Читать книгу Shaped by Snow. Defending the Future of Winter онлайн

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Wildflowers lined our path, delicate and colorful. There were many I couldn’t name by sight, but I did recognize the yellow black-eyed Susans and glacier lilies, white-and-pink columbine, scarlet-and-tangerine Indian paintbrush, and my favorite, deep-purple lupine. They were blooming a little earlier this summer than they normally would. Wildflowers in the Wasatch typically bloom mid-July through August, but Northern Utah had experienced a low snow year the prior winter and the snow in the mountains melted quickly. Once the soil is exposed and saturated with moisture from the snowpack, seeds that have lain dormant in the ground since the fall are able to germinate. When the snowpack is thicker, it lasts further into the summer, pushing the wildflower season back.

After one particularly heavy winter, the wildflowers didn’t bloom until September. The snowpack lasted so long into the summer that my parents skied on the Fourth of July—Snowbird’s closing day. My grandparents went on a hike on my grandma’s birthday, September 18th. Mid-September in the mountains is usually well past wildflower season, when the leaves start changing colors. But that year mid-September was prime blooming season. In a picture taken on their hike, my grandparents stand in a thick field of flowers that reach their knees, the persimmons and indigos of Indian paintbrush and lupine so dense you can’t see their shoes. “Wildflowers in Mineral, September 18, 2011. Fast Max’s 86th birthday” is written in sharpie at the bottom of the photo.