BUT IT’S JUST A FEW FLOWERS…
I saw several different groups picking wildflowers on my patrol at Max Patch last weekend. Handfuls of them. Some with their kids right beside them, little bouquets clutched in little fists, everyone smiling in the sunshine like they were starring in a shampoo commercial.
I get it. I really do. The mountain is absolutely exploding with wildflowers, and the urge to gather them up and take that beauty home is one of the most natural human impulses there is. I did it as a kid, too… you know, every mother’s best gift ever… a little wilted handful of what most gardeners would call “weeds.”
I’m a lifetime Leave No Trace educator, a volunteer Trail Ambassador on the Appalachian Trail, and what some might call an “avid enthusiast” about LNT… particularly, in this case, about Principle #4, Leave What You Find. So, when I see flowers being picked on a fragile, protected landscape, I am absolutely going to say something. It’s kind of my whole deal. It’s on my business card. Well, it’s not literally on my business card, but it should be.
Now, anybody who knows me knows I will stop mid-stride and give anyone an unsolicited, (though hopefully positive and entertaining), LNT chat. But the truth is, it’s never fun correcting other people’s behavior, even when you have the authority and responsibility to do so. Nobody wakes up in the morning hoping to be the fun police on the mountain. (Ok, maybe a little… if you witness a positive learning moment… but mostly no.)
There is always a kind way to have these conversations, and fortunately the folks I ran into this past weekend were incredibly gracious about it. We talked, they understood, and everyone walked away smiling, flowerless but informed. As far as trail encounters go, these were genuinely lovely exchanges. Nobody cried. Nobody called the cops on me or threw anything. I count that as a big win.
But what stuck with me long after I walked on was that there were children present. And while watching your mom get gently corrected by a slightly obsessive stranger in a Trail Ambassador uniform may not be the most thrilling childhood memory, it might just stick. Kids are sponges. They absorb what they see far more than what they’re told. Little eyes are always watching, and they are far better at catching hypocrisy than most adults give them credit for.
So why does picking “just a few flowers” actually matter?
Max Patch and places like it see tens of thousands of visitors every year. If every single person picked “just a few,” there wouldn’t be any left by the second week of June. What looks like an endless sea of wildflowers is actually a carefully balanced ecosystem that took years to establish, and it is far more delicate than it looks from a picnic blanket. Some of those species are slow growers. Some are food sources for pollinators that depend on them completely. Some simply will not come back at all if they’re pulled from the root, which is exactly what happens when a small, well-meaning hand reaches down to grab them by the stem.
The flowers are not souvenirs. They are alive, doing important ecological work, and they belong exactly where they are, doing their small, unglamorous, essential job of holding the whole mountain ecosystem together.
Leave No Trace is not a set of restrictive rules designed by a committee of humorless bureaucrats intent on taking the fun out of being outside. It’s simply the right thing to do, whether anyone is standing there reminding you or not. The mountain doesn’t ask for much. It just asks us to leave it exactly as we found it.
But, in the end, it’s not what we say. It’s what we do. So, do your best and do the right thing, no matter who’s watching. And those little eyes on the trail? They’re going to remember what you did, long after the flowers have faded and the tantrum about not getting to pick them has been thoroughly forgotten.
Leave them for the bees. Leave them for the next person walking by. Leave them because they are infinitely more beautiful swaying on that mountainside than they could ever be wilting in a mason jar on your kitchen table.
Leave what you find. Take the photo. Take the memory. Just please leave the flowers.
