A lingering look at life
Violets have always enchanted me – I still am not sure why. They’re lovely, yes. Many flowers are. But something about them has always intrigued me.
I first saw this violet probably eight years ago, if not longer ago, and hadn’t seen it since – This whole spring, I’ve been keeping an eye out for it, and was so happy to stumble across it this morning!
Everything was golden. The honeyed air was rich and fragrant, sweet with pine and warm earth. The afternoon sunlight filtering through the trees had that mystic quality of springtime, painting everything in vivid color, gilding the greens, the reds, the pinks, the browns, glinting from the gravel and garnets along the jeep trail, sparkling in spiders’ webs, shimmering on the wings of the swallowtails and bees and moths busy drinking the flowers of the golden currant.
The busyness and life of these industrious pollinators was mesmerizing – In and out and around and about they went, back and forth through the golden glow of the currant bush. Moths, like tiny hummingbirds, sipped daintily. Bees bumbled from flower to flower. Swallowtails hung like jeweled pendants from the drooping branches. The lazy droning of the bees blended with the chirruping of crickets and the whir and whiz of grasshoppers in their haphazard flight. Birds twiddled their tunes, trying to keep out of sight in the thick trees and undergrowth.
The path was abundantly scattered with wildflowers. Hardy larkspur violets and longspur violets and low larkspur and wild strawberry, and finally the columbine, the belle of the flowering woods. Fleabane, like an innocent child with smiling face, grew saucily in the sunny trail.
Around one of my favorite bends in the trail stands a grove of aspen and birch, tall and pale under the shadow of a steep pine- and moss-covered hillside. As I came down the hill into that hollow, the trees were a brilliant, luminous green, the smooth leaves winking and twinkling a golden green.
It was a golden afternoon.
It took me awhile to correctly identify this particular species of violet, and I identified it incorrectly for awhile as a bog violet. It was this picture, actually, which helped me identify it today. The longspur violet, as its name suggests, has a spurred lower petal, which I didn’t notice in some of the other smaller plants of this species that I had found.
This lovely little thing was sunning itself along the Hole-in-the-Wall trail. I didn’t even see it until I was on my way home. Once again, the variety and intricacies and beauty of the plant world never cease to amaze me. How could I believe that all of this was just some incredible accident? This all had to come from the hand of a loving Creator God.
While the sun was still high above the horizon, I fled to the outdoors, drinking in the evening coolness and the warmth of the slanting light. There was a delightful sense of apprehension or urgency – Light is the life of the wildflower hunt, and every day is a hunt when wildflowers are in bloom. So I chased the light.
From shadowed hollow with golden pools of sunlight, to warm and brilliant hillside, I followed the sun. It streamed through the slender trunks of pine trees, sparkling on threads of spider silk, casting long shadows, illuminating like glass the transparent greens of young grasses, the fiery fuchsia of shootingstar, the milky white of deathcamas, the sapphire of bluebells.
Tucked deep into the taller grasses in a sheltered place, larkspur violets spread themselves out in the evening light, some of them the palest of lavenders, others a deeper purple. Pussytoes grew like groves of tiny trees. Clusters of ballhead gilia caught the light in their tiny white flowers and on their velvety stems.
Catching sight of grazing deer ahead of me and over a little rise, I stopped suddenly and sat down quietly. Hastily and silently I changed my lens, and slipped the camera bag to the ground. I crawled closer, hoping to sneak up on them, but I got over-eager and they hightailed it into a ravine, their white tails waving like flags. Every time I see a herd of whitetails, their white tails bouncing and waving, I can’t help but think of the sense of humor of our Creator!
The sun disappeared behind the hills, and a dusky cool settled into the trees and over the hills. Grandma’s house was just over the next hill. When I walked home from visiting with her, it was dark, with the faintest turquoise still tinting the horizon. Lonely birds called and echoed. The stars were dim in the light from a brilliant moon. I opened my arms to the moonlight, as it trickled through the trees and silvered the whole landscape like a heavy frost. Perhaps it would freeze, but the warmth of the day still lingered in the air.
Evening disappeared with the sun. Night had come.
This understated flower was just beginning to bloom along the trail at Buzzard’s Roost, and at first I didn’t even recognize it as a flower. The petals were barely open and looked almost like still-growing leaves. I snapped a picture anyway, so I could check its identification and, sure enough, it was the sulfur paintbrush. 
What variety God has designed into His Creation!
Over lunch break today, I and the other scribe at the clinic went for a walk over by Rapid Creek. We wound up back at Canyon Lake, near where I got pictures of the killdeer nest a few weeks ago. I had gone over there recently to check up on the nest, but there were enough slightly ruffled goose parents and their fluffy yellow chicks, I didn’t want to risk getting flown at. But today, once again I heard the killdeer before I saw it, and even then I could barely see it in the grass near the shore. The bird was almost in the throes its wounded bird imitation, so I knew that either there was another nest and we were close to it, or it had chicks.
We hunted around for a few minutes, and could see a second killdeer a little ways away. They called to each other, hunkered down in the grass, flew this way and that, and almost had me convinced to come back later. But then there was a little flurry of tiny movement, and not one, not two, but three baby killdeer were scampering around on the shore.
We watched them for probably ten minutes, laughing at their antics and trying not to terrify the parents too much. The babies were almost fearless, but I knew if I got too close, I would have an angry parent flying at my face. The babies’ movements were comical, so perfect and coordinated that they looked almost awkward, their little feathers still downy and short, in spite of their grown-up coloring.
Hard to believe that something that tiny and helpless will be flying and protecting its own nest before too long!
Song Dog Journal 