Tag Archives: Idaho

Passion and poison: the thorn in the rose

Feb
25
2017
by Betsey | 4 Comments

Yellow David Austin rose in Manito Park, Spokane, Washington by Betsey CrawfordWhat can enclose
this ample innerness?
So soft is this touch,
it could soothe any wound.
From Ranier Maria Rilke’s Inside the Rose

I may belong to one of the smallest groups in history — people who don’t love roses. It’s not that I don’t love the look of many roses, or their subtle variations of color and intricacies of form, or the voluptuous softness of their petals, or the way they hold light in their layered bowls. I love the deep, complex, sensuous perfume of those with scents.  I love the natives, those simpler, wilder roses that grow on the edge of the woods, climb mountains, thrive on the outer coasts and survive arctic winters. With fossils dating back 40 million years, and a likely history of 70 million years, the wild roses are the ancestors of all of the more complex roses in our gardens.

A wild rose, Rosa woodsii, in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho by Betsey Crawford

A wild rose, Rosa woodsii, in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho

In all this, I join an endless line of rose lovers, the first long lost in antiquity. Presumably, our forebears enjoyed the same things we do: their beauty, their scent, their touch. Perhaps their use as food or medicine, since rose hips, the fruit following the flower, are very high in vitamin C and bioflavonoids. Only when they settled into houses on their farms, 10,000 or so years ago, could our ancestors begin to think about growing roses for the pleasure of it. And, just as they discovered that corn, for example, is stronger if its pollen comes from a variety of strains, they discovered that they could breed preferred characteristics into roses. 

Thus, by 300 BCE, the Greek writer Theophrastus, in listing all known roses, included varieties with as much as 100 petals per flower. And Confucius, writing around 500 BCE, noted that there were many varieties growing in the imperial gardens, as well as hundreds of books on roses in the emperor’s library. But it wasn’t until the late 18th century that roses from China began to be crossbred with roses from Europe, creating larger flowers and longer bloom time. The descendants of that marriage constitute most of today’s cultivated roses.

Red and white Fourth of July roses in Manito Park, Spokane, Washington by Betsey Crawford

Manito Park, Spokane, Washington

Despite my appreciation for their beauty, I am deeply aware of the thorn in all of this hybridization: it has created a lot of needy plants. The hardiness of the wild roses is long gone from their cousins, who, though undoubtedly beautiful, with more complex flowers and, for some, the ability to bloom all season, need crutches like pesticides and fungicides to prosper under standard gardening conditions. And a lot of both. I once heard a man with a famous rose garden describe the weekly sprayings and soil drenchings needed to keep it going. He lived above an aquifer that is the only source of drinking water in his area, but stood in front of a group of gardeners advocating routinely soaking the ground with poison in support of his passion.

White single rose in Manito Park, Spokane, Washington, by Betsey Crawford

Manito Park, Spokane, Washington

He was not remotely an evil man. He was in love with roses, and willing to do what it took to keep them beautiful in a damp climate. This is one of our complex human challenges: reconciling the desire for beauty, or at least a certain type of beauty, with what it takes to obtain it. And it’s not new. The ancient Romans loved roses so much they insisted that the peasants grow less food in order to make more land available for roses. Today vast rose farms in Ecuador and Colombia, providing the 1.5 billion roses needed for the US florist trade annually, destroy the health of the farm workers and poison the rivers that irrigate peasant farms downstream.

Yellow and pink rose in Manito Park, Spokane, Washington by Betsey Crawford

Manito Park, Spokane, Washington

Hybridizers work tirelessly to come up with vigorous plants that provide us with what we want, in food and aesthetics, without needing to be propped up by chemicals, but it’s a slow and chancy process. Shrub roses, in particular, made progress toward fungal resistance. Then, in 2000, Will Radler, an amateur hybridizer in Wisconsin, launched Knock Out roses, one of the few roses I was happy to use as a landscape designer. At the end of a muggy Long Island summer, they were as green and vibrant as they were at the beginning, something unheard of with rose cultivars until they came along. Since I like the look of the simpler wild roses, I like Knock Outs. Apparently, others are also willing to forego the lush look of the exquisite Manito Garden roses pictured here, because Knock Outs are now the best selling roses in the country.

Firelight, a watercolor painting of roses by Cara Brown, Life in Full Color

‘Firelight.’ Watercolor by Cara Brown.

It’s possible to grow roses organically. That’s how everything was grown until a few decades ago. One way to start is to choose plants strategically. My friend Cara, who was clearly put on earth to grow and paint roses, was mystified when I talked about all the fungal problems roses present. But I’m from humid New York, and she’s used to dry California summers. She has many more options for growing roses than does an east coaster who doesn’t want to spray fungicides. From there, the usual organic practices apply: create rich soil, irrigate efficiently, use biological controls when needed. It’s not complicated or arduous. Nor is it complicated to buy organic cut flowers from easy-to-find suppliers like Organic Bouquet or the floral members of Fair Trade USA.

White and pink rose in Manito Park, Spokane, Washington, by Betsey Crawford

Manito Park, Spokane, Washington

At this point, despite its exponential growth in recent years, organic production is not remotely scaled to meet our massive demand for either flowers or food. Nor is the mindset there, or the willingness to pay any extra cost upfront, at the grocery store or florist, rather than have it buried in unintended consequences. Organic gardening and agriculture are not simply lists of alternative steps to take, but a way of thinking, a different relationship to the earth, to soil, to water, to insects and animals, as well as to our fellow human beings. It’s sympathy for workers and concern for children. It’s understanding bees are just as much a part of the cycle of life as we are. It’s the realization that three things keep us going on this earth — air, water, soil — and degrading them is ultimately deadly to all life, including our own.

Pink and yellow rose with close up of stamens, Oakland, California by Betsey Crawford

Oakland, California

This is a vast topic, and it may seem a little unfair to pile it on roses’ soft petals. But people often wonder what they can do to help heal the environment, given the damage done. Supporting organic production is something that can be done every single day, in our own gardens, and with every dollar spent on organic food or flowers. As small an action as it seems, it’s part of dismantling the poisonous idea that it’s okay to do whatever we want with the earth, or to ask certain people to face more of a toxic burden than we ourselves are willing to bear. It’s acknowledging that we are not in charge of the earth, but are one part of — and utterly dependent on — the richly varied life our planet supports.

Yellow rose in full bloom in Manito Park, Spokane, Washington, by Betsey Crawford

In Manito Park, where several of the rose photographs come from, rose gardener Steve Smith keeps spraying to a minimum by choosing resilient varieties. He’s also blessed with a dry climate full of summer sun.

I’d love to have you on the journey! If you add your email address, I’ll send you notices of new adventures.

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Songlines 2016: landscapes of love and prairies

Dec
27
2016
by Betsey | 14 Comments
Songlines for 2016 start and end in Marin County, just north of San Francisco. Purple lines go east and north, magenta go west and south.

Songlines for 2016 start and end in Marin County, just north of San Francisco. Purple lines go east and north, magenta go west and south.

When I first described my love for the Aboriginal concept of songlines, the paths taken by the First Beings as they sang the world into existence, I said that one of the ideas I love best is that we are tasked with continuing the work in our own lives. As we walk through our days, we renew and replenish the songs of those beings, enriching our landscapes, continuing to bring life to life.

My songlines this year first had me crisscrossing Marin County, just north of San Francisco, both in the living of my life, and in the search for flowers. I spent lots of time in my ‘backyard,’ Ring Mountain, and treasured the rare flowers found there. I discovered that Marin County is a rarity hotspot, with an unusual number of rare flowers, due in part to the beautiful but deadly serpentine rock underlying much of the coast. 

Tiburon mariposa lily (Calochortus tiburonensis) growing on Ring Mountain in Tiburon, California by Betsey Crawford

Tiburon mariposa lily (Calochortus tiburonensis) which appears on Ring Mountain in Tiburon, California and nowhere else on earth.

At the beginning of June I left on farther flung adventures. Because my reports on my travels featured many flowers, I thought for this final post of the year I’d celebrate the landscapes I moved through along the way. As a photographer, I focus more on wildflowers, but I am equally passionate about the land around them. The experiences are both different and the same. Being with a flower is an intimate visitation, inches away, often on the ground with them. Being in landscapes is a passage I make while walking or driving through, eyes raised, surrounded by wonder. Both are a meeting of souls, a constant coming home to my connection to the earth. 

Red rock and blue sky, one of many incomparable landscapes in the Valley of the Gods in southeastern Utah by Betsey Crawford

Red rock and blue sky in the incomparable Valley of the Gods in southeastern Utah

1. The first landscape is from a favorite area — southeastern Utah — which I visited with a favorite person — my son, Luke. We first drove through here 19 years ago, when he was ten, and we both feel the powerful pull of the magic and mystery of this land. I reposted an essay about the wisdom this ancient landscape teaches us in A Land of Stone Tablets.

Ancestral Pueblo ruins create amazing landscapes at Mesa Verde National Park in Cortez, Colorado by Betsey Crawford

The Cliff Palace, Ancestral Pueblo ruins at Mesa Verde National Park in Cortez, Colorado

2. On this trip we were drawn to the centuries-old ruins of the Ancestral Pueblo people. The remains of their stone buildings, often tucked into cliffs, are a common feature of southwestern landscapes. We happened on several ruins as we explored, and hiked around a wonderful preserved village at Hovenweep National Monument. I’ve always loved the history of ordinary people, and from single structures built into rock overhangs to entire villages, these are intensely moving, a direct connection to the lives of the people who carefully built and lived in them. Mesa Verde National Park protects several spectacular sites, including this one, called the Cliff Palace.

Red rock canyon walls create stunning landscapes along the Dolores River between Naturita and Gateway, Colorado by Betsey Crawford

Red rock canyon walls along the Dolores River between Naturita and Gateway, Colorado

3. Luke flew home from Grand Junction, Colorado, so we got to see the spectacular canyonlands between Naturita, where we stayed for a couple of nights, and Gateway, north of which the lighter limestone formations so distinctive of the Grand Junction area slowly take over. Driving through this whole area is one endless lesson in the history of our planet, and here I was particularly caught by the thin white line. It occurs in the Chinle formation, which formed in the Triassic era, 201 to 252 million years ago. It’s possible the white layer is volcanic ash, though ash layers tend to be shades of gray. It could be limestone, though it’s very white for that, too. It could be gypsum left by a shallow, and fleeting — in geological terms — sea.

Or it could be something else. What we can see at a glance is that it was the result of a relatively brief phenomena, that didn’t repeat itself in this spot for the rest of the Triassic, or into the Jurassic, which is when the upper cliffs were laid down. Like a dinosaur footprint, or the conifer fossils common in the Chinle, it brings us to a moment in time. It could be a moment that lasted 100,000 years, but in our planet’s history, that is still a moment. I find this very helpful for putting the headlines of the day in perspective.

Old-fashioned windmills dot the landscapes of the Pawnee National Grasslands, northeastern Colorado by Betsey Crawford

A windmill in the Pawnee National Grasslands, northeastern Colorado

4. I left the southwest for very different landscapes. I was on a quest for prairies, and started with the Pawnee National Grasslands in northeastern Colorado, about an hour and a half north of Denver. The goal of the Grasslands, which form a patchwork with privately owned land, is to restore this very arid land to grazing, which also helps restore the prairie. The landscape is dotted with these windmills, which provide the power to bring well water to the surface to fill drinking tubs for the cattle. In our high tech world I took comfort in their prosaic task and simple talents, but also found them rather haunting, alone out on the prairie, particularly when paired with a wild sky.

Clouds and farm fields dominate the landscapes along Route 40 in western Kansas by Betsey Crawford

Along Route 40 in western Kansas

5. The landscapes above and below are a pair. My second prairie was in western Kansas, which I described, along with the area’s fascinating and complicated prairie dog wars,  in Smoky Valley Ranch. One evening on my way back from the ranch I drove west on Route 40 to see what I would see, and found myself among vast farm fields. The sky — often more turquoise than I am used to elsewhere — is as important an element of prairie landscape as the land, and on this trip I had the joy of a storm coming in. In the first picture, you can see, at the top, the dark clouds beginning to move over the sun-drenched wheat. In the second, you can see the change in the sky when I drove through on my way back. I escaped the rain this time, but I’ve never been in wilder thunderstorms than Kansas had to offer.

The wild thunderstorms of Kansas create their own landscapes along Route 40 in western Kansas by Betsey Crawford

Storm coming in along Route 40 in western Kansas

An old schoolhouse, one of many striking landscapes in the Tallgrass National Preserve in the Flint Hills, Kansas by Betsey Crawford

An old schoolhouse in the Tallgrass National Preserve in the Flint Hills, Kansas

6. Next stop was Chapman, Kansas, my gateway to the prairies of the Flint Hills, the Konza Preserve in Manhattan and the Tallgrass National Preserve an hour south. I’m not often drawn to buildings as subjects for photos. But I loved this old one-room schoolhouse, built out of the region’s mellow sandstone, alone on top of a hill, among the stormy clouds. In Saved by Stone, I described the sad limits of the remaining tall grass prairie, and how the rock in the Flint Hills helped preserve what remains. And, of course, how beautiful it all is.

One of the vivid landscapes seen in Wah Kon Tah Prairie in El Dorado, Missouri by Betsey Crawford

Wah-Kon-Tah Prairie in El Dorado, Missouri

7. My posts from Missouri — Surprised by Delight and Walking in Beauty —  celebrated the beauty and the unexpected amount of fun I had in Missouri, thanks to meeting some wonderful prairie people as well as an adventurous baby bird. One evening I took a walk in the Wah-Kon-Tah Prairie in El Dorado, and, once again, the sky and land came together in splendor.

Pasture thistle (Cirsium discolor) Curtis Prairie, Madison, Wisconsin by Betsey Crawford

Pasture thistle (Cirsium discolor) Curtis Prairie, Madison, Wisconsin

8. This was a year of family, thus the love in the post’s title. I spent time with Luke, with my sister Ann outside of Denver, with my brother and sister who live in Milwaukee, and the whole family gathered there for a reunion on Labor Day weekend. In Love, Grief, Wildflowers, I wrote about a trip with my brother, who is very ill, to Curtis Prairie in Madison, the oldest prairie restoration in the world. I only had eyes for him and for flowers that trip. I chose this one because thistles were so omnipresent in the prairies that they became symbolic. I grew up in an area where they are invasive pests, but they are so handsome and sculptural — in leaf, bud and flower — that I was delighted to be in places where they are welcome natives.

The badlands in Theodore Roosevelt National Park, North Dakota create vivid landscapes by Betsey Crawford

The badlands in Theodore Roosevelt National Park, North Dakota

9. After leaving Wisconsin, I stopped south of Minneapolis to have breakfast with a friend, and then drove along the northern tier. On an earlier trip through North Dakota I’d been surprised to find that there are badlands there, too. These landscapes are not as spectacular as the ones in the South Dakota badlands, but they are wonderful, and another vivid reminder of the slow, patient work of our planet. This time I planned a stop so I could walk among them.

Kootenai National Wildlife Refuge, Bonners Ferry, Idaho, one of many beautiful landscapes in the Rocky Mountains by Betsey Crawford

Kootenai National Wildlife Refuge, Bonners Ferry, Idaho

10. After the badlands, I kept going toward Coeur d’Alene, Idaho. I think of northern Idaho as a wonderful place to be because Luke lives there. But it’s also spectacularly beautiful, nestled in the mountains, with lots of lakes, unusual for the Rockies. There are some exceptionally deep glacial lakes, and many streams, like this one in an area that used to be farmed. Now the Kootenai Wildlife Refuge, what little farming still happens here is designed to provide seed for migrating birds.

After a month in Idaho I drove south to Marin once more, along the Pacific coast landscapes of water, shore, and redwoods, continuing to sing my life into existence. The First Beings, who formed themselves out of primordial mud to take on the task, never said this singing would be easy. Between my brother’s illness, the state of the world, and the myriad challenges that come our way, day after day, it wasn’t. But I had wonderful times traveling my songlines this year.

I’ve come to understand that joy, like love, is a state of being, not a reaction. Fear, grief, anger are reactions. They all have their place, they’re all inevitable, since vulnerability is also a state of being, and one we can never escape. I would love to get to the place where joy is a state I can’t escape, either, but until then, it’s good to know where I can find it: on the ground among the flowers, meeting new friends in unexpected places, being with loved ones in ancient canyons and open prairies, walking toward a sun setting in flashes of rainbow and streams of glory. As the light returns and a new year dawns, I wish everyone an enduring state of joy.

The sun setting over Mount Tamalpais, Marin County, California create beautiful sky and landscapes by Betsey Crawford

Sun setting over Mount Tamalpais, Marin County, California

I’d love to have you on the journey! If you add your email address, I’ll send you notices of new adventures.

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Sowing seeds into the whirlwind

Nov
19
2016
by Betsey | 6 Comments
Cow clover (Trifolium wormskioldii) Chimney Rock trail, Point Reyes National Seashore, California by Betsey Crawford

Cow clover (Trifolium wormskioldii) Chimney Rock trail, Point Reyes National Seashore, California

Learning, on yet another election night, that progress is not only not remotely linear, but that the way is often bewilderingly and heartbreakingly tortuous, with far too many backward strides, I was reminded of Wendell Berry’s poem, February 2, 1968. He wrote it three days into the disastrous Tet Offensive of the Vietnam war, in a year that was to include two deeply tragic assassinations, worldwide rebellion, and a bitter election. 

In the dark of the moon, in flying snow, in the dead of winter,
war spreading, families dying, the world in danger,
I walk the rocky hillside, sowing clover.

A seedpod from the Fabaceae, or legume, family, in the Anza Borrego Desert in southern California by Betsey Crawford

The nutritious seedpods produced by the legume family, this one from the Anza Borrego Desert in southern California, are one of the reasons the human race has made it this far.

Words in poems are not accidents. In the face of grief, fear, and despair, Berry was sowing a member of the Fabaceae, the legume family. One of the most ancient plant families on earth, with fossils 56,000,000 years old, it is also one of the largest, and perhaps the most important for our species. Our evolution went hand in hand with the legumes, the most abundant source of plant protein.

They can prosper even on Berry’s rocky hillside because of an extraordinary ability: to take nitrogen — the nutrient plants are hungriest for — and transfer it from the air to the soil by converting it to another form of nitrogen, ammonia. Rhizobia, bacterial descendants of billions-of-years-old archaic organisms, perform this feat, living in nodules along the roots of the plants. Because they create their own fertilizer, legumes can adapt to a wide array of conditions. Then, while thriving themselves, they enrich and renew the ground they grow on.

White clover (Trillium repens) Cougar Bay trail, Coeur d'Alene, Idaho by Betsey Crawford

White clover (Trillium repens) Cougar Bay trail, Coeur d’Alene, Idaho

But Berry wasn’t sowing chickpeas, or peanuts, or peas, or soybeans. He was sowing clover, a plant specifically used to nourish both soil and grazers. For millennia farmers have planted clover to bring tired soil, its nitrogen used up by other crops, back to life. It offers extra rich fodder to farm animals. It keeps pollinating bees in the neighborhood by giving them nectar they particularly value. In the middle of war, in the dark of winter, on frozen ground, he is sowing a plant of deep nourishment and renewal, a thread that ties crucial elements of farming — and thus life — together. 

Groundnut (Apios americana) Osceola, Missouri by Betsey Crawford

Groundnut (Apios americana) Osceola, Missouri

For post-election solace, I turned once again to the millions of people who are sowing clover all over the world in Paul Hawken’s book, Blessed Unrest. For all the benefits to be gained by good legislative policies, governments are perhaps the last places to look for lasting revolutions in human affairs. Political institutions are designed, for good and ill, to perpetuate themselves, and thus are conservative by nature. Any movement too far in one direction calls for counterbalance, often too far in the other direction. “Change,” President Obama reminds us, “doesn’t come from Washington. It comes to Washington.” That’s true for any capitol in the world. Progress, as least as I define it, does lurch along, but the lurches can be sickening, even terrifying. 

Canyon pea (Lathers vestitus) Charmlee Wilderness, Santa Monica Mountains, Malibu, California by Betsey Crawford

Canyon pea (Lathyrus vestitus) Charmlee Wilderness, Santa Monica Mountains, Malibu, California

So, instead, I take comfort in the slow, steady work of ordinary people. In the New York town where I spent most of my adult life, the environmental organizations range from The Nature Conservancy, a world-wide force with a budget in the billions, to a small group of volunteers who faithfully monitor the health of the harbor I lived on. Each village and hamlet in the township has its own group, working to preserve and restore natural areas, advocating for open space, rebuilding dunes and beaches.

Farther afield, the Group for the East End works on issues facing the eastern end of Suffolk County on Long Island. A bay keeper, part of the fast-growing Waterkeeper Alliance, oversees the health of Peconic Bay. The local commercial fishermen, individuals with small boats and businesses, gather together to protect their centuries-old livelihood from the demands of sport fishermen and the tourist industry. 

Fairy duster (Calliandra eriophylla) Anza Borrego Desert, California by Betsey Crawford

Fairy duster (Calliandra eriophylla) Anza Borrego Desert, California

Multiply this out, town after town, state after state, country after country. Working for the health of rivers, streams and wetlands, for clean air, for better public transportation. Other groups working for indigenous rights, workers’ rights, civil rights, the right of girls worldwide to an education. More groups concentrating on land, farming and hunger issues. Each issue weaving into all the other issues.

Hawken lists the varieties of organizations: keepers, watchers, friends, defenders, coalitions, alliances, incubators, networks, “each keeping its unique character and focus while adding to the richness of the movement as a whole.” He likens it to the growing understanding of the human immune system as a network rather than an army, where the cure for disease may depend more on fostering the network’s connectivity than on pushing for a ferocious response.

Eskimo potato (Hedysarum alpinum) Denali National Park, Alaska by Betsey Crawford

Eskimo potato (Hedysarum alpinum) Denali National Park, Alaska

Connectivity is one of the most important elements in this worldwide web. Every path that you follow will lead you to related paths, and those paths will lead you to numerous other possibilities. Like the internet on which it depends, this vast movement works toward more opportunity, more connection, more information, more ideas, more ways to gather people together. A one-person campaign to save a stream morphs into a variety of organizations dedicated to changing the upstream practices that cause pollution. The challenges to those practices lead to larger questions about what really serves the human race and the planet we depend on.

This indigo bush (Psorothamnus schottii) flower in the Anza Borrego Desert in southern California clearly shows the characteristics of Fabaceae flowers: the banners at the top, the wings spreading on either side of the keel at the bottom.

This indigo bush (Psorothamnus schottii) in the Anza Borrego Desert in southern California clearly shows the characteristics of Fabaceae flowers: the banners at the top, the wings spreading on either side of the keel at the bottom.

“Most movement activists start like Chico Mendes, believing they are fighting for a specific cause, in his case rubber trees, and realize later they are fighting for a greater purpose: ‘then I thought I was trying to save the Amazon rainforest. Now I realize I was fighting for humanity.’”

I, too, am an ordinary person sowing clover, some of which is on this page, along with other Fabaceae family members. When I wonder if my passion for plants is enough, given the magnitude of the tasks we face, I remember theologian Howard Thurman’s soul-affirming answer to a friend asking a similar question: “Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.” 

Lupine (Lupinus sericeus) Tubbs Hill, Coeur d'Alene, Idaho by Betsey Crawford

Lupine (Lupinus sericeus) Tubbs Hill, Coeur d’Alene, Idaho

What makes me come most alive is peering into the souls of flowers, and returning with the news I find there. Their stories reach far beyond their luminous petals, eventually connecting, as Berry’s clover does, as Hawken’s immune system does, as all our endeavors do, with all life on earth. This eternal interweaving is why poet Gary Snyder’s advice for the journey, at the end of For the Children, can be so simple. One thing leads to everything.

To climb these coming crests
one word to you, to
you and your children:

stay together
learn the flowers
go light

Feather plume (Dalea formosa) Organ Mountains, New Mexico by Betsey Crawford

Feather plume (Dalea formosa) Organ Mountains, New Mexico

I’d love to have you on the journey! If you add your email address, I’ll send you notices of new adventures.

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Happy Halloween: slightly ominous, very orange

Oct
29
2016
by Betsey | 8 Comments

Orange flowers-Globe flower (Trollies species) taken in Manito Park, Spokane, Washington by Betsey CrawfordWhen I first saw the picture of the trollius above, taken at a lovely garden in Manito Park in Spokane, Washington in 2012, I was struck by how ferocious it looked, though the trollius itself didn’t inspire that thought when I took it. It was the only time I’d ever associated the word ‘ominous’ with a flower. I was reminded of it this fall, as I took pictures of fading flowers and my beloved seedheads. I realized that some, in their withered and darkened states, were slightly spooky. Others were ghost-like. One even had a seed pod like a withered claw.

Orange flowers-Purple coneflower (Echinacea purpurea) taken at Curtis Prairie, Madison, Wisconsin by Betsey Crawford

Spooky petals and fierce spikes: purple coneflower (Echinacea purpurea) Curtis Prairie, Madison, Wisconsin

So I decided to do a Halloween post celebrating the slightly ominous in flowers. As I went through my collection, I was amazed at how many I found to fit this theme, whether it was a shape, or the play of the light, or the possession of spines, or the dark lure of fading petals, or simply Halloween’s emblematic color. I have photos to celebrate Halloween for years. For this one, something fairly typical of me happened — I was attracted to all the orange flowers.

Asked to choose my favorite color I would find something on the lavender/purple spectrum.  I keep my environments relatively neutral. I like the soft browns and greens of earth tones. Neither pure red nor pure yellow is at all becoming to me. But I’m drawn to orange, both in flowers and clothes. One of my most vivid childhood color memories is of a bright orange dress, pleated from the shoulders to the hem, that I wore in second grade. Another is of a coat, the color of the cactus below, that my mother bought me for Easter one year.

Orange flowers-Gander's cholla (Cholla cylindropuntia ganderi) taken in the Anza Borrego Desert in southern California by Betsey Crawford

Sharp spines and scary buds: Gander’s cholla (Cholla cylindropuntia ganderi) in the Anza Borrego Desert in southern California

It’s not a common color for flowers, particularly in the wild. On Mike Haddock’s wonderful Kansas wildflowers site, he includes 10 orange flowers in a section with pink and red flowers. Yellow flowers get their own section to accommodate 192 different flowers. Blues and purples are a close second at 186. Whites dwarf them all at 312. They are even more rare in the desert. There is a wider variety of orange flowers for gardeners and florists, because growers and propagators aren’t depending on native plants alone. They find plants all over the globe, and encourage the colors they want by creating cultivars of likely prospects.

Our color readers are cone shaped neurons embedded in our retina, six million in each eye. Almost two-thirds of them preferentially read the longer wavelengths of the warm colors — red, orange, yellow — and are able to distinguish more color variation in those tones than in blue or purple ones, which are transmitted by only 2% of our cones. The remaining third are dedicated to green wavelengths. From those ranges come all the color variations we are sensitive to.

Orange flowers-Purple coneflower (Echinacea purpurea) taken in Sandpoint, Idaho by Betsey Crawford

Skeletal petals: purple coneflower (Echinacea purpurea) Sandpoint, Idaho. The bright colors in the background are orange leaves on the ground.

The carotenes in orange flowers — the same chemicals that make orange fruits and vegetables so good for us — selectively absorb and reflect light waves of specific lengths. The reflected ones enter our pupils, excite the cones that are receptive to that length, and our brain tells us that we are looking at orange. Like the proverbial tree falling alone in the forest, creating sound waves no one hears, without brains to interpret the messages brought by these wavelengths, there would be no color. The flower would still have carotenes, the light from the sun would still both be absorbed and bounce off it, cones would even get stimulated. But they only telegraph their excitement. The brain — ours, a hummingbird’s, a butterfly’s — translates the result.

Orange flowers-Orange globe mallow (Sidalcea malviflora) taken at Newspaper Rock in southeastern Utah by Betsey Crawford

Lit from within: orange globe mallow (Sidalcea malviflora) at Newspaper Rock in southeastern Utah. Malviflora sounds a bit ominous, but it only means it has mallow-like flowers.

Human enjoyment of its color isn’t a flower’s first priority. Their gorgeous hues are designed to lure pollinators, and did so for eons before we showed up. Hummingbirds see in the near-ultraviolet spectrum, which makes reds, oranges and bright pinks pop out for them. Our biblical heritage, where the earth was presented to us to use and enjoy, makes it hard to accept that these beautiful colors aren’t designed for our pleasure. Where does our delight fit in? The joy of the little girl twirling in her bright orange pleats, the joy of the woman sitting among cups of orange light? It’s hard to think of ourselves as bystanders of all this splendor, able to enjoy it, but having no reciprocity. Do flowers know they’re loved? Have they, in fact, enslaved us by their beauty, ensuring millions of us will spend hours each day growing more and more flowers? What a great plan!

Orange flowers-Monkey flower (Limulus aurantiacus) in the Charmless Wilderness in the Santa Monica Mountains, California by Betsey Crawford

A light in the dark: monkey flower (Mimulus aurantiacus) in the Charmless Wilderness in the Santa Monica Mountains, California

The idea that beauty nurtures us in order for us to nurture beauty reminds me of my discussion of Nicholas Humphrey’s theory that our ability to feel awe has been chosen by evolution to more deeply connect us to the earth we inhabit. To make what can be a very difficult life worth living. And the even larger idea, first introduced to me by Thomas Berry, that our consciousness has evolved to allow the cosmos to reflect on its own luminous creations. I love the thought of the creative energies patiently working, on a time frame we can’t begin to fathom, to insure that there will one day be enough hyper-sensitive cone-shaped neurons nestled in the retina, and a powerful enough optic nerve traveling to a large enough brain. All so that the universe can contemplate its own beauty, reflected in vivid orange flowers.

Orange flowers-Columbia lily (Lilium columbarium) taken at a roadside stop in southern British Columbia by Betsey Crawford

Just for beauty: Columbia lily (Lilium columbanium) at a roadside stop in southern British Columbia

I’d love to have you on the journey! If you add your email address, I’ll send you notices of new adventures.

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Living on the ledge: ingenious bitterroot

May
21
2016
by Betsey | 5 Comments

Bitterroot (Lewisia rediviva) on Mount Burdell in Novato, California by Betsey CrawfordThis is a story about a difficult and fascinating terrain, a beautiful, adaptable flower, and a maddening claim. Bitterroot is far from rare in the western states of the U.S. and Canada. It’s Montana’s state flower, has bequeathed its name to the Bitterroot River and Valley there, as well as to the Bitterroot Mountains and the Bitterroot National Forest, which separate Montana and Idaho,   It grows from northern British Columbia to southern California, and west to Colorado. It was a major food source for Native Americans for thousands of years.

Serpentine rock outcrop on Mount Burdell in Novato, California by Betsey CrawfordBut in Marin County, just north of San Francisco, where I’m spending my spring, it only grows in two places, and very sparsely. One of those spots is on a small ledge of serpentine on Mount Burdell, in Novato. If I hadn’t been on a walk with Marin County naturalists both times I saw it, I would never have found it. There are tons of small rock outcroppings on walks in Marin, and sometimes they don’t even aspire to the term ‘outcrop.’ They just look like bare, rocky soil.

But this isn’t any rocky soil. Serpentine is named for its dominant mineral, serpentinite. There’s more of it in this neck of the woods, going north into British Columbia, because it forms at the edge of old continents, where the inexorable plates moving along the planet’s surface meet. One dives under the other, scraping massive piles of rubble onto the edge of the upper plate, and taking equally massive amounts deep into the earth. After eons of heat and pressure, that rock finds its way to the surface again, the crystal structure it once had completely altered.

Serpentine rock on Mount Burdell, Novato, CaliforniaAmong these metamorphic rocks is serpentine, noted for its blue and green coloring, though it can have lots of colors, even orange. Serpentine is poisonous for most plants since it contains a much higher ratio of magnesium to calcium than is usual for the the earth’s crust, or is at all comfortable for plants. It has high levels of heavy metals toxic to plants, like manganese, chromium and nickel. It even has asbestos in it, which makes it ironic that it’s the state rock of California, a state with a ‘this causes cancer’ sign everywhere you go.

Whatever plans to grow on the thin, pebbly soil that erodes from serpentine has to have adaptations that allow it to deal with this toxicity, and to be able to live without the potassium and phosphorus that are crucial to most plants. Some have developed ways to selectively absorb the calcium they need, and others — called metal hyper-accumulators — have evolved to be able to store the toxic metals in their leaves and the ground around them. This not only solves the problem of the excess metals, but protects the plants from browsing animals and various forms of bacteria.

Bitterroot (Lewisia rediviva) on Mount Burdell in Novato, California by Betsey Crawford

This bitterroot still has its fleshy, cylindrical leaves, though they often disappear before blooming, and return after the heat of summer.

There are plants that have adapted so well they can only live in such soils. Bitterroot is not one of these serpentine endemics, though its habitat is always rocky and dry. It solves its water needs with a large root for such a small plant, thick like a forked carrot, and very nutritious. Like many members of the Portulacaceae family, it has fleshy, almost succulent leaves and stems, which also help with water storage. These leaves go dormant in the summer, sometimes even before the flowers bloom, which also helps the plant cope with dryness from sun and hot rocks. The whole plant stays low to the ground, so is less affected by drying winds.

Bitterroot (Lewisia rediviva) on Mount Burdell in Novato, California by Betsey Crawford

This year the flowers were paler than the blooms of 2014.

Given all these strictures — metal toxicity, water deprivation, low fertility — bitterroot’s flowers are startlingly large and lovely, opening out like waterlilies strewn on rock. They bloom briefly, and often intermittently, preferring sunny days to cloudy, and sometimes afternoons to mornings. Having seen them blooming gloriously on one visit to Mount Burdell in 2014, I was looking forward to seeing them again. But this April they seemed to be struggling. Their leaves had gone dormant by mid-month, the tips of the buds were dry, and the few flowers I found blooming were paler in comparison. All, perhaps, the result of early, unusually hot weather. And proving, once again, that loving the ephemeral beauty of wildflowers requires a certain existential fortitude.

Marin dwarf flax (Hesperolin capitata) growing on Mount Burdell in Novato, California by Betsey Crawford

Growing next to bitterroot on Mount Burdell, the rare and delicate Marin dwarf flax also thrives on serpentine.

At least I’m not depending on them for food, which the Native Americans did for millennia. And that brings us to the third part of the story: the maddening claim. Bitterroot’s Latin name is lewisia rediviva, named by German botanist Frederick Pursh for Meriweather Lewis, who brought back samples (still at the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia) from his great exploration. Rediviva refers to its ability, after years in Lewis’ luggage, to revive when planted, although it never bloomed.  Naming plants for the Europeans who came across them in their travels has been standard practice ever since Linnaeus’ introduction of botanical nomenclature in the 18th century. Given that it was a European system, that was perhaps inevitable.

California poppy (Eschscholzia californica) on Mount Burdell, Novato, California by Betsey Crawford

California is covered with poppies in the spring, and though fewer on serpentine, those there seem to thrive.

What I find maddening now, however, is to read the claim that Lewis ‘discovered’ bitterroot. Here are some of the people who discovered bitterroot long before Lewis and Clark arrived in Montana: the Washoe (California and Nevada), Owens Valley Paiute (California), Northern Paiute (California, Idaho, Nevada and Oregon), Western Shoshone (Idaho, Nevada, California, and Utah), Gosiute (Nevada and Utah), Northern Shoshone (Idaho, Wyoming, Utah), Eastern Shoshone (Wyoming), Southern Paiute (Utah), Northern Ute (Utah), and Salish (Idaho). Also, the Upper Nlaka’pamux, southern Shuswap, Okanagan-Colville, and southern Kootenay of British Columbia. North of bitterroot’s blooming range, the  Nlaka’pamux, Lillooet, northern Shuswap and northern Kootenay peoples traded for the roots, which were so valuable a bag of them could buy a horse.

Round headed gilia (Gilia capitata) Bitterroot (Lewisia rediviva) on Mount Burdell in Novato, California by Betsey Crawford

Another neighbor on the outcrop: round headed gilia (Gilia capitata)

The wholesale dismissal of people living here for 10,000 years before Europeans arrived has had a thousand infinitely more dangerous and debilitating manifestations than the claim that Lewis discovered bitterroot. But it still seems worth pointing out that this is another dismissal. These cultures had a long and intimate relationship with the beauty and durability of bitterroot, living on its energy through the winter and timing their spring foraging migrations by its bloom. It was the second most commonly collected root for food, after camassia, the source of crucial nutrition for untold generations. And yet it’s credited to and named after a man who only mentioned it in his journals to note that he found the bitterness of the boiled roots ‘naucious to my pallate.’

Cream cups (Platystemon capitata) growing on Mount Burdell, Novato, California by Betsey Crawford

There were a few tiny cream cups (Platystemon capitata) prospering on the serpentine

It seems a little harsh to sandwich the gentle, fleeting beauty of bitterroot between the toxic realities of serpentine and the tricky prejudices of language. But there are complex and deeply interwoven histories among humans and plants, cultures and habitat, politics and policy. My Irish forebears came here because Ireland was devastated by the Great Hunger of 1845-1852.  The famine was caused as much by disastrous political conditions as by the fungus-like Phytophthora infestans, which laid waste the potatoes that almost half of the population — due to those political realities — relied on as their sole source of food. There are thousands of such stories in human history, and more to come as climate change and population pressure alter the conditions and places in which plants can grow. These stresses will cause both strife and inventive adaptations, as plants, the earth, and humans continue their completely inseparable evolution.

Bitterroot (Lewisia rediviva) on Mount Burdell in Novato, California by Betsey Crawford

I’d love to have you on the journey! If you add your email address, I’ll send you notices of new adventures.

Songlines 2015: north to Alaska

Dec
30
2015
by Betsey | 3 Comments
Songlines-2015

Warm colors go west and south, cool colors north and east.

For the first Songlines post last spring, I wrote about how much I love creation stories that not only have the world sung into existence, but also have us continually bringing life to life as we relish our own passing presence. What a great joy it is to be given the task of singing of all that we touch, everything we see, every note we hear, everyone we meet. To celebrate a year of wonderful songs, of so many great adventures on the road to Alaska and back, I thought of choosing my favorite photographs from each place I stopped for any length of time, but I didn’t want to repeat any that I’d used in previous posts. That still left plenty, but, as I looked through my photos from the year, I found myself drawn to those that brought back small, special memories. Not, for this post, the wild transcendence of being at Denali, but rather finding myself at a roadside stop unexpectedly filled with flowers, or taking a hand tram across a rushing gorge, or having dinner with a family of moose. That criteria still made for a quite a list, and I’ve done my best to restrain myself.

ratany-krameria-bicolor-elephant-tree-trail-Anza-Borrego-desert-by-Betsey-Crawford-2

Ratany (Krameria bicolor) Anza Borrego Desert, California

l) I started both this year’s adventures and this website in the Anza Borrego Desert, and though I wrote of how much I loved being there and my joy in walking with its mysterious creatures I didn’t have time to include flowers, which is one of this winter’s tasks. Among the many, I chose ratany because I was enchanted by its tiny beauty, and had never seen it before. The flower is less than an inch in diameter, and grows profusely on a small, silvery, very stick-y shrub. I didn’t find out the name until I got to Arizona, and dragged a ranger out to see one growing outside the information center at Saguaro National Park.

feather-dalea-dalea-formosa-Dripping-Springs-Las-Cruces-New-Mexico-by-Betsey-Crawford

Feather dalea (Dalea formosa) Dripping Springs, Las Cruces, New Mexico

2) After Saguaro I gave the luminous cactus flowers their due, both in a post and gallery, and then went to Las Cruces, in far southern New Mexico, to visit a friend. On a hike in Dripping Springs Natural Area I discovered a shin-high shrub that appeared to be a haze of silvery gray. On closer inspection, the haze turned out to be thousands of tiny, squirrely, fuzzy seedheads. There were a few magenta flowers remaining, but I was perfectly happy with the state I found it in. Once found I ran into it everywhere, much to my delight.

Cross-Canyon-Cahone-area-Colorado-by-Betsey-Crawford-2

Cross Canyon, southwestern Colorado

3) The story behind this picture is an extra happy one. Before I got to Utah, I emailed the Four Corners Native Plant Society to ask about finding wildflowers. I instantly heard back from Al Schneider, who is the FCNPS, as far as I can tell. He was extremely helpful and friendly, and said to call him when I got there and we’d go out wildflower hunting together. Which we did, three times, with other flower lovers, enjoying wonderful hikes and picnics out in the desert. One day I went with Al and Betty, his wife, to Cross Canyon, just over the Utah border in Colorado. We were out of the red rock territory that’s so characteristic of southern Utah, and which can be seen (until I get to the Utah galleries!) in Moses in Utah and A Land of Stone Tablets. While we were hiking and taking photos of wildflowers in Cross Canyon, I looked back from a perch high above the valley floor and saw my truck in isolated and tiny splendor among juniper and sage, sitting on the Dakota Sandstone that makes up that canyon walls and bottom. Al has been cataloging the wildflowers of the Four Corners (of Colorado, Utah, New Mexico, Arizona) for 15 years. His website is a masterpiece.

apache-plume-fallugia-paradoxa-seedheads-Snow-Canyon-state-park-St-George-Utah-by-Betsey-Crawford

Apache plume (Fallugia paradoxa) Snow Canyon State Park, St. George, Utah

4) I love seedheads! As was clear in both the Going to Seed post and the gallery. Who could resist these? I found them in a garden showcasing Utah native plants outside a restaurant (where we had a delicious lunch) on the outskirts of St. George, in southwest Utah.

David-Austin-rose-Manito-Gardens-Spokane-Washington-by-Betsey-Crawford

David Austin rose in the Manito Park rose garden, Spokane, Washington

5) After Utah I spent a month in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, where my son, Luke, lives. My posts from there explored the concept of home, contemplated what made wildflowers take over my life, and shared an adventure with Luke and Splash. Since I don’t, at least so far, write about garden flowers, the unbelievably photogenic David Austin roses at Manito Park in nearby Spokane might never see the light of day, so I’m including one here.

columbia-lily-lilium-columbianum-near-Yahk-British-Columbia-by-Betsey-Crawford

Columbia lily (Lilium columbianum) near Yahk, British Columbia

6) On the way from Coeur d’Alene to Waterton Lakes National Park in Alberta, for the Waterton Wildflower Festival, I pulled into a roadside rest stop for a short walk and soon found myself unexpectedly surrounded — and completely enchanted — by glowing orange lilies. My favorite was this one, delicately folded over a grass stem.

Tall-purple-fleabane-Erigeron-peregrinus-Waterton-Lakes-National-Park-Alberta-by-Betsey-Crawford

Tall purple fleabane (Erigeron peregrinus) Waterton Lakes National Park, Alberta

7) This photo of very common, lovely, and exceptionally photogenic fleabane was taken at the Waterton Lakes Wildflower Festival, where I found myself in heaven. It’s in the Waterton Lakes gallery, but I wanted to include it here, because it’s one of my favorite photos of the entire year. It reminds me of a line I love from a Robert Hass poem: The light in summer is very young and wholly unsupervised.

moose-family-Long-Rifle-Lodge-Glacier-View-Alaska-by-Betsey-Crawford

Mother and two babies near Matanuska Glacier

8) I loved Alaska and loved writing about it — how we lost track of time, falling in love with Homer, the amazement of Denali, the beauty of fireweed everywhere, the extraordinary music of The Place Where You Go To Listen. I did a gallery of landscapes, and a gallery of wildflowers. So, it’s been well covered, though there are more! But these three pictures have their own Alaska stories. This mother moose with her two babies showed up to browse behind the restaurant where we ate after visiting the Matanuska Glacier. I convinced George to walk to the edge of the glacier with me, which was a challenge for him, and you can see the slightly dubious look he gave me in the picture below. But he got close, and made it back, with a bit of help on a tricky section from a sweet, hearty young man. After all that we were starving, so we had dinner with the moose family.

George-Matanuska-Glacier-Alaska-by-Betsey-Crawford

George at the Matanuska Glacier

hand-tram-lower-Winner-Creek-trail-Girdwood-Alaska-by-Betsey-Crawford

Hand tram over Winner Creek, Girdwood, Alaska

9) I gather hand trams were once common in Alaska, since this one advertised itself as a ‘real Alaskan experience.’ It’s the only way to continue on the Lower Winner Creek Trail in Girdwood, which I wanted to take, so over I went. It’s very zippy until you get to the center, where you hang for a moment, swaying, looking down at the rocks and rushing water 15 feet below. Then you have to haul yourself ‘uphill’ to the other side, a longer trip than it looks in the photo. On my way out, I found two 14 year-old boys happily pulling people across, so that part was easy. I was a bit worried about how I’d get back, since it looks like it takes stronger arms than mine. However, I decided it would all work out, and it did. Everyone helps pull everyone else over, with lots of jokes and good humor, which, to me, is another real Alaskan experience.

alpine-milk-vetch-astragalus-alpinus-Seward-Alaska-by-Betsey-Crawford

Alpine milk vetch (Astragalus alpinus) Seward, Alaska

10) I love this photo because it captures the feeling of lots of ground in Alaska — full of plants, moss, and lichen, spongy to walk on, lush and lovely. However, I’ve never fully identified the flower. I’m hoping, for my sake, it’s alpine milk vetch, but it could be an invasive pest vetch, also purple, and growing abundantly on roadsides. So, until I know, I won’t put it into the Alaska wildflower gallery, but I wanted to include it here.

alpine tundra along the Dempster Highway in the Yukon, including bearberry (arctostaphylos alpina) and lichen by Betsey Crawford

Alpine bearberry (Arctostaphyos alpina) and lichen, Tombstone Territorial Park, Yukon

11) There are words that bring up the mystery and beauty of the north instantly: muskeg, aurora borealis, midnight sun, tundra. This is a bit of tundra, which I was determined to find, easy if you’re willing to drive far enough north. We drove up the Dempster Highway in the Yukon, as far as Tombstone Territorial Park, and found a beautiful world of mountains and tundra. Had we gone on, we would eventually have gotten to the Arctic Ocean, but the next day a big, snowy storm blew in, so it was a relief to be back in Dawson City, where it only rained. I left already envisioning a return trip, when I’d drive up in July for the wildflowers, and back in August for the fall color. Such a short growing season, with lots of dry cold the rest of the year, creates a treeless biome of dwarf plants and lichen. These are barely 2 inches high.

sunset-Spokane-River-Coeur-dAlene-Idaho-by-Betsey-Crawford-2

Sunset over the Spokane River in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho

Back to 5) You can catch fantastic skies everywhere, but Coeur d’Alene, with its unusually beautiful cloud formations, produces them routinely, giving me the perfect visual metaphor as the sun sets on 2015. I wish everyone an adventurous, fun and joyous new year.

Life, tilted

Jun
23
2015
by Betsey | 8 Comments
Idaho wildflowers-shooting star (Dodecatheon pulchellum) taken on Tubbs Hill, Coeur d'Alene, Idaho by Betsey Crawford

Shooting star (Dodecatheon pulchelum)

There are moments that tilt life, even if we don’t know it at the time. Not the big moments, when our paths take sudden and dramatic turns, like locking eyes with the stranger who will become a great love, or taking your child in your arms for the first time. The quiet ones. Moments that say, from now on, your path will change. It may not be a dramatic shift, just a tilt, but it may make all the difference. The photos accompanying this post are from one such tilt.

Idaho wildflowers-fairy bells (Disporum trachycarpum) taken at Cougar Bay, Coeur d'Alene, Idaho by Betsey Crawford

Fairy bells (Disporum trachycarpum)

One tilt can lead to another, even eleven years later. When my dog, Splash, came into my life in 2001, she created a tilt, for the simple reason that she never understood cars, and I couldn’t let her off leash anywhere a car was conceivable. I started taking her on trails, mostly through the woods of Montauk, at the eastern tip of Long Island, and so started an entirely unexpected chapter of my life. The most important aspect of that chapter, for this post, is that I began taking my camera with me everywhere we went.

I wasn’t new to photography, but up until then it had been about things — my son, trips taken, gardens I designed, flowers I wanted clients to see. In the woods it became aimless. As my eyes lit on something that touched me, I took a picture of it.

Idaho wildflowers-chocolate lily (Fritillaria affinis) taken on Tubbs Hill, Coeur d'Alene, Idaho by Betsey Crawford

Chocolate lily (Fritillaria affinis)

This produced a bunch of very uninteresting photos. It took a while to convince me that the camera and I see the world differently. My eyes can pick out the truncated branches and twisting trunk of the dead tree that looks like a rough-hewn angel. The camera records every branch and trunk in the neighborhood, so the fascinating dead tree is barely evident. One spring I was convinced that I could convey the castle-like qualities of aging stumps, with their upper edges worn into crenellations and their ramparts of moss. The camera, lacking my imagination, recorded a bunch of old stumps.

Idaho wildflowers-a wild rose (Rosa woodsii) taken in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho by Betsey Crawford

Woods rose (Rosa woodsii)

I kept going. There were delicate wild azaleas and cascades of mountain laurel in the spring, sweet-scented clethra in early summer, gold grasses and red sumac in the fall, light glimmering on the water, tracery of branches in the winter. It was part of the meditation and the fun of being in the woods season after season. The camera and I began to come to grips with each other’s strengths and limitations.

Idaho wildflowers-yellow pond lily (Nuphar polysepalum) taken at Fernan Lake, Coeur d'Alene, Idaho by Betsey Crawford

Yellow pond lily (Nuphar polysepalum)

When we left on our journey in 2011, I had been making mandalas for a few years and was still working on them as we traveled. The easiest art to practice on the road, however, was photography, since it involved no supplies, no setting out or cleaning up. I could just grab my camera and go, and it went everywhere with me, recording our adventures.

That didn’t change dramatically in May, 2012, but it tilted. I came to Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, for a month off. My partner, George, had had complicated surgery in February. In April we’d made a trip to the east coast to see friends and family and to finalize the sale of his boat. He stayed in the east to do that, and I came to Coeur d’Alene. It wasn’t a happy time. We were both exhausted and out of kilter. My son, Luke, the main draw in this neighborhood, was going through his own challenges. I spent an unusual amount of time, for me, just sitting and watching the Spokane River go by.

Idaho wildflowers-Ninebark (Physocarpus malvaceus) taken on Tubbs Hill, Coeur d'Alene, Idaho by Betsey Crawford

Ninebark (Physocarpus malvaceus)

But something wonderful was happening on Tubbs Hill, a promontory into Lake Couer d’Alene, a wild place, full of trails, right in the middle of town. It was a banner year for wildflowers. Everything was blooming in full force. Once I saw this, off I went, morning and evening, taking pictures of the whole show, starting with a patch of shooting stars, out on a small ledge over the lake, their vivid pink glowing in the late afternoon sunlight.

I left the trail and got down on the ground with them, taking picture after picture, day after day, as they bloomed, faded, and went to seed. Lying in the golden sunlight, in the cool May evenings, with my dog Splash settled near my feet, was heaven, and as flower succeeded blooming flower, a heaven that lasted for weeks.

Idaho wildflowers-Shooting star (Dodecatheon pulchellum) ready to shoot its seeds, taken in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho by Betsey Crawford

Shooting star (Dodecatheon pulchellum) ready to shoot its seeds

One day, a few weeks into the season, I was lying on the ground taking pictures, just off a little-used path. After a while, I sat up and looked around. I’d forgotten where I was, and everything rushed into my heart at once — the cool, dense earth I was sitting on, the trees soaring above me, the sun showering through the leaves like ethereal gold coins. The lake glinting off to my right, the green breath of plants surrounding me. The delicate beauty of the wildflowers. My passion for them.

Let the heart love what it loves, says my favorite sutra. Life tilted, and the tilt has made all the difference.

Idaho wildflowers-Bruneau mariposa lily (Calochortus bruneaunis) taken on Tubbs Hill, Coeur d'Alene, Idaho by Betsey Crawford

Bruneau mariposa lily (Calochortus bruneaunis)

I’d love to have you on the journey! If you add your email address, I’ll send you notices of new adventures.

Related posts:

 

Songlines

Jun
07
2015
by Betsey | 9 Comments

Songlines-mapIn my favorite creation story the world is sung into existence. I first came across this wonderful idea as a child, in one of C.S. Lewis’s Narnia books, ‘The Magician’s Nephew’, where he has his divine embodiment, Aslan the lion, slowly move across a pitch black and featureless void, singing first the stars into the darkness, then the sun, and then on to all the details of the world we love.

Polly was finding the song more and more interesting because she thought she was beginning to see the connection between the music and the things that were happening. When a line of dark firs sprang up on a ridge about a hundred yards away she felt that they were connected with a series of deep, prolonged notes which the Lion had sung a second before. And when he burst into a rapid series of higher notes she was not surprised to see primroses suddenly appearing in every direction.

Fairy bells (Disporum trachycarpum) at Settlers Grove of Ancient Cedars near Murray, Idaho by Betsey Crawford

Fairy bells (Disporum trachycarpum) Settlers Grove of Ancient Cedars near Murray, Idaho

All these decades later I can still feel Polly’s ‘unspeakable thrill’ at the thought of Aslan’s ‘gentle, rippling music’ sending waves of green up the hills he had just sung into existence. While the rest of his creation story is straight out of Genesis, Lewis knew the world’s myths, and perhaps took the singing from its originators, the aboriginal peoples of Australia. This retelling is from Sara Maitland’s ‘A Book of Silence’:

In the beginning is the land — flat, dark and featureless — until the ancestors went traveling the paths of it. As they travelled they were creating the mountains and the hills and the rocks and the animals, people, places. They did not do it once and for all, they do it still. The paths must be walked. The creation work must be done; the land is forever and the creating of it is forever. The dreaming, singing, dancing, walking goes on and on, forever.

Tall bluebells (Mertensia paniculata) at Settlers Grove of Ancient Cedars near Murray, Idaho by Betsey Crawford

Tall bluebells (Mertensia paniculata) Settlers Grove of Ancient Cedars near Murray, Idaho

The ancestors included humans, landscape features, and the first of certain totem animals, who gathered themselves together from primordial mud and proceeded to sing the rest of the earth into existence. To me this creation story has the keenest intuition into the actual processes that formed the earth — the earliest floating particles and gasses that gravity pulled slowly together into a swirling mass. The billions of years of coalescing, exploding, hardening, cooling. The pushing up of gigantic mountains. The coming and going of vast silent seas. The slow emergence of plants and animals. The millions-of-years-long evolution of human beings.

All this time the ancestors were singing, breathing, dancing the world into form, the landscape into rivers, forests, rocks, flowers, canyons, people, animals, birds, sky, clouds. These songs and stories created songlines, maps to the Australian landscape. If you know them, you can find your way, landmark by landmark, along the line you’re following, through trackless desert, along the ridges of mountains, finding water in the valleys, seeing the quicksand to walk around.

Meadow rue (Thalictrum occidental) at Settlers Grove of Ancient Cedars near Murray, Idaho by Betsey Crawford

Meadow rue (Thalictrum occidentale) Settlers Grove of Ancient Cedars near Murray, Idaho

The best part is that, fired by the same forces that shaped us in the first place, we are still singing the earth into creation. The dreaming, singing, dancing, walking goes on and on. What a wonderful task to be given: to sing of all we touch, each person we speak to, every place we visit, everything that opens our hearts. To spin songlines every day of our lives.

Settlers Grove of Ancient Cedars in the Idaho National- Forest by Betsey Crawford

The paths must be walked. The photos accompanying this post are from such a singing, along such paths: going with my son, Luke, and my dog, Splash, to Settlers Grove of Ancient Cedars near Murray, Idaho. An echo of deep time: the oldest tree there was a seedling in 900 CE.

When I was last in Coeur d’Alene, my friend, Marie Cecile, said something that I took as a beautiful blessing — that as I go from place to place, I’m not only bringing my own energy to that place, but I’m also taking the energy of that place with me, and bringing it to the next place, and so composing an interwoven network. Her words inspired me to create the map of my song lines since leaving on our adventures in 2011. Warm color lines brought us west and south, cool colors north and east. This summer I will be adding brand new ones, tying nature to spirit.

Baneberry (Actea rubra) Settlers Grove of Ancient Cedars near Murray, Idaho by Betsey Crawford

Baneberry (Actea rubra) Settlers Grove of Ancient Cedars near Murray, Idaho

As I travel these lines I sing of wildflowers, and my love for beauty, for my family and friends, my love for the green sighing of the forests and prairies, the gray mists of the coasts, the hot breath of the deserts, the prickly cacti flaunting their gorgeous, silky flowers, the tiny shooting stars nestled in damp woods. I sing as I walk, as I meet people, as I take pictures. We all do this, singing of the life we love, of the things we’ve lost, the joys we long for, paying attention, bringing life to life, our songlines floating out behind us, like spider’s silk, both gossamer and resilient, reeling from our hearts.

Moving hearts

May
26
2015
by Betsey | 8 Comments
bow-tie-arch-moan-utah-by-betsey-crawford

Bow Tie Arch, Moab, Utah

If places were men, Portland, Oregon would be the guy I met at a farmers market. We both like to hike, and read, and travel. He talks about his feelings. He recycles. It’s all very satisfying, but a bit damp. Moab, Utah would be running away with the cowboy who comes to town occasionally, never says a word, looks at me out of the corner of his eyes, and one day shows up with an extra horse so I can ride away with him. Hot, but after a while the dryness would get to you.

If home is where the heart is, then southern Utah is one of my homes. But I don’t see myself living there. Moab, the most likely candidate in practical terms, like a thriving library and access to foods I like, is indeed a cowboy town, dealing with a constant avalanche of people, tons of whom fan out into the wilderness on all-terrain vehicles instead of horses, making Moab the ATV capital of Utah. It’s a lot of hubbub, and there are only two months of the year — cold January and blistering July — when it calms down.

silver-fleabane-erigeron-argentatus-Snow-Canyon-Utah-by-Betsey-Crawford

Silver fleabane (Erigeron argentatus) Snow Canyon, Utah

For most of my life home was a physical place, a building, both shelter and oasis. Now, taking my home with me, and discovering that there are places that are home even if I have never known them, expands the idea, makes it clearer that home is resonance rather than space, however suitable and even wonderful the space is.

Take California and South Dakota, for examples. California is a place of great compatibility for me — incredible beauty, a constant avalanche of fruits and vegetables, acupuncture easier to get than a slice of (artisanal) pizza. I know and love wonderful people there. There are thirty times more wildflowers blooming there than, say, Utah. You can have desert, mountains, meadows, cities, small towns, valleys, vast lakes, ocean, all without leaving the state.

fort-pierre-national-grasslands-south-dakota-by-betsey-crawford

Fort Pierre National Grasslands, central South Dakota

But I’ve never felt in California the way I felt driving into southeastern Utah for the first time, or the way I felt one hot July day in South Dakota, when I stopped the car on a lonely road along the Native American Scenic Byway and stepped into the prairie, the sun overhead, the sky cobalt, the grasses flowing over my feet, calves, tickling my knees in the constant wind, the heat pressed against my skin, almost dizzy with the sense that this was my place on earth. That the curves of my body were part of those vast rolling hills, with their waving oceans of  green and tan grass, their endless breathing of air.

I doubt I’ll ever choose either Utah or South Dakota as a place to live permanently. But they are home, because my heart was already there, waiting for me. This is a great mystery. Many of us, including me, say casually of these experiences, ‘I must have had another life there.’ We feel that we’re walking into echoes. I have no clear vision of how our energies mix in this universe as they come in and out of the plane we call life. Perhaps we’re part of a universal consciousness, potentially making all histories and stories our own. Though, if so, why do some places, people, situations so reverberate with us, while others don’t at all? Why do I find echoes in the prairie of South Dakota and the desert of southern Utah, but not in the mountains of neighbors Montana and Colorado?

fernan-lake-coeur-d'alene-idaho-by-betsey-crawford

Fernan Lake, Coeur d’Alene, Idaho

In the past, I had the old saying backwards. I made a home I loved, and put my heart there. Now I see that enduring phrase also acknowledges the heart’s ‘homing’ ability — the resonance that tells us where home is, where our heart belongs. Right now I’m at home in Couer d’Alene, Idaho, because this where my son lives, and so part of my heart is always here.

kalientoI’m privileged to be able to live this mystery, to wander from place to place, finding echoes, surprises, beauty, wildflowers, companions. It’s both mildly antic and quite wonderful to travel through the world towing chairs and forks and my favorite rug, making home wherever I feel like it, wherever I’m drawn.

But I have a lot of company on this journey, whether on wheels or not, because we’re all living in moving homes, as we carry our hearts from place to place.

Camas-lily_Tubbs-Hill_Coeur-d'Alene-Idaho_by-Betsey-Crawford-

Idaho’s camas lily (Camassia quamash)