Perspective (North Rim Grand Canyon)

Last week I visited the North Rim of the Grand Canyon, so the plants in this post are Arizona natives.  A recent cold snap with late spring rains left the area lush and full of blooms.  I couldn't have arranged better timing.

North Kaibab Trail.  Can you see the bridge at the bottom?  It looks like a toothpick.

Perspective matters.  The Grand Canyon, and Scott's recent medical crisis, have offered me a vertiginous change in perspective.  What is large and what is small?  What is important and what is not?  Wild or tame?  Safe or risky?  The answers depend on your perspective.

Muddy spring, or gnarled pine against a cloud-strewn sky?  

Some plants at the Rim were familiar, sort of.  "Is that a Ceanothus?"  California Lilacs are long past blooming in my neighborhood, yet the local Buckbrushes, Ceanothus fendleri, were in bud or in copious bloom at different spots around the rim.  All grow low to the ground, perhaps so they can nestle under the snow when the weather gets rough.  One was covered with tiny bee-like critters, perhaps specialized pollinators.

Pollinators love Ceanothus.  

Manzanitas looked lush compared to ours, but also hugged the ground.

Desert Snowberries (Symphoricarpos longiflorus) wore tiny pink blooms in abundance.

Other plants were stunningly unique.  When I saw this delicate plant hanging in a mossy crevice at the back of an overhang at Hidden Springs I knew it was special.  It is the Cave Primrose (Primula specuicola) found only at sheltered springs on the Colorado Plateau.

Cave Primrose tucked under a deep overhang at Hidden Springs.  The spring has contained five of these plants for the last 50 years, despite the fact that each plant lives three or four years.  A naturalist speculated that seeds fall "up" by getting caught in spiderwebs on the cave walls.

This little herb grew at an interesting angle.

I am grateful to Nancy Varga, a longtime Grand Canyon volunteer who created a wonderful photo guide to the local wildflowers.  It resides in the North Rim Visitor Center.

Cliff Rose (Purshia mexicana) in flower looks like a Rockrose.  Up close, aging flowers reveal feathery appendages, like some sea invertebrate at 8000 feet.

What is your perspective on non-native plants in the wild? Salsify is a Eurasian immigrant but it sure is cool.  (The wildflower guide reported that Native Americans used it for food and medicine. Recently, I guess.)

You might think this Salsify (Tragopogon dubius) was a normal sized puffball if you didn't have my finger for perspective.

The occasion for my visit was a class taught by Thea Gavin (prime mover of Concordia University's Heritage Garden) called "Writing on the Edge."  It was sponsored by the Grand Canyon Field Institute, which has all kinds of amazing classes and adventures.  Leisurely hiking, close observation of the wonders around us, and writing to open-ended prompts invited us to see the beauty around us with new perspectives.  You can join us June 17-19 of 2016!

What is your perspective on barefoot hiking?  Thea, our instructor, has been doing it for years. She provided endless entertainment to other hikers.

Someday the artificial green of our drenched and manicured and chemical-dosed Southern California lawns will be seen for the waste that it is, and the fitting beauty of native plants will be acknowledged.  Sometimes it takes the edge of a cliff to change a person's perspective.

If you'd like to read a poem I wrote that takes a variety of perspectives, read on.

Overlooked
(Widforss Trail, June 25, 2015)

A Pine Cone Husk

I am part of the dance.
I sprouted.  I swelled.  I ripened.
I popped wide open.
I fed a chipmunk.
And now I cushion the forest floor.

Why do you continue to believe that you must be busy to be useful?
To be recognized to be useful?
To be something you craft yourself into
instead of
part of the dance,
growing in one season,
feeding others in the next,
spent in dignity of rest in the third?

A Ponderosa Pine Branch Tip

A fine bouquet, I was. Fifty feet up.
The squirrel got hungry, I suppose.
Plucked me, but did not set me in a vase.
Left me unused in the snow
where I settled slowly
over two seasons
into the forest floor litter.

See my needles?
They are still a bit golden.
I fell in my prime.
I was spent wastefully.
Take a needle cluster with you,
and remember me.

A Burned Tree Trunk Remnant

I am a memorial
of the forest that was
not so long ago.
I am honored
to break the canyon winds
for this young sprout.
I am tickled
to have become art
in my dotage.

Let me tell you a secret.
The fire scars harden the wood.
I endure
where my sisters have vanished.
I do not live
     as my young friend lives
yet I endure.
I am a memorial.

A Bent Stick

Now why, you ask,
Would I grow at such a ridiculous
     angle?
It happens.
The cone got heavier than I expected.
The mother tree was preoccupied
     with matters of life and death.
And I bent
till I hung straight down
which is handy when it snows buckets.

But now I lay flat.
No cones, no needles.
Bark cracked, twigs broken off long since.
Though I think
     I am starting to grow
          a fine patina of lichen.
It suits me, don't you think?

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