Flowering

 

Charles Johnston, Peter and I went flower hunting in the Kalmiopsis Wilderness, up on Vulcan Peak which got scoured by the Biscuit Burn in 2002. Started by a lightning strike, it fried 500,000 acres. The new understory in this area is the Siskiyou Azalea. From the top of the ridge the most intoxicating perfume wafts up from under the snags, which once reeked of ash and char. Cobra Lilies grow in the serpentine seeps along with the Siskiyou Indian Paintbrush as an adapted companion plant. And harebells, pipsissewa, and tiger lilies oh my!

Ten years later, and this place still looks like a bomb went off here. But its a great place to look for wildflowers!
Ten years later, and this place still looks like a bomb went off here. But its a great place to look for wildflowers!
foxglove
Foxglove are such a ubiquitously beautiful feature of the Pacific Northwest landscape that sometimes it’s hard to remember that they are immigrants from Turkey, escaped from domestic gardens.

(NOTE: In mid-June 2016, my husband Peter and I along with an artist friend, Charlie Johnston, spent a week at the Chetco River Inn. It is about twenty miles up the Chetco River outside Brookings, Oregon, which is on the border with California. As I often do, I decided to make a series of daily journal videoitos aka digital stories. This is the fourth in the series of five videos.)

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