Day 75: Hello, Wildflowers!

(Mile 1034.5 to 1056 = 21.5 miles)

Colombine always catches my
eye; it seems playful.

"Every woman loves getting flowers," Kindergarten Cop said one afternoon during a rest stop.  I disagreed.  I don't really like flowers.  Oh, they are a nice gesture, and many, many women do indeed love receiving flowers; I'm just really not one of them.  I thought for awhile.  "Skulls," I said.  "A skull is a perfect thoughtful gift for me.  Or any other found bone."  "Skulls with flowers in the sockets."  "Sure."

Monkey flowers remind me of my own park, Silver Falls.

I remember the last time I received flowers.  Irises.  I do love irises (as does my oldest sister, Liz, and did my grandmother, Agnes.) I also remembered being shocked upon gazing at those flowers.  They were huge!  And the colors and shape so pronounced!  I knew and loved my little pale purple Oregon Irises. These domesticated ones were like watching the Hollywood version of your favorite book.  You recognize the story, but everything is bigger and flashier, and you're not quite sure if you love it or hate it.  There is just something about a wildflower, a subtle beauty you stumble upon as walking along.  You don't expect it; it just appears and stops you in your tracks.  It is the difference between the naturally beautiful woman you bump into at the post office and the done-up bombshell at the bar.  Both attractive, but in different ways.  I suppose it depends then on what you like.  I guess I am more of a post office gal.

These lupine were nearly as tall
as me! Other lupine were only
an inch tall.

We walked through thousands of wildflowers today.  It was incredible.  And it made what might have been a long day, memorable and meaningful.  There is just something about a wildflower.  It has been the colors that have struck me most during this trip.  I wrote awhile back on one of our last days in the desert that my new favorite color was pink.  Bright pink.  Now, normally, my favorite color is actually gray -- especially that slightly blue, slightly purple shade of gray.  I still love gray.  But that day in the desert was the first time in my adult life that I understood loving pink.  It had been a hot, monotonous, lonely, and miserable couple of days.  Dull terrain, bleached sky, and nothing but browns, grays, and greens.  Then, out of the blue, a late season cactus appeared with huge bright pink blossoms. It stopped me in my tracks and brought a big grin to my face.  That was pink.  That was what pink feels like.  I got it.  And all of the wildflowers' colors have been like that this trip.  I see them, and I get a sense of what those vibrant colors feel like.  We get so used to items "coming in" colors that I think we sometimes forget that all of the shades exist in the natural world.  And the combinations!  I think of the color combination booklets you can get at the paint store ... we have nothing on nature's work.

 

Ah ... mariposa lilies!
In a bed of mint. Yum.

So, today, I thoroughly enjoyed the wildflowers.  I also enjoyed repeating their names.  (The ones I knew ... I am a bit embarrassed at my weakness with botany.  I can get by, but just with armchair knowledge.  I will be working on it post-trip.)  I know there is a vein of naturalists and interpreters who feel that knowing the names of everything is not important.  Why must we name everything?  But I like knowing the names of plants.  For me, it conjures up associations and memories.

Bouquets of wildflowers were around every corner!

There were all shades and sizes of paintbrushes today.  I don't know all of the specific species, but I do know they were all paintbrushes and appreciated their differences.  It reminded me of the story the NPS ranger told when I first learned of paintbrushes, something about painting the color of the sunset.  And sunset shades are the shades of the various paintbrushes; and the flowers look just like brushes dipped in a sunset.  I also saw mariposa lilies.  Every time I hear the word "mariposa," I think of a trip I took to Oregon's future state park, Cottonwood Canyon.  We visited a proposed lookout point, and there I saw and ID'd my first mariposa lily.  It was the loveliest wildflower I'd ever seen.  A pale pink flower with a creamy center, delicately blowing in the wind.  Here, they are cream with a yellow center and dark burgundy markings.  And there are thousands of them.  All conjure up that feeling I had when I saw my first.  Mariposa lily, I repeat to myself.  The names are like the names of friends.  Say your good friend's name, and something, a feeling about them comes to mind.  Same with wildflowers.  Repeat the last name of a family you enjoy, and a feeling about all of them comes to mind.  Same with wildflowers.  If you get to know wildflowers and their names, it is like having friends all over the place.  Which, it turns out, is important for endless reasons on a trip such as this.

Mule's ear?

So, I do not love getting flowers.  But I do love flowers, especially the wild ones stumbled upon while hiking.  A friendly face, waiting to say hello.