Rowena Crest

When I lived in the valley I was too young to know the flowers would someday become a thing of gold. In my naivety I picked the blooms for potions, pulled the petals to see who liked me and who did not.

The colors of the spring were just a part of things, until they weren’t. My parents moved me suddenly from the fragrant valley( one late winter when I was 6) to a vast high desert muted by pines and grain fine dirt.

Here I’ve grown, save a few years back in Portland, where the blooms fell on the tables I had to keep clean. My allergies blossomed in time with the season and really, the beauty was lost on my wayward days of waitressing and wasted time.

So now, the spring beckons from across a mountain and I have to go. I’ve grown into an appreciation for organic color- wild art.

The Columbia River Gorge, just a gentle rainy meander through Mt. Hood territory for me, is home to early spring balsam root, peonies, tulips, bluebells, and lupines.

The blooms start low to the East and raise higher as the season warms. By the high heat of August you can find them lighting the tops of Timberline. Nomadic murals on the plains.

Rowena Crest, a bend in the road, beloved and bent; a metaphor for life. The twists and turns it takes to make it here, to see from above, to consider- is the corner stone of this viewpoint.

But the flowers, perched high atop the river, dance in the dusk of early May. This is the backdrop of milestone photography- I’m talking graduates, engagements, and the fullness of life itself- maternity.

Magic.

On this day in May the balsam root was already willowing, it takes time to for me travel from desert to fruit valley- I’m still a pioneer in that right- but I didn’t mind.

Crushed flowers, stale, drooping, wind swept is not a bother to me. I just love the color, the grace of tangled life. What a season to be alive!