Not today

I knew it would look like this, but it’s always worth a try: it’s only a few miles from home, and sometimes it’s nice to see a couple of favorite trail heads while they are still under the influence of winter. Today my pack stayed in the car: I didn’t try the snow packed trails to Blossom and Pear lakes on the Montana side of the pass nor test the even deeper snow up to Revett Lake on the Idaho side. In another month… but for now winter is still only a half mile higher than the valley.

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Decorated by the morning dew

This year there are very few scouring-rush showing up and they are very small but they are decorated every morning just as they always are in spring.

Scouring-rush Horsetail, Common Scouring-rush, Dutch Rush, Prairie Scouring-rush ~ Equisetum hyemale

Spring Wildflowers

Eddy Peak in the Cherry Peak Roadless Area photographed from the Munson Creek trail head.

One of my favorite days of Spring usually comes on April 18th and for years on that day I have hiked two miles up the Munson Creek trail to an area where there is a large area of Trilliums in bloom. This year it has been cool and rainy with few sunny days and I suspected that the trilliums would be late so today I checked at the footbridge near the trail head where they bloom earlier and found they are just beginning. My hike will be put off another week or so because my favorite area is two thousand feet higher in elevation.

Pacific Trillium, (trillium ovatum)

Several other wildflowers have begun to appear now too:

Yellow Bell, (fritillaria pudica)

Dark-throated Shooting Star, (dodecatheon pulchellum)

Small-flowered Woodland Star, (lithophragma parviflorum)

Already!

In the rain

This evening, in the rain,

I took a lonely walk up the road;

where I encountered a little tree,

a volunteer that bears the sweetest fruit around.

She shared her blossoms with me…

and I am content.

Yellow hills and purple flowers

While capturing the scenes of the yellow hills I discovered that the Larkspur were also in bloom. It was a nice reward from Mother Nature for climbing the hill to photograph the sunflowers.

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