Found this little gem along the Hell Canyon trail, west of Custer. Ranged in color from palest pink to a deep fuchsia. 
Their blossoms are probably a centimeter long, maybe a half inch, and don’t open any further than this. They’re a relative of the pasqueflower, since both are genus anemone.
Armed with plenty of water, bug spray, and a dog, Hannah and I set off up the steep initial climb of the Hell Canyon trail. There was only one other vehicle at the trail head parking lot, so it would be a quiet hike.
The Hell Canyon loop is a little under 6 miles and we took it at an enjoyable pace, stopping aplenty to revel in the beauty of the trail. Within ten minutes of setting out, I spotted a cutleaf anemone, which I had never seen before except in pictures, and a little further ahead we started seeing rock clematis, another new one for me. A cluster of pasqueflowers caught the light, blooming later in the higher elevations west of Custer.
I pointed our a few more flowers, thrilled to be seeing such different flowers from my hikes on our ranch. “Those are some great flower names you’re making up,” Hannah teased. So the next new flower I saw, I asked, “Do you want to know what this one is called?”
The remoteness of Hell Canyon is exhilarating. Hiking along the rim, we enjoyed the soaring vistas and plummeting slopes into the canyon’s center, the towering rock formations and the narrow trail, the silence and tranquility of the middle of nowhere. Remnants of once-great ponderosa pine trees evidenced the former thriving forest of Hell Canyon, stripped and desolate from past fires.
The dead and denuded ponderosa trunks still towered high, and the hillsides and canyon walls were covered with deadfall. Stumps were still black with soot. But Hannah pointed out an old burned-out tree stump, where last year there had been a black-eyed Susan growing out of the center. Deep and steep ravines were growing back full of of aspens, their pale green leaves bright in the sunlight. The wildflowers thrived, bearberry and phlox and prairie goldenpea, rock clematis and anemone and longspur violets, Nuttall’s violets and white milkwort and prairie smoke, and a single early stem of wild blue flax. Life from death.
Ezekiel 36:26 says: “And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.” God takes our hearts of corruption and death and He renews them, breathes life into them. He takes our souls destined for the fires of Hell and cleanses them, purifies them, sanctifies us. Life from death.
The trail traced along the rim of Hell Canyon, and then gradually dropped down into the greenness of the canyon itself. Down in the cool and shade, with carpets of longspur violets and Canada violets and rich, tall grass, it was hard to believe a fire had ever desolated the canyon. The ability God gives to His wonderful Creation to rejuvenate and regrow is astounding.
Chokecherry trees, larger than I had ever seen, lined a portion of the trail. A spring-fed ephemeral stream crisscrossed the trail a handful of times, eventually disappearing underground. The peace was sweet. It was like walking through a garden where God alone is the caretaker, undisturbed except for the faint foot-worn trail. Seeing the untouched, undefiled reaches of Creation, the sorrow and turmoil and suspense and violence of the world fade into the background – It is just about impossible to worry when deep in the woods, with trees and cliffs and blue sky soaring overhead, with the silence and joy bursts of birdsong, the chuckle of the creek, a soft breeze, and the companionship of a sister in Christ. Perhaps it is because I’m constantly being reminded of Someone far greater than myself, and being drawn out of my own selfish thoughts into the light of God’s goodness and majesty, revealed in His Creation.
In Luke 12:25-28, Jesus exhorted His disciples: “And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life? 26 If then you are not able to do as small a thing as that, why are you anxious about the rest? 27 Consider the lilies, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. 28 But if God so clothes the grass, which is alive in the field today, and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, how much more will he clothe you, O you of little faith!”
The first day of my week off was spent almost entirely outside – The way I like it! Gardening, yard work, and other activities this morning, mowing until dark this evening, and a hike this afternoon to see if any water was still running in Battle Creek. Boy, was it! It roared pleasantly through the canyon and the deep-cut creekbed, a chocolatey, muddy brown. Wildflowers are blooming even more now, and the brush and forest were alive with bird life. My cellphone battery died on my hike, so I walked very carefully on the way home. I’ve never seen a rattlesnake on the Hole-in-the-Wall trail, but I didn’t want to find my first one and not have cell access in case of an emergency!
What a wonderful day to be spent outside, enjoying the quiet and serenity of the Black Hills, the wind in the pines and the tall grasses, the vivid sunlight, the flashes of wildflower color, the shimmering green of the aspens. No place I’d rather be.
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.
Song Dog Journal 