posted by Sandy Fails 0 comments

I woke early to find thick fog hovering above rain-soaked earth. I pulled on jeans and muddy sneakers and headed out to check out rumors of wildflower bacchanalia out Brush Creek Road. Sure enough, I soon passed Dusty Demerson’s photo workshop participants just off the road, thigh deep in dewy lupine with their cameras and travel coffee mugs.

            Luckily no one yet had hit the ditch trail (off the big trailhead about three miles out Brush Creek). Since it eventually fades away instead of “going” somewhere, the rutted old road doesn’t show up on trail maps or bikers’ radar. As I parked the car at the trailhead, I saw no other humans.

            The night’s rain had apparently washed all sound and movement from the world. Water filled the potholes, dripped from the leaves and hung in the fog, giving the air a velvety feel that’s rare for our dry, sunny mountain clime.

            And the flowers… oh my. Blue lupine, yellow sunflowers, scarlet gilia, purple larkspur, countless others… like a carpet made of bouquets. I found myself walking with a certain reverence in the midst of such beauty.

            At the first vivid patch of flowers, I felt the same urge I feel when a rainbow appears or a sunset deepens before me; I immediately wanted to share the wonder with someone else. But as I walked on, I was glad not to have other people with me (though I keenly missed the undemanding companionship of Luke, the old golden retriever whose recent passing warrants another blog altogether).

            Alone, I breathed in the mud-infused perfume of flowers coming into bloom and fading into seed. I felt, as always when I venture outside in solitude, an expansiveness loosen my shoulders, lungs and mind.

            Inside structures, my loftier thoughts and yearnings bump into ceilings and bounce off walls and grow cramped and stunted. When I stay inside too long, my life starts to feel small and contained, so limitations and obligations take up an undue portion of it. Grander stirrings shrink to irritating discontentments, like buzzing flies bashing against the windowglass.

            Outside, my aspirations expand. I don’t just want to finish that press release or get the bills paid, I also want to be a clear, loving, effective person. Beyond completing chores, I want to bloom with abandon and lend perfumed splendor to the world.

            So now I’m back home. My muddy jeans are tumbling in the washer with the day’s laundry and my “to-do” list awaits. I’ll work, then perhaps I’ll hike with friends to chat, share trail mix and ogle the floral profusion around us. Back to the plot line of my life. But this morning, it felt just right to walk alone in silence, to send my prayers and stirrings into the ether along with the rising fog.