I was in Glacier National Park yesterday, and someone saw my license plate and asked where Connecticut was. I didn’t quite know how best to answer that one. But it got me thinking a little about the glories of the Nutmeg State. For one thing, I think, we find beauty and in the elegance and resilience of small things. That is perhaps why amid all the splendor of mountains and glaciers and lava fields and burned out forests, I find such wonder in the the wildflowers that grow and thrive in some pretty challenging landscapes. It’s one thing to stand in awe of the magnificence of Redwoods and Sequoia, but to feel reverence, pause for a moment at a patch of wildflowers growing out of a baked field of lava or the husk of a burned out Douglas Fir.
The pictures below come from various stops over the past four weeks: from Wyoming and Idaho, to the high desert of eastern Oregon and the volcanic soil of McKenzie Pass; and from the from the glacial valleys of northern Washington to the forests of Montana.
Out of the Wilderness 
These are breathtaking and Godful
Hmmm…something greater than I is at work here. If only we could be as strong as the delicate green shoot that pushes itself through a vein in rock. Magnificent and wondrous!
Nothing is more beautiful and serene than flowers blooming in the cool mountain air! Thank you for the chance to see the flowers I remember from trips into “the wilderness” once more.
Thanks Barbara, for your reply. I was struck by this a couple of weeks ago, as I was walking through the lava fields around McKenzie Pass in central Oregon. This is a landscape that seems so utterly devoid of any potential of life. Still, there are these really amazing plants -wildflowers and small trees- who have found a way to live and thrive in places most of us would not imagine to be capable of sustaining life.