Flowers I Almost Missed
Mo Saw Them First
I told Mo I thought I’d spotted some buttercups or dandelions earlier in the hike. Maybe. I wasn’t really paying attention if I’m honest. She lit up through the screen anyway, which is the thing about Mo... her enthusiasm has this way of becoming yours whether you’re ready for it or not. She told me to keep looking.
So I did.
What followed was basically a guided botanical tour conducted entirely over text message, with me as the field correspondent and Mo as the expert back at headquarters. I’d send a photo, she’d fire back an identification, and suddenly a hike I was doing alone had a whole second person in it. Yellow bells. Buttercups. Penstemon stalks just starting to think about blooming. Oxytropis doing its dense, silvery cushion thing low to the ground. Phlox with those small white flowers punching way above their weight class. Something that might be a native crocus, she said, with the appropriate scientific caution. A Townsend daisy she had to think about for a second before committing.
By the time the hike ended I’d walked the whole thing by myself and somehow not been alone at all. That’s not a complaint or a brag, just a fact I kept turning over on the drive home. Without her nudge I’d have walked past every single one of those plants without a second glance, just another guy moving through a landscape he wasn’t really seeing. The flowers were always there. I just needed someone to remind me to look down.
March 26th’s Constant Reboot
For twenty-four years, March 26th has been my annual reset button. From declaring chill sessions and waiting on spring weather to cheering hundred-mile snow bike races and deciding to quit photography for a year, this date consistently forces recalibration. This year’s single purple bloom feels like the perfect metaphor for all those nudges toward something new.
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