Sights, Smells, and Sounds in Our Spring Forests

In the Southern Appalachians, spring sends our senses into an ethereal otherworld as so many sights, sounds, and smells unique to the season greet us. Here are some of the sensory delights that folks in our region treasure the most.

Virginia’s Sherry Crumley lives on a mountain spread with her husband Jim.

“To me, the smell that most means spring comes from autumn olive,” she says. “When you get near a patch of autumn olive in bloom, it smells like a woman wearing too much perfume—it’s that powerful. But it’s still a really great smell.”

A sound that Crumley really relishes comes from barred owls, which are often defending their nests and territories in March and April. “A barred owl’s song is like ‘who cooks for you, who cooks for you all,’” she says. “Mixed in are all these cackles almost like the owls are laughing, but there are also hoots and gurgles.”

The most beautiful sight, maintains Crumley, is that of a native orchid.

“Yellow lady slippers have these delicate butter-colored pouches with tiny red markings inside the bloom,” she says. “You have to get down on their level to really appreciate their beauty.”

Tamara McNaughton grows certified organic vegetables, herbs, plants, and transplants in the Meadowview, Virginia area at her TNT Farm N Greenhouse.

“Spring brings the sight of dogwoods, serviceberries, redbuds, and forsythia,” she says. “I love the early native, flowering trees. They tell gardeners like myself to prepare for seeding and planting.  The soil is tilled and turns up the smells of earth’s fertility and readiness to grow after winter’s rest. Garden and field rows begin to make themselves seen. Bugs and birds sing together as the winds and rains add their part to the sensory beauty spring gives. Humans and nature work together to produce the bounty of summer’s harvest.” 

Becky and Steve Wolf operate Wolf Farm, also in Meadowview in Washington County.

“Spring is a busy time of year for us on Wolf Farm,” says Becky. “But not to the point we don’t take time to appreciate the beauty that it brings. It’s the smell of the first rain as it soaks into the freshly tilled soil. It’s the taste of honey in the sound of the bee’s buzzing through the warm spring air. It’s seeing the blossoms that fill the apple orchard and enjoying the fragrance that lingers there.

“It’s a favorite time to explore our land and have the excitement of seeing the first morel mushroom to push through the warmed forest floor. It’s hearing the sounds of baby robins chirping from a nest in the old ox yoke that hangs above our front door.”

Alicia Phelps, executive director of the Northeast Tennessee Tourism Association revels in the highlands as well.

“My favorite sight is the trees budding along the ridges at Rocky Fork State Park as the fog left over from winter slowly lifts from the mountaintops a few hours after sunrise. My favorite sounds are creeks full of water from the melting snow and the crackle of the leaves and rocks underneath me as I go on a few of my favorite springtime hikes.”

Phelps describes her most beloved fragrance as petrichor, meaning the earthy, sweet scent created by rainfall after a dry spell. 

“Petrichor is the smell I experience just as a light, spring rain begins to touch the trees and towering rocks in secluded sections of the Cherokee National Forest.”

Ashley Cavender, communications and programs manager for the Town of Unicoi experiences her most enticing spring sight when she is her at “beach” and gazes upward at the Nolichucky River Gorge.

“Once you are in the campground, there is a path at the far end that will take you into the national forest and open up into a beautiful beach area with an outstanding view!” she says. “My favorite spring sounds are the rushing water on the Nolichucky, and the birds chirping in the woods behind me. And my favorite smell is the fresh cut grass around the campground there and new wildflowers coming up along the footpath to the beach.”

Doreyl Ammons Cain, Director of the Appalachian Mural Trail, lives in Tuckasegee across from Bear Lake. She and her husband Jerry dwell in a treehouse in a nature preserve and also have an art studio in a yurt. Part of their mission is to locate existing historical murals and also assist communities to create outdoor Appalachian historical murals.

“Being on the extreme side of visual as a biological artist, to me the world opens up like a lotus blossom in the spring,” says Doreyl. “The fragile and unbelievably attractive blooms of spring wake the whole of creation up and beauty envelops the mountains. The most stunning spring flowers to me are the spring violets and trillium. They are the sure signs that spring has arrived. I love violets in the snow.

“My attempt to capture this lovely rainbow of color with pastels and acrylic mural paint is top priority in the spring. This past spring my brush strokes created a Maggie Valley spring panel in a six-panel ‘Maggie Valley, Seasons of Time’ mural which is housed at Joey’s Pancake House in Maggie Valley. This mural is now placed on the Appalachian Mural Trail where historical and environmental murals displayed tell a most interesting story of western North Carolina and Virginia.”

Doreyl adds that murals uplift communities year round—their beautiful colors proclaim a celebration of the mountain way of life. 

“Communities with murals always feel a pride in their community and begin to get more involved in making their place something to enjoy and take care of,” she says. “Murals are an awesome statement about who we are!”

Jack Sharp of Sky Valley Zip Tours in Blowing Rock, North Carolina, waxes poetic about the Southern Appalachians.

“At Sky Valley we believe that adventure in the Appalachians begins down a dirt road,” Sharp says. “We like to share with our guests the wild ramps that push up in the spring, the many varieties of trillium that stretch out and bob their heads on our slopes, the drumming of the grouse and strutting of the turkeys, the dwarf iris as they fight for sun in on the cool banks of our roads, and so many more. We tell people, ‘put some gravel in your travel’ and find authentic Appalachian adventure.”

Norma Murphy is an artist from Bethel, North Carolina.

“The blooming of the locust trees in May is one of my favorite sights,” she says. “The blooms are a lacey white and really soften the landscape. We have so many of them in the woods here, but they only bloom for about a week so you have to keep an eye out for them.

“The smell of the fiddlehead ferns when they unfurl is overwhelming. It’s almost a sweet smell but it’s herb-like as well. And in the spring, fiddleheads are one of the first things you will see coming up on shaded trails.”

Spring peepers are tree frogs that feature a dark X on their tan or brown backs. These amphibians gather to mater in vernal pools and mud puddles as early as March in our region. Murphy explains why she relishes their music.

“The sound of the peep frogs in the evening is the quintessential sign of spring,” she says.

Sometimes the natural beauty of the season can be found in unforeseen places—perhaps even in the front yard of a highland town. Amanda Livingston is the marketing manager for Abingdon Convention and Visitor Bureau.

“Abingdon is full of beautiful old buildings, but there’s one house in particular that always signals the start of spring for me,” she says. “The yard is a little wild and overgrown, and every spring the entire lawn is filled with thousands of tiny purple crocuses. It always seems like they appear overnight, and for about a week, they make a solid carpet of purple. After a cold, dark winter, that purple lawn always feels a little bit magical.”

J.R. Rison, who works at Mahoney’s Outfitters in Johnson City, Tennessee, lives for those spring mornings when he can hear the sounds of gobblers in the Cherokee National Forest.

“It’s really nice to go deep into the Cherokee’s mountains, see the elevated peaks, then hear a gobble ring out,” he says. “That’s a true sign of spring. There’s just so much land that you can walk in any direction and find solitude and turkeys. What’s also amazing is that I can be in the Cherokee just a few minutes after leaving Mahoney’s.”

Jeff Stanley, one of the owners of Wahoo’s Adventures in Boone, North Carolina, says his favorite spring sights take place on the 9-mile float from Pine Run Road down to Bill Hill Road near his canoe and kayak livery. 

“We’re so high up in the mountains here that much of April is what we call ‘stick season,’ in that the woods are still pretty much barren,” Stanley says. “But then come the first two weeks of May and everything changes. When we take clients on the Pine Run Road float then, they can experience all these different shades of green: electric green, chartreuse green, avocado green, florist green—just every kind of shade you can imagine as you float by different kinds of trees. At that same time, the daisies, morning glories, and goldenrods are bursting out of the ground and they add to the colors.

“Another favorite sound and sight is when the wind picks up a little, and you can see the flash and glimmer of the young leaves, plus hear their rustling mixed in with the sounds of rushing water charging downstream. That sensory experience has got to be one of the most medicinal things possible. It can heal you both physically and mentally.”

Eva Beaule is owner of Adventure Mendota River Outfitter on the North Fork of the Holston in the Old Dominion. Like Stanley, the hue green has much meaning to her come spring.

“Green is how we describe spring,” says Beaule. “Spring reminds us we live in an exotic salad bowl with diverse shades of green sprinkled with red and white from the redbud and dogwood trees. The air nearly hums around Mendota from nature’s photosynthetic energy pushing bulbs and flowers to bloom. As spring matures, our fields grow tall with grass. It’s time to cut hay, and those of us in rural Appalachia get to enjoy the smell of it freshly cut. There is no better smell, and if we could package it, we’d be rich.

“Finally, the North Fork and its tributaries that were dark, cold and deep during the winter months begin to relax, warm up, and invite us back in. That first toe in the water...that first cast...reminds us to lay our cell phones aside, it’s time to stop texting and start living in this place called App-uh-latch-uh!”

Rob Cole, business manager at Bays Mountain Park and Planetarian in Kingsport, Tennessee, offers some very simple, yet delightful sensory experiences of the season.

“I like the smell made by rubbing the leaves of wild mint together while I’m walking the trails at Bays Mountain,” he says. “My favorite sound is the rush of excess water pouring over the Bays Mountain Dam’s spillway following a good spring rain.”

Finally, Wayne Miller, president of the Virginia Creeper Trail Conservancy, gives us this.

“I love spring in Appalachia because it brings back the bluebirds and swallows which entertain me with their competing for the nest boxes in my back yard and along the Virginia Creeper Trail,” he says. “I also love to watch the progression of wild flowers blooming along the Trail, from the early violets and wild geranium to the climax in May with the beautiful white and red trilliums. The smell of the sun warming the Earth is also gratifying, but more difficult to detect as age diminishes my various senses. I love fall, but spring is my favorite season.”

Yes, fall is fine as is summer and winter. But spring is much better; it’s sublimely wondrous. Indeed, legions of lexicons and all their words couldn’t do justice to this most magnificent time of the year.