Red Currant

Ribes sanguineum next to Silver Creek

Red currant (Ribes sanguineum), a classic Pacific Northwest shrub and favorite nectar source for calliope and rufous hummingbirds. Snow holds in the hanging valley of Silver Creek at 3420 feet elevation. The sound of water rushing down the gorge underscores the entire day. Wind out of the west is cool, dry.

 

A Long Weekend

The “official” start of summer…around here that means traffic. People get out of the city and come here.

I stayed home, having anticipated a stretch of time to garden and putter around the house. I’ve been sleeping deeply at night, probably because of the return to lots of physical exercise. When morning comes, waking involves getting upright and sitting with tea and journal. Out the window I can see my grampa’s bird houses on the neighbor’s pine tree. Just when I had given up hope of any birds using them this year, I saw the flash of blue. Yep, a pair of western bluebirds has taken up residence in the south house. Oh, joy!

Things I wanted to do and did: batch of oat-n-wheat bread; tomatoes set out–Cherokee Purple, Tomaccio, Koralik, Siberian, Alaska Fancy, Gill’s All-Purpose, Silvery Fir Tree, Golden Nugget, Boxcar Willie (ten plants, what am I thinking?); ten basil plants; ironed every damn pillowcase I own; trip to library; sniffed lilacs at every opportunity; excavated a big hole in the backyard, sifted the dirt, built a raised bed from reclaimed 2 X 6 lumber from my old deck, transplanted 21 strawberry plants; mend some work pants. Neighbors told me the junk man used to live here, and I have been astonished by some of the stuff I dig up. I’ve saved the forks and spoons and mixer beaters, along with springs and mysterious hardware and the plastic carousel horse. These are arranged in a spontaneous collage on top of a willow stump. Much more has been discarded–broken brown glass of Rainier beer bottles, mirror shards, rusted metal rods, car seat springs, telephone wires…I will plant flowers and blackberry vines.

This afternoon I made a trip to Ellensburg and the going-home traffic heading west was already backed up for forty miles. I took an alternate route, grateful to return to my nest.

And now morning will come too soon, and with it the return to work…

 

Filing System and Field Testing

Pixie’s chain was sharp when we hit the trail this morning (my crew is weird–we name our chainsaws). I felt gleeful when I powered the saw into the first green log of the day and big chips spewed out the back. But a couple logs later, the inevitable happened. There was a large-ish rotten Douglas-fir squatting right down on the ground. I couldn’t see very well, so wasn’t sure when I was going to complete the cut. When I noticed a couple of sparks, I knew I had gone too far. We rolled the log away and I saw the groove in the dirt made by the chain. Ooh, that’s bad. It’s best to keep the whirling chain away from dirt and rocks, but sometimes it can’t be helped.

I rooted around in my pack for the saw kit, and pulled out the file. A rotten log next to the trail would do for a workbench, and I knelt down in front of it. Field sharpening is a skill at which I do not excel, so it was time for practice. In the shop, the saw is held by a vise so I can stand in a comfortable position. It’s a lot easier. The file is a 3/16ths inch round file for sharpening saw chain. I use a file guide to keep a consistent angle on each tooth. All the teeth on one side are filed, and then the saw is flipped so I can file the other side of the chain. While I do this task, I hold more than one focus. The front of my brain, my eyes, and hands are paying attention to the angle of the file, and counting the strokes. But my ears are tuned to the sounds in the woods: noisy river, varied thrushes, aircraft up in the clouds. My belly is digesting lunch, my knees and ankles are feeling the weight of supporting me as I lean over my work. Sweat dries on my back now that I am not hiking. Tooth by tooth, minute metal filings dust the sharp edges.

When I start cutting the next log, I know I haven’t done as well as I would have liked. But it’s the last log–the trail is buried under snowbanks that persist under the trees. We’ll have to come back when they melt. I’ll have a chance to file that chain in the shop before Pixie goes out again.

I’m field-testing a new work pack. I’ve written before about the challenges of finding gear that works for trail crew. My back and shoulders insist that I make changes. After online research, I settled on a Deuter Futura Vario Pro, a small overnight pack. The two features I most want in a work pack are adequate suspension, and side pockets. This one is rated to carry 40 pounds, and is designed to distribute the weight away from the shoulders. When I put the saw over my shoulder, the top of the pack supports it nicely. Yes! I’m happy. The side pockets are not perfect–getting my hand held radio out is something of a wrestling match. But at least I can get to it. Deuter packs are German, so I have hopes for sensible engineering and durability. Oh, and please note the yellow fabric flower. It’s a lily. It’s a women’s pack, which I approve of because it may fit my anatomy more comfortably. The flower is a concession to my innate femininity, even though I am out in the woods wallowing in dirt and getting sawdust in my bra. After my tirade last summer about a new personal backpack named “Trollhetta Lady”, I have nothing more to say about gear manufacturers marketing to women (this blog, August 2011). But I’m leaving that dang flower on my work pack till it’s soaked with bar oil and rots away from pure filth and abrasion. I will not be mistaken for a boy!

Unsettled weather all day. Perfect for working, really. Not too hot. Not windy. A few light rain showers, and some sun breaks. Walking along, I notice a couple of calypso orchids. Another name for them is fairy slippers, and their bright pink jumps off the forest floor. The leaves are just emerging on the vine maples and huckleberries–the understory still seems open. More twigs and branches than foliage. Soon it will be different. The woods are changing all the time, and I amazed at my own amazement. This cycle is familiar, yet I never tire of it. How good it is to be out there doing good work!

 

Between

You know those days when you look at the satellite picture and the big white swirls are coming up from the southwest? When you look toward the mountains all you see is mist, and then the rain starts sliding in at a slant and you have to pull up the hood on your raincoat. When you stop the truck and wade through the last patch of soggy snow to the trailhead, only to find the trail snow-free, its surface pounded firm by the rain. As far as you can see, the trail beckons. And the river is in full thrashing motion, all that water squeezed through a rocky chute, gravity and centrifugal force battling for domination. The Cooper River has a loud voice right now. Looking upstream, you can see dwindling scraps of snowpack under the trees. And you think to yourself how clean the woods are at this point between winter and summer, as they are just now emerging from the wild isolation of the dark season, opening to flowers, birds, people. Spring is an invitation to go further up the trail, deeper into the forest. Even the rain would not hold you back, if you really wanted to go.

That’s how it was out there today.

 

Feeding the Creative Fire

It smolders all the time, the creative fire. Even a beginning firefighter can tell you that the three things a fire needs are heat, fuel, and oxygen. The intensity of the fire depends on the supply of those three things. My own smoldering fire has plenty of fuel to burn, and residual heat. This weekend I gave it some oxygen.

Yesterday I attended Write on the River, a writer’s conference in Wenatchee. As I entered the building, it seemed a shame to spend such a sunny day inside. But soon I was engrossed in the kind of talk that happens when writers get together. The world of publishing is undergoing great changes–this digital revolution really is revolutionary. The tools for writing and reading have changed dramatically, and continue to evolve. Writers are much more involved in the marketing of their work, and readers have many options to find and follow authors. This is all interesting. As a non-fiction writer, I am also interested in the craft of writing–structure, the many facets of memoir, the difference between personal essay and literary journalism. How to find feedback and support, to further polish the written piece before sending it out. How to find the right place for your own particular voice to be heard. I’m working on all of that. The next step for me is to find a writer’s group, or a buddy to share work with. At this point, I need honest critique. I don’t need to hear only nice things, and I don’t need to be reduced to tears. Somewhere between those two extremes is the sweet spot.

By early evening I was ready to escape. The sky had filled with clouds and the air was humid. I hadn’t planned to head for home, so drove to an undisclosed location up a dirt road near Blewett Pass. I found a level place to park the truck in a small side draw. While my supper heated on the camp stove, I had a close look at the deciduous trees: choke cherries in a froth of blossom, bigleaf maple with tender bronze leaves emerging, and pendulous yellow flowers hanging like bunches of grapes. It was so humid and gray I wondered if rain was coming. Nope, it never did. After eating, I sat reading a new-to-me copy of Rachel Carson’s Sense of Wonder. Felt a need to revisit what she had to say about nurturing this in our children. That’s important, but I feel that the world is full of adults starving for the wonder and connection that was theirs in childhood. How to rekindle that, and save the planet?

Too lazy to put up the tent, I slept in the back of the truck like the twenty-something I once was. On the road and completely free. The clouds held sounds close to the earth–water coming down the creek into a culvert and under the road, a distant great horned owl, warblers and Swainson’s thrushes singing the last songs of the day. I was out before it got completely dark, and slept well.

This morning I rose, made tea, and went to my next creative adventure. It’s Spring Bird Fest in Leavenworth, and four days of activity celebrate the resident birds and neotropical migrants. I tend to shy away from hard-core birders with their optics, life lists and need to get up before dawn, but a workshop called “Birds, Brushes, and Brunch” appealed to me. A little bird watching, a little watercolor painting, and a lot food–what could be better? This gathering was held at Run of the River Inn and Refuge, which is located just outside of town along Icicle Creek. We gathered on the deck, and instructor Heather Murphy led us through some bird identification and drawing warm-up exercises. Heather is a retired Forest Service wildlife biologist who now travels, paints, publishes notecards, and teaches people to connect with nature and art in her own personable and encouraging way. Her creative fire blazes brightly, and it feels good to stand close to it. Our assignment was to draw five things from nature on our page, then add watercolors. I wanted to get caught in the first thing I saw, which was an intricate vine of wild clematis. But I had four more things to find. A domestic duck floated by, and I went for it. I tried Heather’s technique of inserting a box for detail–why have I never done that before? My eyes found flowers, the texture of rock, the colors in water…Time flew, and we were called to brunch. Oh my. What a beautifully presented feast, not to mention good company. We wrapped up with show-and-tell. I was impressed by everyone’s willingness to share their attempts and successes. It fascinates me to see what others find in the same place.

I came away feeling as if a lid has been removed from a contained fire. Air pours in, and the flames can breathe. My imagination is fueled by simply living, by stepping away from the endless round of chores and responsibilities that I think is my life. This brings me back to Rachel Carson, and I leave you with her words:

“A child’s world is fresh and new and beautiful, full of wonder and excitement. It is our misfortune that for most of us that clear-eyed vision, that true instinct for what is beautiful and awe-inspiring, is dimmed and even lost before we reach adulthood. If I had influence with the good fairy who is supposed to preside over the christening of all children I should ask that her gift to each child in the world would be a sense of wonder so indestructible that it would last throughout life, as an unfailing antidote against the boredom and disenchantments of later years, the sterile preoccupations with things that are artificial, the alienation from the sources of our strength.

“What is the value of preserving and strengthening this sense of awe and wonder, this recognition of something beyond the boundaries of human existence? Is the exploration of the natural world just a pleasant way to pass the golden hours of childhood or is there something deeper?

“I am sure there is something deeper, something lasting and significant. Those who dwell, as scientists or laymen, among the beauties and mysteries of the earth are never alone or weary of life. Whatever the vexations or concerns of their personal lives, their thoughts can find paths that lead to inner contentment and to renewed excitement in living. Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts. There is symbolic as well as actual beauty in the migration of birds, the ebb and flow of the tide, the folded bud ready for the spring. There is somethings infinitely healing in the repeated refrains of nature–the assurance that dawn comes after night, and spring after winter.”

The Sense of Wonder by Rachel L. Carson, 1956

 

Fire at Night

We gather in the morning, a bunch of us in green Nomex pants and tough fire boots. Most of us wear ball caps and sunglasses to shade our eyes. Along with the yellow shirt, this is the signature uniform of wildland firefighters off the fireline. The guys in charge of the project outline the objectives and the plan. Safety, communications, logistics are discussed. Everybody knows where they fit into the big picture. I offer to do weather and be a lookout, and am happy when that proposal is accepted.

Oh boy. Prescribed burning! There are lots of legitimate reasons to light fires in the woods: to reduce the amount of logging slash (tree limbs and tops) and create spaces for tree planting; to reduce fire danger; to stimulate plant growth. These days, there’s real concern about the intensity of wildfires because 100 years of fire suppression has changed the composition of western forests. Tree growth is dense, species have shifted to trees that are less well-adapted to fires, and it’s possible that climate change affects the overall health of forests. Around here, trees are stressed by an outbreak of spruce budworm that has lasted over 10 years. And to complicate matters, more people have homes in the woods. Firefighters have noticed a change in fire behavior over the years. Fires are more intense and less predictable.

The objective of our burning project is to reduce ground fuels in a recently logged area. There are homes on private property all around. It’s better to burn in May when the soil retains moisture and before the vegetation and slash dries even more. A specific burn plan has been written and approved. No flame touches the ground until all parameters are in alignment. The desired outcome is a forest that is more fire-resistant.

I have a map of the burn unit, and drive around until I have my bearings. Then I park, gather my gear, put on my hard hat and climb the hill. The place I am looking for is where the fire will come, where I can see the sky and observe the wind. My radio scans frequencies so that I hear all the conversations. In my mind’s eye, I know where everyone is and track their movements. Every half hour I measure temperature, relative humidity, wind speed and direction, fine dead fuel moisture. This information is relayed to the burn boss, but I know everyone else is listening to hear for themselves how the weather conditions will affect fire behavior. After awhile I see smoke, and report on its movement. The air grows warmer. Winds conflict over the ridge. The high temperature is 81 degrees, the low humidity is 20%.

Events unfold and depart from the plan. This is normal. Humans are interacting with a natural process so we observe and adapt. There’s no drama, just response and teamwork. Lots of communication and reassessment. Decisions and action. Ignition stops in the middle of the day. The fire is held back in some places, and allowed to proceed in other places. I change my location to go watch a part that is advancing. My notebook fills with fire behavior observations. By late afternoon, things have calmed and ignition begins again.

It’s almost midsummer and evening lingers. The burning goes well. The wind is in the fire’s favor, the temperature drops and the humidity rises. I watch from an open hillside as daylight drains away in the west. Swainson’s thrushes are calling and my heart lifts–this is the first I have heard them this year. A crescendo of robin chirps rises and falls as dark comes. I reach into my pack to find the headlamp so I can read the thermometer. A small owl starts up in the middle distance, a perfectly spaced steady tooting. I search for the memory…it’s either a Saw-whet or a Northern pygmy owl.

Orange flames bloom across the hillside as the lighters find concentrations of slash. Smoke rises, lit from within. It’s quite beautiful. I can hear the crackling, and voices. I’m chilly but content. This is familiar, and I am part of it.

At some time during the afternoon, I realized that I have been a wildland firefighter for 30 years. In the summer of 1982, I attended my initial firefighter training in Avery, Idaho. We watched old training films from the 1960s shown by a clattering projector in the back of a room in the warehouse. Our instructors used a blackboard and told stories. We were issued green Nomex pants and yellow fire shirts. In July, I went on my first fire. That fall, my crew helped with prescribed burning. Some years I haven’t gone on any fires, but I’ve always felt the responsibility to help. And the desire. A few years back, I realized I was not going to outgrow this fascination with fire.

The smell of smoke wipes away those thirty years like they are nothing. My inner firedog is forever young. Sometimes I wake from intense dreams of being in a lookout. Or of chasing flames with a crew of friends. The sound of a Bell 206 helicopter reverberates deep within and memories come.

Ignition finishes at ten minutes before midnight. The fire will continue to back down the slope all night. Some people in fire engines will stay to watch. The rest of us pile in trucks to go home.

Today I’m tired. I pulled out my notes to write up. My weather kit needs some refitting. Another fire season stretches ahead of us…

 

Field Trips

There are two kinds of field trips. I went on the first kind today: a hike along the big basalt cliffs above the Columbia River, about 50 miles east of here as the raven flies. This place is deep in the rain shadow and already knows the heat of summer. The sagebrush leaves are velvety and fragrant, but the green grass of spring is drying. The yellow balsamroots drop their petals. Boots kick up dust. Brushing by a thorny shrub, my leg stirs a rattlesnake into a buzz. It is buried so deep in the shade that we can hardly see it, but we glimpse its striped snout and flicking tongue. Time for us to continue our walk. A prairie falcon sails out over the river, its cries insisting that we are passing too close to its eyrie. Hunkering in a patch of shade, we watch dusty tan bighorn sheep make their way along the cliffs. Some of them are new lambs, and I swear they gambol behind their mothers. Sweat trickles down my spine as I hold still. And all day swallows circle and chirp in the blue blue sky above.

That is an outside Field Trip.

There is also the inside Field Trip. My friend Jude Spacks came up with this practice, and it agrees with my inclinations. You can read about Jude’s work here. In my humble opinion, she’s brilliant. I am drawn to all things metaphorical, and this fits perfectly. Jude starts with this bit of poetry by Rumi:

Out beyond ideas of wrong-doing and right-doing,
There is a field. I’ll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass,
the world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase each other
doesn’t make any sense.

(Coleman Barks translation)

The Field is the starting place for the experiences that cannot be expressed in spoken and written language. I’ve long understood that one reason I paint is because talking is inadequate for what I want to express. I have an ongoing series of visual Field Trips. With watercolor, they start as fluid washes. My intention is usually to limit the color scheme to some specific impression from the natural world. It’s important that there be movement, and I turn the paper to paint in all directions until it’s clear to me which way is up. Sometimes this never comes clear, and that’s OK. It’s about the process, and I feel lucky when one turns into a finished piece. The Field Trip shown here came from sitting next to a mountain stream in May, and deliberately letting go of feelings that needed to travel downstream and away. But you can see whatever you want in it.

Both kinds of Field Trips are about exploration and discovery. The thing is to enter the Field and stay as long as possible. The world really is too full to talk about, even though I try. This is the writer’s paradox–to use words to describe life and connections and the vastness of it all. When this is too frustrating, I fall back on shapes and color.

I dare you to try it. Take a Field Trip, inside or outside. Or both. Don’t be so literal. See what you find.

 

Wishing for Snowshoes

We should have taken snowshoes.

What you can’t see from this photo is that I am standing on a snowy road. The snow is one to three feet deep, with variable firmness. Where people skied and snowshoed all winter was packed down and frozen–good places to walk. Where the snow wasn’t packed, a booted foot could plunge down to the knee. As the sun moved, the snow warmed and became even mushier. Bad places to walk. There was no way of knowing the difference between good and bad footing until the weight was committed to the step. We slid, we wallowed, we walked in a mincing careful manner. Snowshoes would have given our feet more flotation and grip. But we were optimistic when we left the truck in the morning, and the snowshoes stayed behind.

It was the first day carrying and using my chainsaw (“Pixie”) this season. My body remembered the familiar weight of it balanced on my left shoulder. My hands remembered the starting sequence, and I remembered how Pixie stalls a little bit when I rev the throttle. None of this is anything new. The new thing is that the oil reservoir needs a cap with a functioning seal to stop the leak that has developed. My focus narrows while the saw is in the log. I’m watching the chips fly, feeling for the bind, feeling how hard the saw is working. The upslope wind blows sawdust right into the open neck of my shirt and I know that I’ll be twitching the rest of the day. In a Zen sense, I am one with the saw. I will never master the saw, and will always be its student. It requires my full attention. When the release cut is made, the log falls. I engage the chain brake and switch off the engine before I step back. Pixie’s bar and chain are sheathed, and the saw again rides on my left shoulder. I stumble forward toward the next log, thinking about the snowshoes down in the truck.

Jon and I agreed that we are entitled to five minutes of whining per day. I used some of mine to notice that what we are doing is physically harder than it ought to be. (That’s not exactly how I said it.) Discomfort is a reality check. We’re in no immediate danger. The sun is shining, although the wind is cold. We’re out of the office, doing work that makes the trail a better place. There are no mosquitoes at all. We’re hiking uphill, but it could be a lot steeper. We’re flopping around in the moment. We know we are going to eat lunch in a pleasant spot.

And we did. I dropped my pack and the saw near where I thought the end of the trail was and hiked up to scout. Ha! As I suspected, there was no need to carry the saw any further. It was time for lunch. As I slid my way back down, I stopped to admire the view of the Stuart Range. The snow line creeps up mountain flanks as the valleys hold warmth. The sound of running water is everywhere. And wind through the stiff subalpine fir branches. Lunch was big spinach salad with feta cheese, red onion and a tomato dressing. Some rice crackers, a handful of toasted almonds, two squares of organic dark chocolate, washed down with plenty of water. I eased back onto my pack, face turned toward the sun. Then it was time to get up and shoulder the saw for the return trip. Going down was even slippier, and we took a shortcut to get back to the truck. The internal whining increased as my shoulders protested the weight of the saw. It’s early May. My shoulders and I will have to work something out.

We laughed a little about a story the receptionist told us this morning. The front desk gets a lot of calls from people wanting to head to their favorite lakes. When they are told that they can’t drive to the trailheads because the roads are still snowy, they just can’t believe it. One caller wanted to day hike to Robin Lake this weekend. All he needs is snowshoes! He can park at the end of the pavement, snowshoe the seventeen miles up the road to where the trail takes off, and then climb up to the granite basin where Robin Lake is still locked in ice. The grownup part of me knows that it’s not nice to laugh at the naivete of city people, but c’mon–all they have to do is look east and see that white stuff hanging on the Cascades. The mountains are accessible. All you need is snowshoes, and a good lunch.

 

Grow Where You Are Planted

Helena wrote a thoughtful comment a couple posts back, about how reading this blog helps her pay closer attention to her home in the Sussex countryside. On the surface, we live on different continents, with different climates, terrain, and native inhabitants. But not too far under that surface, what we have in common is an evolving feeling of home. Curiosity and a willingness to be pulled deeper into the familiar, only to find that it is wilder, more astonishing and wonderful than we can imagine.

I’m a slow thinker. Wandering from one task to another in the garden this afternoon, I followed my thoughts as they looped and spiralled around this theme of home and how we pay attention. My hands dug in the soil, feeling the warmth of the sun caught there. I felt the hard pellets of sweet pea seeds as I pushed them in to just the right depth. My fingers scrabbled dandelion seedlings out of the compost around the rosebushes, and wiggled the long taproots of established dandelions until they released their grip. I felt the tenderness of strawberry leaves as they unfold, and found the tight form of the berry-to-be in the flower. When I squatted down by the beehive, they ignored me as they landed on the bottom board. Their back legs were loaded with pollen and they went directly into the hive. All of us went about our tasks of gathering, tending, growing. I can’t say that I was thinking in words or noticing the passage of time, but still there was rumination and consideration happening. Slowly.

As I sit here writing now, I am aware of wanting to pull together threads into elegant connections: how we pay attention, how neuroscience and some forms of spirituality overlap; this notion of “home” that comes up for me again and again in my life; and just this evening listening to a radio program about Henry David Thoreau and his relevance today, 150 years after his death.

Thoreau was definitely a slow thinker, and not one to follow the crowd. He lived in a time of war, social polarization, and economic uncertainty. He was a questioner, and stood by his convictions to the point of being willing to go to jail for not paying his taxes. He could not support a government that allowed slavery. His advice was to “Simplify, simplify.”

I have not borrowed my neighbor’s ax in order to build a small cabin next to a pond in the woods. But I do live in a small house. There was a time when I lived in a bigger house and had more things. Then, it mattered to me that my silverware matched, and that the curtains were right for the house. These days my silverware is a jumble of hand-me-downs and thrift shop finds, and I couldn’t be happier. I have had the privilege of living out of a backpack and noticing what I really need to live. Truly, I don’t need that much stuff. Food, warmth, shelter. The intangibles feel like riches–friends, relatives, companions. Being upright and breathing and able to walk around with senses fully alive. Paying attention, exercising curiosity.

Today it occurred to me to count all the books in the house. I stopped at 158. There are lots more here, maybe 300. One of them is a collection of Thoreau’s writing. I’ve read him before, and always lost patience with his nineteenth century deliberateness and New England sensibilities. I have a notion to try again, because he was a writer who understood home and attention. He grew where he was planted. As Helena is doing in Sussex, and as I am doing here. As the bees and strawberries do with no effort at all.

 

Native Plants

Found the first trilliums (Trillium ovatum) today on a west-facing slope at 4300 feet elevation. The snow has been gone for a week and a half, maybe. These tender green leaves poke up through the soft soil and unfold, to reveal the purest white petals. Like violets, I have known these flowers my whole life, and I never tire of finding them. Every spring is a joyous reunion.

This week, the Washington Native Plant Society celebrates native vegetation. Living here in the rain shadow of the Cascades, I enjoy a great abundance and variety of native vegetation. To the west are plant communities that thrive on moisture, cooler temperatures, and higher elevations. To the east, it’s a little drier and warmer. Turn the corner, cross a slope, head up a draw–you will find something different within a short distance. The area is a geological jumble, with volcanic, sedimentary, and metamorphic rocks contributing to a variety of soil conditions. The plants depend on the terrain and climate. This is not a dull place to be a plant-lover.

As the snow melts, the trail crew will follow spring deeper into the mountains, and I will still be finding trilliums in early July. One week is not nearly long enough to celebrate native vegetation. Go out and discover for yourself how conifers are woven into our life here. Now is the moment for the soft green-bronze of emerging cottonwood leaves. The silvery leaves of sagebrush are plump with rain, and the balsamroots under the pines turn their yellow sunflower faces to the sky. Go out there and see for yourself what grows and blossoms after winter ends.

Emerging larch buds against the bark of the tree (Larix occidentalis)