‘Wildflowering’ with long-time enthusiast Tom Harrington

It’s wildflower season in the Great Smoky Mountains, and beneath the long morning shadows at Chestnut Tops Trail near Townsend, Tennessee, Tom Harrington is in his element. We’ve barely reached the trailhead sign before Harrington, a hiking and “wildflowering” aficionado and park volunteer of 25 years, pauses to point out the colonies of purple flowers painting the path—purple phacelia (Phacelia bipinnatifida), a native wildflower whose nectar is said to make some of the best honey around.

We stop, admire, take photos . . . and just a few steps later, stop again. This time, it’s to inspect a delicate white spray of foamflower (Tiarella cordifolia), which is nestled near a cluster of arcing green stems hung with white blooms—Solomon’s seal (Polygonatum biflorum), whose flowers grow in evenly spaced pairs below the stem, and false Solomon’s seal (Maianthemum racemosum), whose bloom erupts in a cluster at the end. Nearby grows a collection of yellow trillium (Trillium luteum), curved petals rising like pieces of modern art. When the sun hits them, Harrington says, they’ll emit a lemony scent.

“I had a friend who used to hike with me, and he’d get very upset because I’d stop and smell the fragrance and make photos,” Harrington said. “He had a schedule. I said, ‘You don’t want to hike with me when the wildflowers are out.’”

In the Smokies, wildflowers are out for most of the year. Harrington, 85, has found blooms as early as mid-February and, in mild years, as late as Thanksgiving. He records these observations in a wildflower journal he’s kept since 1986.

A couple years after he became a Volunteer-in-Park at Great Smoky Mountains National Park in 2000, Harrington’s supervisor asked if he’d be willing to share his observations with others. Ever since, Harrington has been sending his wildflower reports to Smokies staff as well as to about 70 other wildflower enthusiasts who sign up to receive them. He hits the trail at least once a week to record what he sees, doubling that frequency during the height of wildflower season in April and May.

A US Army veteran and retired insurance agent, Harrington is no professional botanist, nor is he a lifelong hiker. Growing up in Knoxville, he always loved the mountains. But it wasn’t until April 1982, when Harrington was 42 years old, that he got hooked on hiking—and on the pastime he refers to as wildflowering.

“Some friends invited me to go hiking with them after church on Sunday, and we did about two and a half miles on the Cooper Road Trail,” he recalled. “And it was just like fireworks went off, sirens rang. I was bitten.”

At the time, Harrington’s hiking experience had been mostly limited to some excursions with the Boy Scouts and a private boys’ camp in Elkmont he’d attended during the summers he was seven, eight, and nine. He remembers hiking all the way up to Mount Le Conte and camping at Alum Cave Bluffs, but “it didn’t make any particular impression.” In the years that followed, picnic areas, not trailheads, were the typical destination when he ventured into the mountains.

“I could kick myself from here to Hollywood for waiting till that old to start hiking,” he said.

But he made up for lost time, frequently ticking off 15 to 18 miles in a single day after that life-changing Sunday on Cooper Road Trail. These days, he typically limits his hikes to “only” five miles or so, though occasionally he’ll double that to ten.

While he walks, he wildflowers, a verb that Harrington defines as “searching for, finding, and enjoying wildflowers.” It’s a journey of constant learning, because more than 1,500 species of blooming plants can be found in the park’s 816 square miles. We saw more than two dozen of the 105 species Harrington claims to be able to identify with confidence, though he’s certainly familiar with a greater number than that. The park contains more than 30 species of violets, for example, which are often notoriously difficult to tell apart. But Harrington doesn’t let difficulties with identification get in the way of appreciating the beauty before him.

“When I think of all the beauty that’s out here for us to enjoy, and I know that the Lord put it here for us to enjoy, you can feel closeness with him,” Harrington said. “When you experience a beautiful sunset or a beautiful rosebud orchid in bloom, or you come up this trail in the height of the fall foliage, it’s just incredible. You just can’t believe what you’re seeing.”

Harrington has devoted his retirement to extending that sense of wonder to as many people as possible. Throughout the year, he spends his Saturdays at Cades Cove, engaging with visitors at the orientation shelter, and from March through November he’s there Tuesdays and Thursdays as well.

“I start out at the orientation shelter, and then I go down to the Primitive Baptist Church and I do history programs at 11, noon, and one,” he said. “And then after that, I either go to the Abrams Falls Trailhead or back to the orientation shelter.”

It’s not unusual for Harrington to meet some of the people he’s helped at Cades Cove while he’s hiking elsewhere in the park. Once, as he descended Alum Cave Trail following a hike to Mount Le Conte, he encountered a Miami couple that had attended one of his programs. Harrington’s goal for that program had been to encourage more visitors to leave their cars and experience the Smokies from the trail.

“They said, ‘We wanted you to know we took your advice,’” Harrington said. “And that really made me thrilled that they would get to have an experience like I have.”

On the trail, Harrington is an unwitting celebrity. We’ve barely started our hike when a pair of female hikers stops to strike up a conversation with Harrington as he bends over the Solomon’s seal.

“Hey, how are you?” he said, greeting the two strangers like old friends. “I hope you’re having a wonderful day.”

He explains how to tell the difference between this plant and its somewhat disparagingly named but objectively beautiful relative in the lily family, false Solomon’s seal. The women look on attentively, keeping Harrington’s slow wildflowering pace for several turns of the trail before hiking on.

“People like that are just a wealth to me,” one of the hikers said as she left.  

Minutes later, another group walks past us. They recognize Harrington, stopping to tell him about a rare plant they’ve spotted growing farther up the trail.

“It’s about another hundred yards,” one of the men says. “I’ll wait there for you.”

Walking with Harrington, it’s hard to tell which hikers are acquaintances and which are strangers, because he greets everyone with sincere conviviality. Several of the hikers, he tells me, are familiar faces on the trail. But Harrington has never before met many of the visitors whom he greets with a sincere wish to enjoy their hike or have a wonderful day. Perhaps the park volunteer uniform he’s wearing—brown pants and khaki shirt bearing an official Volunteer-In-Park patch—is responsible for spurring these warm interactions, Harrington posits. But I wonder if another explanation might also be at play. Harrington’s joy in time spent outdoors and his desire to share it with others are downright magnetic.   

“It’s such a wonderful experience to get out into nature,” he said. “I think we can come more to terms with ourselves and our place in life if we experience it as much as possible.”

View Harrington’s wildflower reports at SmokiesLife.org/wildflower-reports or email t3hiker@bellsouth.net to receive them directly. To get started with wildflower identification, purchase Wildflowers of the Smokies in park stores or at SmokiesLife.org.