Even with my limited knowledge of the names of flowers, I know that orchids are some of the most beautiful. Even the bouquet of artificial orchids in my living room is so beautiful that visitors often marvel at them.

So when I read in one of my trail guides that “in spring, some of the best stands of coralroot orchids grow” along the Bluebell-Baird Trail, I knew that I had to hike there. I didn’t find it on the trail. I even quizzed a couple of park volunteers whom I encountered on the trail. They hadn’t known about coralroot orchids here, but suggested I might find them in Long Canyon to which I will return soon.
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My expectations for the hike today were low. After two days of dreary weather here, the day started overcast and cool. I was disappointed in the weather, but went out anyway.

I had wanted to hike a forested trail in the foothills. But the weather called for the open plains around Rabbit Mountain, especially since the next few days are supposed to be hot. So I went back there for the second time in two weeks, albeit to a trail I had never hiked before, Indian Mesa Trail.

Was I ever surprised when the sun came out just as I crouched down to take the first of the 122 pictures that I took today. And the sun stayed out for the next three and three-fourths hours on the trail.
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I decided to postpone the TURP operation that I had scheduled for July 3. The TURP is an elective procedure that will reduce the size of my prostate. Formally, it’s a transurethral resection of the prostate for benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH), which is sometimes called (incorrectly) benign prostatic hypertrophy.

Ever since I scheduled the operation a few weeks ago I have regretted the timing. The operation — and more importantly the long recovery period — would rob me too much of the summer hiking season. My urologist said that I wouldn’t even be able to do any lifting for several weeks afterwards.

But it wasn’t until last night that I came to the decision to postpone the operation until the coming winter. One thing led to another, and I listened to the chain of events.
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Early this morning I set off to climb the highest peak near Boulder. I didn’t make it. I am not is as good a shape as I thought I was.

I planned to high up a lateral of the Mesa Trail called the Shadow Canyon Trail and on to the summit of South Boulder Peak. The trail starts at the south end of the Mesa Trail in Eldorado Canyon at 5,600 feet. The peak is 8,549 feet. I only made it to 8,200 feet at the pass (or “saddle”) between South Boulder Peak and Bear Peak, The final 350 feet were out of my reach today.

As I approached the saddle I realized that it would have to be my destination today for a couple of reasons. I had started up Shadow Canyon Trail three or four times in the past few years, and it always did seem pretty tough going. And the higher you go the worse it gets.
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To say that I was anxious to get back to the top of Rocky Mountain National Park today would be an understatement.

The road was open, as I had read in the local paper a few days ago that it would be today. But when I called about 10 a.m. it was still closed. Then, when I called at 11:30, the ranger told me that it had opened a few minutes earlier — but could be closed later because storms were coming it.

They came, and the weather was terrible. I chanced it, realizing that I might get up the road to the West side of the park and not be able to return. That would have forced me to make a detour of at least 150 miles.
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Late spring may have arrived in Boulder. But not in the high foothills where I hiked today.

“In late May and early June, the Ceran St. Vrain Trail is one of the best places to find large clusters of fairy slipper orchids,” says my favorite Boulder area hiking guide. In fact, I didn’t see one wildflower along the first couple of miles of the trail that runs though dense pine forest along and always in sight and sound of the South St. Vrain Creek. (St. Vrain is a respected name here. Ceran St. Vrain (1802-1870) was a fur trader in these mountains from 1824, a businessman, and a pioneer.)
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“Beauty is wherever there is a soul to admire it,” Henry David Thoreau once wrote and today I read in a little book that I took with me on the trail. “If I seek her elsewhere because I do not find her at home, my search will prove a fruitless one.”

My home is beautiful, and it includes all of Boulder. I searched for the beauty of early spring wildflowers today on a hike very close to my home today. The Four Pines trailhead at 17th Street and King Avenue is barely 3 miles from my apartment, according to Google maps.

It’s just to the west of Green Mountain Cemetery, which is in clear view at the start of the trail. Last November Karen and I explored gravestones of several of her relatives who are buried there. Today a funeral took place as I watched from the trail. But then I hiked on and all of a sudden gunfire surprised me. It was a three-gun salute followed by the most mournful tune in the world, “Taps.”
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Yesterday I drove down to Denver to visit the Botanic Garden for the first time in May. I enjoyed my visit last month and the previous June so much that I knew that I had to go back every warm month.

Here are the photos that turned out OK.
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Still hunting wildflowers today, I hiked a 4-mile lollipop loop called Eagle Wind Trail on Rabbit Mountain, formerly called Rattlesnake Mountain. I didn’t see any eagles, rabbits, or rattlers, and there was little wind, but I saw millions of wildflowers.

This is last of four hikes recommended for early spring wildflowers in the book Boulder Hiking Trails. While not as quite as big or as prolific as the flowers up Gregory Canyon or as dramatic as the flowers at Hall Ranch last Sunday, the millions of flowers here gave me as much pleasure as the flowers on those trails as well along as the several sections of the Mesa Trail I hiked recently in my flower quest.
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On every hike I hope to take at least one photograph worth keeping. That goal reminded me today of Ernest Hemingway’s dictum, “All you have to do is write one true sentence.” He never said what one true sentence he wrote, and I don’t know what true photographs I ever took. But today I have at least one worth keeping.

I’m still hunting early spring wildflowers in the foothills and got off 75 shots today. The day was glorious for a hiker and a shooter, and I made the most of it. The temperature reached 75 degrees in the shade, and I had full sun all day. I was on the trail from 10:30 in the morning until 6:15 in the evening.
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