| Flowers
of the mountain
By
Jack Kintner
“One
thing people say about native plant hikes,” said
Don Hicks of Bellingham, “is that we’ve been
out three hours and can still see our car.” A pace
that slow is as unusual as someone doing 25 on the freeway – it
happens, but it does leave you scratching your head at first.
If
you’re like a lot of weekend hikers on and around
Mt. Baker, a day in the woods can begin frantically as
you toss together gear and kids or roommates or pets and
buzz off to the mountain, and continue rushing once you’re
on the trail.
“I
used to hike like that,” smiled
Walt Lockwood, co-author of three recent books on northwest
wildflowers published by Hancock House. “But when
you get into wildflowers and other kinds of plant life
you see in the woods it slows you down, and that’s
a good thing.”
Indeed,
on a recent hike with Lockwood and fellow plant aficionado
Lyle Anderson we were so slow we were being passed by slugs,
but that didn’t
matter. In the Zen sense of the journey being the destination
we were already “there.” We
stopped every few yards to look at something else fascinating,
enjoying the filtered light through the second growth
lowland forest, finding all kinds of things to examine,
photograph and describe to each other.
Wildflowers
will do that to you, if you let them.
“This
is called a bird’s nest fungus,” said
Anderson at one point, indicating a tiny little
cup secured to a twig. It looked like an old pottery
mug stained a coffee and cream color on the inside. “It
disperses its spores when a rain drop hits it just
so, splashing everything out and on its way,” he
explained.
Instead
of the almost forced march pace some hikers adopt, Lockwood’s
leisurely approach is more like wandering through a museum.
Sometimes the flowers are obvious, as when the meadows
around the hundreds of tarns in Yellow Aster Butte are
in bloom or when the high meadows on the flanks
of Sauk Mountain are wrapped in their spring
colors.
Lockwood,
a career foreign service officer who was president of the
Komo Kulshan chapter of the Washington Native Plant Society
(WNPS) last year, has lately turned his attentions to a
kind of plant life that’s not
so obvious, the lichens, often the first plant to colonize
a barren area.
“They’re
very interesting,” he
said with a quiet zeal, “and are actually a kind
of partnership between a fungus that provides the structure
and an algae that helps nurture the fungus.” This
partnership, or symbiosis in the language of biology,
gives rise to a wonderful variety of shapes and colors
that are as tough as they are peculiar.
Lockwood
pointed out a rock that seemed to have been tagged like
a boxcar by a miniature vandal with a can of spray paint,
leaving a large gray stain mottled with black spots. “This
is a crustose form, flat, a lot like paint.
There’s
foliose (leafy), fruticose (branched) and
a few others.” He
carefully examined several with a hand
lens revealing tiny delicate structures in the plants
and colors that otherwise wouldn’t be noticed.
Once
Lockwood began pointing out various types, lichens seemed
to be everywhere, as with the flowers. The season for flowers
is just getting underway as the warmer weather melts the
snowpack. Later in the season, generally, one should go
higher up in the hills to see the blooms.
Flowers,
like lichens, often seem to take root and survive in what
appear to be almost impossible situations. Lockwood, who
has climbed Rainier, Baker and other peaks as far away
as Kilimanjaro in Africa, cited as an example the flowers
that await those who make the arduous hike up to the top
of 5,740-foot Church Mountain. It’s a four-mile hike
that gains 3,600 feet to the steeple-like
pinnacle visible from the Mt. Baker Highway just before
crossing the river east of the town of Glacier.
“The
top has room for maybe two couples. Just below the summit
there’s a good variety growing out of the
rocks. There are Cut-leaved Daisies,
members of the Aster family and seen throughout the region
in a variety of habitats including alpine ridges. There’s
also some small white-flowered Spotted Saxifrage or Saxifrage
bronchialis of the Saxifrage family. This little beauty
displays reddish-purple spots on the (five) petals. It
is common on rocky ridges, mainly in the alpine zone,” Lockwood
said. Saxifrage means “stone
breaker,” and can also be found
near Artist Point growing right out
of the rocks.
Alpine meadows filled with flowers,
such as those shown in this issue’s cover photo by Bellingham photographer
Brett Baunton, are a little harder
to reach this year as the Skyline Trail leading to Chowder Ridge is closed. Alternatives
would be the seven mile hike into
spectacular Yellow Aster Butte as well as the Sauk Mountain trail off the North
Cascades Highway.
The
Boulder Ridge trail off Baker Lake Road goes up an arm
of Mt. Baker extending from the southeast side,
much of it through wetlands that
can make for muddy hiking and bugs. “It’s
got great wildflowers, though,” Lockwood
said, “and
there’s a kind of shortcut
for the last 80 to 100 feet up to
the top of the ridge on a fixed rope.”
There are also a number of shorter
hikes in the heather parks around the
Mt. Baker ski area that have good wildflower
displays in the early summer. Current
information about specific places to
go is available at the Glacier Public
Service Center just east of the village,
phone 360/599-2714. On the south side,
try the North Cascades National Park
and Mt. Baker Snoqualmie National Forest
service center at 810 State Route 20
in Sedro-Woolley, 360/856-5700, the
visitor information line at 360/854-7200
or the Wilderness Information Center
at 360/873-4590 ext.
39.
Lockwood,
along with co-authors Dana Visalli and Derick Ditchburn,
wrote and photographed Northwest
Mountain Wildflowers and Northwest
Coastal Wildflowers for Hancock
House publishers. The books are
sized for convenient backpacking and
the flowers are separated into eight
sections by color, making identification
easy. For more information go to the
Hancock House website at www.hancockhouse.com.
Lockwood
is leading a two mile wildflower walk through the Bagley
Lakes area on Sunday, July 29, at 1 p.m., departing from
the Heather Meadows Visitor Center near the Mt. Baker Ski
Area. For more information call the Glacier Public Service
Center at 360/599-2714.
Finally, for more information on the Washington Native
Plant Society go to their website at www.wnps.org. The
group is hosting a study weekend on and around Mt. Baker
July 20 through 22. |
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