On The Trail With Auntie Elk

  • A slender blue wildflower rises from a tangle of grasses and sunlit leaves. Its stems are thin and wiry, almost threadlike, bending gently under the weight of several small, bell-shaped blossoms.
    Fewer than 10% of flowering plants produce blossoms that humans perceive as blue.
  • A deep blue-violet monkshood blossom hangs from a slender green stem, its upper petal forming a small hood like a folded cloak. The flower emerges from soft, blurred mountain greenery, delicate and almost hidden.
    Monkshood is found along cool, moist mountain streams. Delicate and easily hidden, a beautiful wildflower with a dangerous reputation. Classification: poisonous
  • A blue-and-white Rocky Mountain columbine grows beside a rushing mountain waterfall. Its white petals face outward while long blue spurs sweep backward, filled with sweet nectar for bumblebees.
    In the cool shade of the last trees before timberline, I found this lovely Rocky Mountain columbine.
  • Blue-violet Sidebells penstemon blooms in the foreground, its small tubular flowers gathered along one side of each stem. Behind it, a herd of elk grazes softly out of focus in the sagebrush.
    Blue sidebells penstemon bloom down in the valley. It is named for the way its flowers grow mostly along one side of the stem. All the blossoms face the same direction, as if ringing out for the elk to come down from the mountains.
  • A large herd of elk gathers in a green valley below a forested mountain. Sagebrush and meadow grasses stretch behind them, while cloud shadows move across the slopes under a bright blue sky.
    Elk are keystone herbivores. In a balanced ecosystem, a grazing herd can cultivate a staggering abundance of wildflowers.