• Flowered Touches of Glory

 

Setting: Solitude Day on the Journey at Pine Springs Ranch, San Jacinto Mountains, southern California

 

Carpets of Baby Blue Eyes [nickel-sized flowers]

    smile at me as I start hiking Spitler Peak Trail.

    They are joined by star-pointed purple gilia

        and a few golden daisies.

 

Today as I hike I’m taking my time for several reasons.

    My energy level is down from a weekend bout with a bug.

    I need time to contemplate God’s glory—

both barriers to experiencing it

and also ways to reflect it.

    I am eager to enjoy sights and sounds along the trail.

 

Fragrance from two chaparral shrubs—

mountain mahogany and holly-leaved cherry—

fills the air with inviting sweetness.

Their blossoms delight both bees and butterflies.

Lizards skitter and scamper across granite boulders

    and rustle dry oak leaves under the chaparral.

    The rock-colored territorial males do pushups,

        exposing bright blue throats and sides.

A Black-headed Grosbeak, one of my favorite birds,

    sings exultantly as he flies from one high perch to another.

Surprisingly few flowers are in bloom.

    Cold weather—there was even snow last week—

        has delayed peak blossoming

        much later than normal.

    Abundant plants promise gorgeous displays

        two or three weeks from now.

    I hunt for the beautiful deep lavender Canterbury Bells

            that at this time of year

            usually bloom in abundance along the trail.

        I find only two buds that might open

            day after tomorrow if the air warms enough.

One southern exposure, aided by heat-gathering boulders,

    has patches of bright orange Indian paintbrush in full bloom,

    along with heavy clusters of pretty pink bells

        hanging in profusion from the tip of every branch

        on the red-barked manzanita bushes.

Nearby, an unusual manzanita with white bells

    has almost completed its flowering season.

 

I relish God’s glory shown in the flowers

    and the majesty of the mountains.

I think of problems and promises and even people

    that sometimes block his glory.

I am encouraged that God has granted me

    the gift of reflecting and sharing his glory

        through word pictures.

 

My slower pace rewards me

with seeing a couple kinds of plants

I had never noticed over the course of hiking this trail

    once or twice a year for the past 17 years.

One of them, a young black oak several hundred feet

    below the nearest grove, was likely only five years old.

But the clumps of resurrection-type ferns

    surviving under the shade of a gigantic granite block

    had undoubtedly lived there far longer

        than the 17 years I’ve been coming by.

Their name derives from how they survive.

    During the heat of summer and other dry periods,

        the leaves curl up, look dead and feel dead.

    But immediately after a rain the fronds unfold

        as though resurrected,

            life courses through their veins,

                and again they present pleasant pictures

                to passersby who take time to see them.

Perhaps observing these plants for the first time

        after many passes

    is a message to me to slow the pace of my daily life

        as I intentionally did with this hike.

Perhaps I need resurrection as well

    in order to experience God’s glory in new ways

    and share that glory better with others.

 

All too soon my time for ascending the trail comes to an end

    and I must descend.

I find my energy is renewed and my spirit refreshed.

My voice joins with the Psalmist:

    “O Lord, my Sovereign,

    how majestic is your name in all the earth!” [Psalm 8:1]

 

~~All rights reserved