Life Unfurling

When hiking on these early spring days, I spend a lot of time looking downward, which isn’t always a good idea when a fellow hiker warns you that there’s a moose on the trail up ahead. But that’s where life is now, as plants slowly emerge from the ground.

On a hike on the Fern Lake trail in Rocky Mountain National Park last week plants that disappeared last fall are poking up from the dirt: plants that haven’t yet revealed their identity, although I recognize the leaves of the heart-shaped arnica. Perhaps if I were a better botanist, I could identify them from their stalks or leaves, but mostly I recognize these plants by their flowers, and it will be another month probably before most produce their blooms.

So now I can only appreciate their budding beauty and the promise of summer when the plants explode and crowd each other out as they reach for the sun. Now they are just hints of the future. Maybe that’s why spring is so precious, because it carries promises of a fuller, more extravagant and richer world, something to anticipate and believe in.

The soil on this trail is still black from the huge wildfires that swept through these mountains almost three years ago, so the flower buds of the grape holly (above), an early spring plant that hugs the ground, pop out in their brilliant yellow as if framed in black.  

 

 

On these walks, growth is also happening next to the trail. In the willow bushes the yellow and red branches are putting out small buds that in some places have already started to flower—fuzzy blossoms that I want to stroke. Above me are the aspen branches that have put out their own dangling earrings of flowers.

By the time I get to the moose, it’s off in the willows by the creek, chewing up the yellow blossoms. Though I hate to see the flowers disappearing down the long gullet of the moose, I’m almost certain that this huge animal is thoroughly enjoying these delectable tidbits after a winter spent eating the only available food source: aspen and willow bark. We all appreciate life from a slightly different perspective.

Comments

[SusanR]

The greenest green I've ever seen was the new growth popping up through the ashes of the Wild Basin fire some years ago. (I just looked it up. That was the Ouzel fire in 1978.)

[shoney]

Thank you for taking us along on your splendid hike. Love the photos especially the pussy willows.