The hills are vivid as I drive east out of Los Angeles. The south-facing foothills north of the 91 are sparkling with speckles of yellow popping from the unusually vivid greenery. But it’s when I headed south on Interstate 15 that the fire started.
Poppies! Not solid, but iridescent patches of orange flames in the hills. Around Lake Elsinore, I stopped as thousands have been doing the last few weeks to gawk. Since it was a Thursday afternoon, the weekend crowd wasn’t there completely clogging the one-lane dirt road that ascends into Walker Canyon.
I found a parking spot at the foot of the road that was forced closed due to the volume of flower seekers converging on this particular canyon since the superbloom started in California. An ice cream truck was selling snacks. Porta-potties were perched as sentries along the pavement. I had a couple of hours before sundown and before arriving at my sister’s house, so I laced up my hiking boots, grabbed my Tilley hat and headed up the path.
All manner of humanity were there, in thankfully smaller volume, but still there were families, couples, kids, a few dogs. Cross-culturally, it was a typical Southern California crowd. As I worked my way up the canyon, the poppies got thicker in patches, interspersed with splashes of purple bachelor buttons and lupine. Smiles of awe and delight were everywhere. I could hardly stop myself from “oohing and aahing” at every turn of the trail. About a mile up the path, I began to hear the gurgle of the stream below, laughing in delight as it danced through the poppies on its way to civilization below. A tiny buzz in my right ear leads me to spot a hummingbird overdosing on nectar. My heart is full of the nectar of joy.
All this was helped not just by unusually copious amounts of precipitation, but fire—destructive, scary, rebellious fire less than a year earlier, saturating the hills with death. And yet that destruction, coupled with nourishing rain, signaled thousands of dormant seeds to come to life months later. The orange swaths of bloom are reflective of the orange flames necessary to bring this resurrection.
We are midway through the season of Lent, burning our way toward the resurrection bloom of Easter. The poppies remind me that new life is often precipitated by death and destruction. For me it can be the destruction of assumptions, bias, resentments, selfishness, or whatever weedy underbrush clogs my spiritual path.
It’s hard to be somber amidst such stunning beauty. I am grateful for the insight to appreciate it, to be wowed by it, to delight in it.
