Last Sunday, several of us hiked up the Straight Creek Trail. It’s kind of an unlikely place. You start just at the west portal of the Eisenhower Tunnel and hike north and east to the ridgetop above the tunnel and the boundary of Loveland ski area. Despite what you might think is a somewhat inauspicious start, you soon leave the sounds of the highway behind, and are instead soothed by the babbling of Straight Creek.





Straight Creek is one of the great wildflower hikes of Summit County, and we caught it right at, or perhaps a tad after, its peak. Everywhere you looked, there were incredible bouquets of a diverse array of flowers. (double click photos to enlarge)

It also harbors a lesson in possibility.





On the way up the trail, we stopped and talked about an essay that Terry Tempest Williams wrote (in her book Refuge) about birds that have rarely been sighted in Utah. Among birdwatchers, such birds, that may be definitively seen only once or twice in a fifty-year period, are called “accidentals.” (Another category of rarely sighted birds for which there is less documentation are known as “hypotheticals.” The terminology alone almost makes you want to become a birdwatcher.) She recounted a trio of sightings of American Flamingos in Utah, as well as a few other accidental species, including roseate spoonbills.






A little later, we got up high enough to see tons of Elephant’s Head flowers in full bloom. This is a flower that in itself stretches your concept of what is possible. A flower made up entirely of little pink or purple elephant’s heads, trunks and ears? Well, why not?  As remarkable as they are, Elephants’ head are often quite profuse in marshy areas and near streams, so much so that they can color entire meadows with a pink or purplish tint.


But then, there on the left, something that does not exist: a white Elephant’s Head. I’ve been on hundreds of hikes in the Colorado Rockies, and only in this place have I seen the white Elephant’s Head.


As Terry closed her essay:”How can hope be denied when there is always the possibility of an American flamingo or a roseate spoonbill floating down from the sky like pink rose petals?
“How can we rely solely on statistical evidence and percentages that would shackle our lives when red-necked grebes, bar-tailed godwits, and wandering tattlers come into our country?
“When Emily Dickinson writes, ‘Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul,’ she reminds us, as the birds do, of the liberation and pragmatism of belief.”

And, I would append, as the White Elephant’s Head reminds us as well.