Wildflowers Everywhere!
“Do something to make the world more beautiful.”
The next spring there were lupines everywhere.
Fields and hillsides were covered in blue and purple and rose-colored flowers.
They bloomed along the highways and down the lanes…
Down in the hollows and along the stone walls grew the beautiful flowers.
from Miss Rumphius by Barbara Cooney
Today is Earth Day—a day we mark to celebrate the beauty of Mother Nature. It’s also a day when we renew our commitment to protecting the earth to ensure that our children and our children’s children will be able to enjoy Mother Nature’s beauty in their life times.
For me, April 22 is a complicated day. In addition to Earth Day, it was my mother’s birthday—she was born in 1925 and would have been 96 today. April 22 was also the day my father died in 2011. So, Earth Day is a day when I celebrate both my parents along with Mother Nature. It’s a generational thing.
Does it seem to you the wildflowers have been particularly bountiful this spring? It does to me. There are so many flowers in so many rich colors. Is that because they are truly extra plentiful in 2021? Or is it because this pandemic has gone on so long and we are so anxious for it to be over that this spring season just seems to be extraordinary?
Whatever the reason, the wildflowers in Northern California have been shamelessly voluptuous and flamboyantly colorful. The roadsides around here are dotted and dashed with color—purple, orange, yellow, and white. Daily, my Facebook and Instagram friends fill my newsfeed to overflowing with photos they’ve taken on wildflower hikes around the region.
My own favorite flower-focused hike is the Buttermilk Bend Trail at the South Yuba River State Park. The relatively easy trail follows along the edge of the river canyon for about a mile-and-a-half (double that if you want to come back). The river rushes over granite rocks below, fast and full in normal spring runoff season, though it’s lower and slower than usual this rather dry year.
When I was there in early March, the California poppies were rampant—bright orange, their heads tossing in the breeze. A few early lupine—deep purple stalks mixed in among the orange.
This week, when I went back for a return visit, the canyon slopes were transformed into hanging gardens painted with rainbows of colors. The early poppies were nearly gone, but the tall spider lupine had taken their place as the dominant bloom. Whole hillsides glowed violet, and seemed to roll like waves with the passing breeze as the stalks dipped and swayed. When I looked closely, the edges of the violet were tinged with a bright rose-color.
In shadier spots colonies of rarer blossoms thrived. Pearly white fairy lanterns, AKA globe lilies, dangled delicately in the shade of oak trees. Pretty faces, small pale-yellow flowers with five slender petals, hid around curves in the trail where the slopes faced east. Most rare, Chinese lanterns bloom only briefly in only one damp and shady spot along the trail. The bright wine-colored flowers were out in numbers I’ve never seen before. I mustn’t forget to mention the peach-colored monkey flowers high on the rocks and the delicate ground iris almost invisible in the shade.
The sight of hillsides covered in purple lupine always reminds me of one of my favorite children’s books, Barbara Cooney’s Miss Rumphius, the story of The Lupine Lady. As a young woman, Miss Rumphius is a very proper librarian, who every summer morphs into an adventurer who travels to “faraway places.” There are lovely illustrations of her visiting tropical islands and riding camels in the desert. As an old woman, the children of the town know her as “the lupine lady,” because she takes long walks with her pockets filled with lupine seeds which she casts about wherever she goes. She leaves behind her a trail of beauty, as each spring vast hillsides of purple lupine blossom from Miss Rumphius’ seeds, as do back alleys and roadsides. The illustrations positively glow violet and rose.
Miss Rumphius’ grandfather gave her advice, which she shares with her own grandniece, “You must do something to make the world more beautiful.” I’ve always thought it a beautiful and inspiring story to read to children.
Mom and Dad were a bit like “the lupine lady,” finding time to travel to places near and far. They instilled in me a sense of wanderlust and a great appreciation for the natural world’s beauty, which I have passed on to my son as well. I try to live up to Dad’s oft spoken life motto: strive to do something that makes the world a better place.
Back to Earth Day and spring wildflower experiences and generational memories. My Grandpa Griff came as a teenager to California with his family from Indiana by way of Colorado in 1913 to settle in a farming community in the Imperial Valley. He often told stories of seeing California’s Central Valley for the first time, describing it as filled from north to south, east to west, as far as the eye could see, and as far as they could travel in a day, with an ocean of unending wildflowers that seemed to glow in lupine blue and poppy gold under a bright blue California sky.
I really wish I could have seen that!
Don’t you?
What’s your favorite springtime wildflower hike?
Favorite springtime wildflower?
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Find more information on the Buttermilk Bend Trail and Miss Rumphius, The Lupine Lady, by Barbara Cooney:
South Yuba River State Park: https://www.southyubariverstatepark.org/
Buttermilk Bend Trail on AllTrails: https://www.alltrails.com/trail/us/california/buttermilk-bend-trail
Lupine Lady story – Miss Rumphius by Barbara Cooney: https://www.amazon.com/Miss-Rumphius-Barbara-Cooney/dp/0140505393/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=lupine+lady&qid=1618726840&s=books&sr=1-1
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Heartwarming story, and beautiful pictures. And you've given me a new children's book to read to the grandbabies. Thank you!
This is so beautiful, Joan! So inspiring...makes me want to hit the trails right now! You’re a natural writer and I can’t wait for your next piece!