Little Blue Flowers

We walked down to the city center today. It was really nice to get out and walk. I love walking. I’ve walked miles and miles and even more miles over the past 20 years. My favorite place to walk is in the mountains on a trail, out away from everyone, just listening to the wind in the pines. But, since I live in a city of close to 500,000 people right now, I choose to walk in quieter neighborhoods whenever I can – that is the nearest I can get to being “close to nature.”

I have walked parts of the Rainbow Trail along the eastern edge of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains in the Wet Mountain Valley of Colorado. Once you get up to the trail from the parking areas, the trail itself is fairly level. It has its uphills and downhills, but not like the hike UP to get to it! While Mel was in seminary in the early 1990’s, I took the kids hiking/walking on the Rainbow several times. On days that Mel was off work and not in class (rare, but days treasured highly!), he and I and our dog, Honey, would often walk parts of the Rainbow, or some of the trails that branched off it into the steep valleys of the Sangre de Cristos. One time we saw fresh bear tracks, so fresh I’m sure Mr. Bear was watching us from the shadows. Several times we saw deer and elk, and a couple times we watched a coyote run away from us across a nearby meadow. Although I think porcupines are very interesting creatures to look at and watch, it was no fun to meet them on the trail. Well, I should say it was no fun for Honey. I’ll never forget the third time we met a porky on a trail. I remember it in slow motion … dog sees a critter and bounds after it, Mel and I yell, dog realizes it’s a porcupine, front paws stretch out front in a sudden braking movement just like in the cartoons (I could almost hear the screeching brakes and see the dust rising), and porky just ambles along like he doesn’t have a care in the world. We should all be so peaceful, unworried and self-confident! (A side note: we did not let our dog chase wildlife, but Honey had met two other porkies up front and personal, with disastrous consequences to her nose!)

Honey and I walked all over the Wet Mountain Valley. Several times a week she and I would drive down to the southern part of the valley, park and walk the quiet country roads. I always knew spring had really arrived when the redwing blackbirds began to appear. Male redwings would stake out their territory and guard it fiercely. As Honey and I walked along the gravel roads, I would delight in the sight of these birds sitting on their fence posts, singing their mating call loudly in the spring breezes. Meadowlarks arrived soon after and added their unique and beautiful song to the chorus.

One day I will never forget. Honey and I walked over the top of a low hill. Off to the left in a pasture about half a mile away and below us I saw a herd of two-year-old calves, maybe 50 or 60 of them, running. I stopped to look more carefully. Why were they running? Honey didn’t notice and didn’t care – the scents among the grasses and wildflowers growing along side the road were much too enticing for her to notice anything else at that moment. As I watched the calves running, I realized a large dog was chasing them and I quickly scanned the pasture to see if a rancher was out rounding the calves up. No pick-up, no person on horseback. Oh no! That was a dog that would soon be shot (any dog found chasing farm animals is fair game and the law upholds the ranchers right to kill them). Suddenly the dog stopped, turned and ran the opposite direction – and the calves turned and started chasing him! After a minute or so, the dog ran under a fence, up onto a small rise a few yards away, turned around, sat down and stared at the calves. I could almost see his tongue hanging out and his sides heaving as he panted. The whole herd ran up to the fence and stood there looking at the dog. The dog, I then realized, was actually a coyote! Coyote sat there for a couple minutes, resting – and I am sure he was laughing as coyotes are known to do. Suddenly he jumped up and trotted off in the opposite direction of the calves, leaving them bawling after him. I think both coyote and calves had had a fun time in the spring air.

A few nights later, Mel and I, along with Honey of course, went for a moonlight walk along the same road. We topped the hill and were enjoying a view of the snow-covered mountains shining in the blue light of the full moon. Suddenly, seemingly out of nowhere, we heard the sound of thundering hooves running, running, growing closer and closer, louder and louder. I turned around in panic – was the fence down? Where was that sound coming from? Should we run and crawl under the fence in the other direction? “Mel! What is it? What’s happening?!!!!” And then, 50 or 60 two-year-old calves came to a dust raising halt not 4 yards away. Lined up along the fence, white faces glowing in the moonlight, dark bodies hidden in the shadows, they quietly stared at us with black eyes. My heart was in my throat and beating wildly. Suddenly I was laughing almost hysterically. Those calves had seen us walking in the moonlight and wanted to find out what we were. No fear in them! I, however, gained a couple of gray hairs that night, I’m sure! (Mel had seen them running toward us and saw the fence was up and secure – he has great eyesight, even in the almost dark of a moonlit night – so the experience hadn’t startled him like it did me.)

I have had no experiences like that while out walking here in Ukraine, in the middle of a city. I’ve seen lots of dogs and cats, hundreds of sparrows and ravens, and even a few chickens pecking at the side of the road. I’ve been stopped in my tracks by cars driving on the sidewalk, or speeding down the street. And I’ve been waylaid three times by the same two Jehovah’s Witnesses women (don’t they remember me? The foreign woman who can’t and won’t speak to them?). But no coyotes, no calves, no quiet moonlit walks with my husband.

While traveling to Yalta on the Crimea peninsula six years ago, our driver stopped on the side of the road and showed us some tiny blue flowers growing in the wild grasses. He told us that their little bulbs were edible, that during the famine years instigated by Stalin, many Ukrainian people had survived by digging up the bulbs of those little flowers and eating them. He took out his knife and dug one up, cleaned it off gently with his fingers and gave it to me to eat. I ate it and it tasted good. Today as I walked along a quiet street I saw dozens of those little blue flowers growing up against houses and fences in private yards. I may live in a city now, but God knows that my heart longs for, cries for, desperately needs the quiet beauty of nature. Little blue flowers fed Ukrainians years ago and saved their lives. Little blue flowers now feed my soul as I feast my eyes on them. They are so much smaller than a mountain, but healing none-the-less. Thank you, Father, for hearing the cry of my heart.