Top 10 Parks for High-Summer Wildflowers
Introduction
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| Wildflowers at Big Sur |
Looking back on my most memorable outdoor experiences, it seems it's the little things that matter most. I think of a summer trip up the California coast I took not long ago. From a car-park at Kirk Creek, I forged off on a trail into the Ventana Wilderness, intent on big views of the Pacific and explorations of old-growth redwoods. But as I switchbacked my way up the ramparts of the Santa Lucias I realized that the real show was right in front of me, in the heathered spectrum of the chaparral hillside I was climbing: so many colors mingled together, the browns and greens of dry grasses and shrubs accented with bright bursts of color—the blooms of blue lupines, fiery coast paintbrush, and the oranges and yellows of poppies and monkeyflowers. To this day it's the palette of that hillside that I remember best about that hike.
Then there was the time, vagabonding my way west on a post-college road trip, that I pitched my tent in the middle of a broad meadow near Telluride, Colorado, stood and gazed at the ragged rock of the San Juans jutting up into the twilight, and felt that I was having an honest-to-god Rocky Mountain High. But when I poked my head out of the tent at dawn to find myself surrounded by an unimaginable profusion of wildflowers, all blazing in the early rays, I knew I could get higher still.
Wildflowers are nature's filigree, there to remind us that getting outside is not only about grand views, big thrills, and marquee wildlife. We usually make a fuss over them only in springtime, when they are harbingers of the changing season. But in most parts, they are there throughout the warmer months, ornamenting nature's design with their jewel-like delicacy, testament that the real wonder of the outdoors is the bottomless complexity of the natural world, more than its broader outlines. And in some places—mountain meadows and mixed-grass prairies, for example—the wildflower shows peak in June, July, and August.
So the next time you're readying for an outdoor trip, figure the little guys into your plans. We've picked out ten of the best places in the nation to forage around with a field guide in high summer—slow down and take the time to smell the flowers.
