After watching
the ice melt at Fort Harry Falls, I walked back to my truck, thinking about my
visit here last summer and how different this valley looks in the winter and
how it might look in the thaw of spring. This small valley should be prime
wildflower habitat, although I could be wrong. In April when the initial
explosion of wildflowers hits the lower and mid elevations of the park, the
distribution of wildflowers seems, to me, to be almost random. For example, you
can drive up the Greenbrier road and see a few violets or foam flowers
scattered along the roadside, then suddenly you’ll encounter a patch of
bloodroot that will take your breath away. Why these bloodroots don’t appear
all along the roadside is a mystery to me. The shade, slope, and soil all look
like prime habitat, yet the bloodroots show up in just that one spot. Or, a
trail that looks to me like ideal wildflower habitat may be remarkably
unremarkable during peak wildflower season, for reasons known only to God and
botanists.
Just as these
thoughts had finished crossing the synapses of my brain, I stuck the end of my
walking stick under a small, rock ledge, and I saw a flash of green. I pushed
the thin layer of snow away and saw the very distinctive, three lobes of a Hepatica
– one of my favorite wildflowers. I have a warm spot in my heart for Hepatica
because my mother used to speak of them as one of her favorite flowers when she
was a young girl growing up in Depression-era, northern Ohio. (That was only a
couple of generations ago, but it seems like dozens because it was a time when
kids actually noticed wildflowers and even knew their names.) She loved them
because they are one of the earliest-blooming wildflowers. They make their
white-pink appearance in early spring, while the weather is mostly cold but
gives an occasional glimpse of the warm weather that is yet to come. In God’s
list of virtues, I’d identify Hepatica with Hope. They are reminders that
resurrections happen and that earth’s annual resurrection is just days away.
The poet Robert
Frost once wrote of a wasted, dying man who had “nothing to look backward to
with pride and nothing to look forward to with hope.” Hepatica is just the
opposite. It’s a promise of hope that the green warmth of spring will soon
arrive, it’s a reminder of the sensuous pleasures of past springs, and it’s a
sign of pride in making it through yet another winter. So because of my mother
and because of the hope of spring, I love Hepatica. It also happens to be one
of the few wildflowers that I can identify just by its leaves. They are so
distinctive that even a guy like me who suffers from wildflower amnesia every
spring – in April I have to start almost from scratch with my wildflower book
in hand – knows a Hepatica when he sees one, even without its bloom.
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| The distinctive leaf of Hepatica |
In a typical
year, I don’t see many Hepaticas in bloom. They aren’t rare, but they bloom in
March or early April, so early that most of us aren’t yet thinking about
wildflowers. The real wildflower show peaks a few weeks later, in mid-April.
That’s when Phyllis and I will spend a few extra days in the Smokies walking
through some of our favorite spots, looking for Trilliums, Trout Lilies, or
Bluets. By then, the Hepaticas are fading, and spring is bustin’ out all over.
When I do see Hepaticas in bloom, it’s usually accidental. That is, we get some
warm days as early March slides into late March, and that gets my blood flowing
again. That seems to be when the Hepaticas’ blood gets flowing, too. We both
make our appearance in the mountain valleys at about the same time. We aren’t
looking for each other, but we find each other nonetheless.
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| Where There's Hepatica, There's Hope |
So now I have
another special, secret spot – a patch of soil under a rock by an unnamed creek
accessible via an unassuming parking lot on the main road through the Smokies.
I’ll be back in a few weeks, when March begins acting less like February and
more like April, looking not only for water falling over a cliff but also for a
small, white-pink sign of hope that earth’s annual resurrection is just around
the corner, and the Hepaticas and I will find each other once again.
