Yesterday my husband and I drove through Rocky Mountain National Park to one of our favorite hiking trails, the Tundra Communities Trail. The trail starts above the timberline at over 12,000 feet. It then climbs half a mile up from the parking area and across what looks like the top of the world, a world of lichen, mosses, and exquisite little flowers in a vast panorama dominated by rocks, wind and sky.
These tiny alpine flowers, only an inch tall or less, grow in an unbelievably challenging climate. Their entire growing season is 6 to 8 weeks out of the year. With nothing to stop it, the wind sweeps across that vast rocky expanse at up to 100 miles an hour. Snow can fall on any day of the year. The plants endure high levels of ultraviolet light, bitter cold, and over 30 feet of snow each winter. They have so little time and energy to grow that many of them take years to flower.
Whenever I go into the mountains, I look for a lesson. Today my lesson was the Alpine sunflower, which they call the Old Man of the Mountain. The Alpine sunflower spends up to 70 years building up enough strength and resources to produce a single flower.
70 years.
Sometimes I feel that because I’m in my 70s, my flowering days are past. That the only option left to me is to curl up in my routine, fold my leaves around me and do less, less, less. To stay in my (very comfortable) comfort zone and never step outside it anymore. To not push back against the little fears that multiply with age.
But if I had done that, I would have missed the hike today.
Today as we climbed, the unstable weather switched back and forth from sun and calm to swift-moving clouds dropping hail and sleet, accompanied by winds that came at us so strongly they could stop us in our tracks for a second.
But I did the climb, despite the wind, the hail and my dodgy knees. And at the top, I got to stand and look across an immense sky from mountain to mountain and across mountain and mountain and mountain.
If I had not done the climb today, I would also have missed seeing real, living Alpine sunflowers. They were only an inch or two tall and easy to miss among the rocks and lichen. Like me, they were being bombarded by hail and sleet and strong winds. But there they were, crowned with bright yellow flowers, pointed always towards the East, and the sun.
As I write these words, after driving down the mountain, I ask myself this question: If the Alpine sunflower can wait 70 years to produce its major accomplishment, what flowers can I produce in my 70s?
Time to try.