April is not a very colorful month in Alaska. It’s Breakup, that weird season in between winter and spring, and frankly, breakup is messy and not so attractive. Morning ice skating rinks give way to afternoon mud bogs and slush piles . Sloppy, sloppy, sloppy. Postholing through the unevenly melting snowpack is tiring and tedious. The predominant colors are brown, gray, white, and dead grass yellow. The only pastel is the sky on the occasional sunny day when it’s not raining, sleeting or snowing.
Even so, we’re all celebrating. The thermometer actually rises above freezing and soon, soon, soon the snow will be gone and summer will be here. Already the days are long and the twilight lingers.
But I miss color. I miss my wildflowers. Although I’ve spent a lot of winters in Alaska in the past, for over a dozen years I’ve been snowbirding it, heading south to the desert or the West Coast for the winter. It’s a lifestyle I love.
Last year at this time I was in lockdown in Las Vegas, one of the most surreal experiences of my life. The colors of April, found in the wastelands on the outskirts of town, were my salvation during this insane interlude.
Most years, though, I spend the month of March immersed in the wildflowers of the California desert. Then as the flowers move up in elevation in April, I follow along, chasing the bloom.
April is also the month that the cactus are in bloom.
By the middle of the month, heat and wind begin to take their toll on the flowers, and on me. It’s time to go North, time to go home, following the flowers.
My new favorite place to begin this journey is Carrizo Plain National Monument. The flowers grow thicker here than anywhere else I’ve ever been. It’s something to ponder, that the entire Central Valley once looked like this.
From there I move on, hopscotching my way along the Sierra’s western foothills, following the path of the Gold Rush on the trail of Highway 49, with a drive through the Yosemite valley along the way.
I’ll head west to the redwoods in Mendocino County and enjoy that other color of April, green, for a day or two on my way to Oregon.
I might visit friends in southern Oregon in the Grant’s Pass area, an April wildflower delight indeed.
From there, time and flowers are both getting scarce. I’ve still got a few days to enjoy the coast on my way to Canada. It’s breakup in Canada, too, though, so I bomb through and reach Alaska right at the end of April – just in time for the first Pasque flowers of the season.
Thank you, Amy for this week’s Lens-Artist’s Photo Challenge – the Colors of April. You’ve made me really miss my spring flowers!
