This afternoon a retreat into a deep dark canyon was the best way to get away from the valley heat. Besides, I promised my friend The Pointer that I would take her for a walk. On a trail like this…
above a stream like this.
And the best commentary on the feel and taste of the cold, clear water of Spring Creek:
With the temperature headed for one hundred today, early morning was the only time for a short hike and yesterday’s post on Jomegat’s Weblog reminded me that the Pipsissewa are starting to bloom, an event I would hate to miss. The wildflowers don’t mind the heat, especially along a wooded canyon trail. There were other flowers in bloom as well.
In the southern end of the Cabinet Mountains a small creek climbs from its confluence with a larger one, about seven miles to its source in a cold spring just below the top of Big Hole Peak. Throughout that course the water falls nearly a mile in a never ending stream of small cascades and waterfalls, some of which can be accessed from the trail that runs along it through Spring Creek Canyon. Here are just a few.
The first cold front with Arctic air has moved into our area for a brief stay bringing colder temperatures and a little snow. It was impossible to resist taking a short hike up to the lower end of Spring Creek to see the new snow on the cedars and to check on the water level in the creek.
At a casual glance, the leaves of the Twisted-stalk look like those of the False Solomon’s seal, and for years I didn’t look at them any closer. Then in the Spring Creek canyon one day the sky suddenly opened up and the rain came pouring down, giving me only time enough to pop open a small umbrella that I always carry with me and crouch down under it so that it would keep my camera and most of me dry. That put the plant at eye level and I suddenly saw the little blossoms hiding beneath the large leaves and realized that the inadvertent “closer look” had revealed another plant that was new to me.
