hiking group had separated, having different speeds of walking. I was fortunate to be with a handful of hikers who kept a comfortable pace and were willing to stop to investigate a flower.

Pretty soon, I could identify more than a dozen wildflowers without checking my book. Trillium being the easiest, since it flourished everywhere. Sometimes it was painted trillium. Sometimes it was white trillium. Sometimes it was wake robin, named because its red color was supposed to wake the robins.
So many wildflowers and so many more to learn. Others along the trail included speckled wood lily, blue cohosh (not yet in bloom), spring-beauty, brook lettuce, wild strawberry, wood anemone, and on and on.

I imagined the names of make-believe flowers - bridgeweed, stumpwort, firebell, cove lily, kettleburr, sinfeather, hoof holly and jumping Jenny. I could hear the words of Gerard Manley Hopkins: “Long live the weeds and the wilderness wild.”

I hiked in a daze, feeling the ache in my legs as we climbed in elevation but knowing the journey was more fulfilling than the destination.

Another hiking group passed us going back to Lemon Gap, and there was talk that a rare four-petaled trillium had been spotted up ahead. But we had no luck finding it. Crossing rock-laden creeks that became roaring rapids further down below us, we followed the sinuous, steep trail onward.

Not to be overlooked were the trees - hemlock, maple, beech, poplar, silverbell and, of course, rhododendron, and lots of it. Before we got to Max Patch, we passed through a canopied trail thick with rhododendron. A magical experience, as if out of a Tolkien novel, a place like Rivendell where no evil could enter.

And nearing Max Patch Bald, we passed beds of beautiful yellow trout-lily, thin petals curving up and in like strips of ribbon not quite making a globe shape.

A welcome wind greeted us as we came out to the grassy bald and couldn’t help but think of Julie Andrews twirling around a field in the “Sound of Music.”

The bald is a favorite resting spot for day and thru hikers alike. At the top, you have a 360-degree view of mountain ranges including the Balsams, the Great Smoky Mountains and the Black Mountains. On a good day, you can see chain upon chain of undulating earth.

On this particular Saturday, the visibility was a little below average but still offered awesome views. If we weren’t already out of breath from the hike, the view surely took it away.

Eating an apple as I looked back on the trail we’d hiked, I could see the serviceberry blooming. Back in the days of circuit riding preachers, this tree would bloom about the time the preachers would conduct the year’s first service — or “sarvis” as they say in the the old English tongue.

Dizzy with the dozens of names of wildflowers in my head, I closed my eyes and sighed. With a full day’s hike, I was no longer colorblind to spring’s wondrous spectrum.

(Michael Beadle is a teacher and writer who lives in Waynesville.)

 

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