The Power of a Flower

When I was a boy up in Michigan, a bit of the joy of Christmas was drained from me because I knew it was the beginning of a long, dark slog until spring. Getting the cold and gray winter months behind us was always emotionally trying and it was hard to even believe the Earth was tilting back toward the sun because the days did not appear to lengthen. As each year ended, I dreaded the snow and short days and endless, cold nights preceding the equinox. Children kept their heads down and leaned into the wind, slicing at our cheeks as we plodded toward the school bus stop. We never seemed to master our despair over the gloomy weather.

In Texas, though, the beginning of a new year always prompts me to envision bluebonnets. Usually, the first few weeks of January I climb onto my motorcycle and ride west to the Rio Grande to get the season’s earliest possible glimpse of the state flower of Texas. While Midwesterners are still running their snowblowers, out along the water course that marks the border with Mexico, the distinctive blue flower is rising from the rocky soil. The Big Bend Bluebonnet, as early as mid January, can frequently be knee high on the shoulders of Ranch Road 170, the winding and chip-sealed track from Study Butte to Presidio. If there is a spot of rain and cool desert air, the bluebonnet season can last into very late spring.

A Solitary First Bloom Along the River Road West of Terlingua

Biologists call the Texas bluebonnet Lupinus texensis and it is a genus of the legume family of Fabaceae, a group of flowering plants, which includes more than 19,000 varieties that grow all over the world. The lupine descriptive means the shape of the bluebonnet involves densely packed petals that show the form of a pea. Bluebonnets are comprised of an upper petal that represents a kind of spike or banner, side petals known as wings, and a keel, which is two fused petals. There are even markings for the pollinators to make their way to the sweet spot and then fly away to spread the beauty across the land. Although there are other species of lupine flowers that resemble the Lupinus texensis and proliferate in parts of the South and West, Texas is, as Nanci Griffith wrote and sang, “….the only place on earth bluebonnets grow.”

“Gulf Coast Highway” - Possibly the Most Beautiful Song Written about Texas

Nothing reassures me that the world might still have a touch of sanity and is properly spinning on its axis than sitting my motorcycle on a warm January day and watching bluebonnets come into my field of view as I lean into the curves of the River Road. Nature can ply its magic even with the most disenchanted and wind in the face, a gently rolling road, and wildflowers will act as a curative to almost any ailment.

A Mid-January Splash of Color in Big Bend National Park, ca 2019

The blooming of great seas of bluebonnets usually happens from late March into May, though way out yonder they come early enough to help a fella get an emotional jump start on spring. Texas legend is that the last images many of the soldiers at the Alamo saw were flowered blue plains running to the horizon beneath the smoke and thunder of battle. I wonder if the fallen found the Elysian Fields to be as pretty. I prefer to experience my bluebonnets without the sound of shots fired in anger and instead with the musical bed of quietly spinning motorcycle wheels.

Inevitably, any natural growth with disarming beauty, which comes with the seasonal change’s warmth, will makes it’s way into culture. The Comanche and Apache both considered the flower sacred and are believed to have used it for medicines and face paints and the European settlers arriving in the remote reaches of Texas found comfort in the colorful blooming flower of the spring. There are too many songs and photos and poems about the bluebonnet to even begin describing a compendium but the titles range from “Bluebonnet Highway” to “Bluebonnets” and just “Bluebonnet.” They are often a paean to Texas or a missing love or perform as a symbol of an aching loss that might be reborn.

My trip to see the first flowers of the year each January is more about the ritual than the ride. Maybe it is because I am, technically, an outlander who was not born over the sacred soil, but there is an emotional linkage for me that is connected to bluebonnets. In the spring of my 24th year, I remember riding the Rio Grande near Mission, Texas with my new bride and the prairie was blue like an ocean as the orange blossoms were also opening and the air was sweet with their promise. As far as we were from our families in the North, who were still fighting the freeze, we knew we had made a right choice by moving to a land where spring arrives in January.

The bluebonnet became the state’s official flower in 1901. We can assume there was not much debate about the other wildflowers, though the Indian Paintbrush must have surely had its own lobby to argue it’s estimable beauty. The bright red of the paintbrush, though, might be made even more starkly attractive when a field of red bloom arrests the eyes next to blanket of bluebonnets. On almost every fireplace mantel in Texas, and on some wall in most houses, there are photos of little ones sitting up to their armpits in a thick patch of bluebonnets. It might even be a Texas law.

Some Sweet Bluebonnet Spring

The glory of bluebonnets coming up in January in the Big Bend is that we are not required to wait for spring in Texas; we can ride out to meet it. The countryside along Highway 190 after Mason and out to Menard and El Dorado and Iraan will still be brown and waiting for rain and there will likely not be a trace of hopeful spring on that long route. South out of Fort Stockton, though, down 385 toward Marathon, a sharp eye might catch the lone lupine bending toward the afternoon sun, even in January.

Along Ross Maxwell Drive, Big Bend National Park

The flower makes it possible to think of the land of the Trans Pecos as it was in previous centuries when Spanish missionaries encountered the Jumano people or when the Mescalero Apache were riding their horses across the unforgiving landscape. A bluebonnet field likely offered hope of life and survival in a desert littered with the bones of more living creatures than could ever be counted. I look and forget politics and bills and angry people stalking all our lives and I see life’s enduring possibilities.

In the petals of a little blue flower.