Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
The Smoky Mountain Field School, sponsored by Great Smoky Mountains National
Park and the University of Tennessee, offers more than 75 outdoor classes
throughout the year taught by biologists and naturalists. Steve Tilley of Smith Col-
lege in Massachusetts, for example, comes to the field school every year to teach a
class on finding salamanders. Known as the “Salamander Capital of the World,” the
national park has more than ten species of salamanders. Or take a class on edible
and medicinal plants. Ila Hatter, the interpretative naturalist who teaches the class,
even prepares a meal at the end of the day from plants collected during the for-
ages. A typical menu might include kudzu pasta with poke pesto, Aztec pork stew
with ground cherries, apple-elderberry-blueberry pie, elderflower sorbet, and either
dandelion wine or mint-ginger punch. One-day classes are from $29 to $49, while
two-day courses, bird-watching and fishing trips, and overnight hikes run between
$95 and $155. A five-day, fall backpacking trip that treks through seasonal scenery
on the Appalachian Trail costs $455.
Smoky Mountain Field School, University of
Tennessee Conference Building, 600 Henley Street, Suite 105, Knoxville, TN 35713,
865-974-0150, www.outreach.utk.edu/smoky/.
Arrowmont began life as a Settlement School in 1912. Sponsored by the Pi Beta Phi
fraternity (the first fraternity for women in the United States), the innovative rural school
brought education and health care to the little outpost in the Appalachians where schooling
didn't exist. Teachers at the school couldn't help but notice the amazing artwork of the par-
ents of many of their students and decided selling it might be a way to support the families'
other needs. By 1945, the school, which helped formed the Southern Highland Craft Guild,
a nine-state regional craft education and marketing organization, was offering summer arts-
and-crafts workshops.
One thing led to another until Arrowmont morphed into a virtual hub for contemporary
artists. The school offers artists' residencies (a highly sought-after program that gives five
artists 11 months' time and studio space to develop a body of work), artist assistantships, art
conferences, and even an outside arts education program for public schools. And Pi Beta Phi
is still behind it all.
A weeklong workshop at Arrowmont starts on Sunday evening and continues with
hands-on teaching Monday through Friday. Three meals a day are served, but instructors say
they sometimes practically have to tear their students away from their work to eat. One-week
courses are offered in the spring, summer, and fall (weekend classes also take place when the
leaves turn), and you can also take the more intensive, in-depth two-week versions in sum-
mer. Classes are small (15 students to one teacher).
Arrowmont, although cozy and self-contained, is literally right off the main drag (Tenn.
441) of Gatlinburg, one of the country's busiest and gaudiest tourist traps, and there's time
