Spring is one of my favorite times of the year because everything is budding with new life. The evidence of it is everywhere. I mean just gazing towards Austin’s skyline, I can see little bright green leaves sprouting out of the previously leafless maple trees in the travis heights neighborhood. But honestly, my favorite part about spring are the flowers. I love flowers, and I always feel blessed to experience the beauty of Texas wildflowers. I mean, here I am sitting atop a hill right behind East Hall, a hill that looks like any regular hill during any other season, but now its covered with Bluebonnets.
Its amazing. I mean I pass this hill on my drive to school everyday, but like most drivers, its just another hill to me. Then suddenly one day you drive by and the Bluebonnets are here! These small little clusters of lavender buds sprinkled with bits of white are just breath taking! So its no wonder while I sat enjoying the beauty of all of these magical flowers that just popped out of the ground one day, there are cars parked all along St. Edward’s Dr. and several different groups of people all doing the same exact thing, taking pictures in the Bluebonnets. Now, I’m not from Texas so I don’t necessarily have a problem with people going gaga over these beautiful flowers. In fact, as Aldo Leopold explained, “Our ability to perceive quality in nature begins, as in art, with the pretty. It expands through successive stages of the beautiful to values as yet uncaptured by language.” So I sort of took these brief moments of people celebrating the Bluebonnets as the moment where people finally stop and look at how beautiful nature is. However, two weeks after this first visit to the hill, almost all of the Bluebonnets had died away and the Indian Blankets took there place.
Now, these really impressed me, a lot more than the Bluebonnets. I love their apparent relationship with Sunflowers and Daisies, but they still manage to remain unique with their loud and bright combinations of red and yellow on each petal. Yet here I am sitting on this hill, completely alone. Not a person in sight, and it is a weekend just like the other week. So why isn’t everyone celebrating the beauty of these flowers? Well, maybe its because these wildflowers do not go hand in hand with that Texas pride like Bluebonnets do. Initially, I was sort of happy to see all the people playing in the flowers because for a minute even just a minute they were recognizing the beauty within nature. As Aldo Leopold said, “Our ability to perceive quality in nature begins, as in art, with the pretty. It expands through successive stages of the beautiful to values as yet uncaptured by language.” Nevertheless, I’m puzzled by the fact that Bluebonnets are getting all the recognition. What about the Indian Blankets? Or the Indian Paintbrushes? Or the Winecups? Honestly, I’m not sure many Texans even know the names of the wildflowers besides Bluebonnets. Nevertheless, in order to remain optimistic about people’s relationship with nature, I guess I’ll just have to remain grateful for the fact that there are people stopping and taking time out of their day to admire at least one flower, and thats much better than nothing.