Feeding the Soul with Flowers

Bear grass. (All photos
by Stacey Romney)

          With its foam-like spikes of tightly packed, tiny blossoms, bear grass is the whitest, fuzziest, most majestic flower in the wild kingdom, in my opinion.

         Bear grass grows throughout the Pacific Northwest, but the best display in the Applegate is on the Cameron Meadows-Frog Pond loop trail, which is steep (2165-foot elevation gain in two miles) but a great trail for wildflowers in general, to say nothing of its trunk-dominated forest with the vastness of spaces between. If you catch the wild rhododendrons at just the right moment, they'll be tumbling down the hillside with large, pink, bulging blossoms. If you're too late in the spring for the best rhododendron display, you might be just in time for the tiger

Cinquefoil

lilies, drooping their orange heads in modest acknowledgment of their superior beauty. Beyond the tiger lilies, in the next of the series of Cameron meadows, at the right time of year the masses of wildflowers make a painterly display of yellow cinquefoil, red columbine, yellow groundsel, white yarrow, purple Larkspur, and red Indian paintbrush, none of which filled that meadow yesterday, when my hiking partner, Stacey, and I climbed the Cameron Meadows trail. The rhododendrons were just beginning to bloom, but the grasses in the meadows were lush and thick, and the cinquefoil was in its prime.

Cameron Meadows pond

          That the meadows were green, the ponds full, the flowers beautiful, the birds vocal, and the weather neither too hot nor too chilly already set an atmosphere for a great hike, but it was the bear grass that turned yesterday's hike into a walk through Eden.

          At the top of the trail, in the woods around the meadows, the bear grass began appearing with stunning strength. Around the trunks of the big firs and cedars, tall stems of bear grass, with their thickly clustered, plump balls or oblongs of tiny white flowers, each with its nipple of buds, rose up through the greenery. As we descended from Frog Pond, we became enveloped in bear grass on both sides of the trail, streaming up the mountain on one side and down it

on the other as far as we could see. For more than a mile we walked through this magic. The soft white flowers were so abundant their usually indistinguishable fragrance sweetened the air.

          To see a bear ambling through the big trees, or as I saw once on this same trail, climbing backwards down a madrone tree after a meal of berries, or to catch sight of a bobcat scooting across the trail, a fawn lying in a thicket, a herd of elk thundering past, or, my most exciting wildlife sighting on a hike, a wolverine nosing through a meadow is to feel privileged at witnessing the natural world in its ecological totality: wildlife in its habitat, just doing what it's doing, going about life, oblivious of human beings. It provides a thrill of gratitude to have been included, for a rare and fleeting moment, in that animal's existence. That's the way it was with the bear grass yesterday. To witness this mega bloom, this beauty, this rarity of abundance was as unique and soul-fulfilling as religious ecstasy.