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Out There: Spring weather brings brilliant yellow blooms

Now, the warming, energizing rays of the sun are bathing the landscape, plant, animal and human life included...
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Sagebrush buttercups with developing seeds

Ten spring seasons ago, about this time, I submitted the first writing for this column, in the April 1, 2004, Creston Valley Advance. It was titled, “Into the sun”. Like then, today, spring has sprung. Now, the warming, energizing rays of the sun are bathing the landscape, plant, animal and human life included, in more intense rays and for longer days.

Not only has spring sprung, but the first showing has sprung into life showing off its brilliant yellow blooms, carpeting the ground with “sunlight”. It’s sunlight in flower form. Two-inch sagebrush buttercups have captured the sun! Now, though, it doesn’t have a corner on the market. The sunlight is shared with pink-veined, white-flowered spring beauty blooms and more recently with the low-growing mountain bluebell.

Birds and flowers are popular items, in the spring out there market, this time of year. Their showing, arrival, hatching, emerging or what ever you call it delights the eye and the imagination. “Flowers feed the soul,” said Mohammed. They nurture the living being. It’s partly that way because winter’s drab browns and grays and cold have pervaded the stage for, to some people, too many months. The increased sunlight chases that away. And, to humans, especially this time of year, “truly the light is sweet, and, a pleasant thing it is for the eyes to behold the sun.” (Ecclesiastes 11:7, Amplified Bible) Sunlight imparts energy to man, flora and fauna. It ups the endorphins while boosting physical, emotional and chemical energy for all.

Continuing onstage are crisp unfolding leaves, brighter green hues following drab ones, branch-tips showing green where there was no green, and brilliant yellow flashes showing from between green sepals of flowerbuds.

Now, following spring’s introduction and another burst of sunlight, come the brilliant yellow flowers of glacier lily, also known locally as Easter lily. Then, trapping some of that sunlight are pink-flowered shooting stars, an endless line of production, rooting in March’s moisture marches on throughout the summer, basking in the sunlight.

There is another sunlight, one that nourishes human life, flora and fauna. That light is the “Son”, the “Son Light”. The Son Light also feeds and nourishes the soul, the human being. The Son Light can warm and nourish the whole of humanity, imparting an additional and other kind of energy to the living being.

Capture, trap, soak up the sunlight through unfolding spring. Don’t let the flowers have it all! And, remember to soak up some the “Son Light”! And, don’t keep it all to yourself, but share it with others!

Ed McMackin is a biologist by profession but a naturalist and hiker by nature. He can be reached at 250-866-5747.