Knee-deep in Lupines

Every once in a while something happens to take my breath away and make me smile uncontrollably. It happened a little more than a week ago.

With a clear blue sky above us, an especially warm spring sun, and a slight breeze, we start our walk across Knowland Park. We head north at first, just above the huge fairy ring. It’s several hundred years old, and I wonder how many children have had fun running around it, tracing its irregular circle on the hillside and finding puffballs on cool damp days. We head downhill, past the fairy ring, and gaze across the rolling coastal valley with the grasses waving in the breeze.

That’s when I start to smile, and I can’t stop. I’m walking carefully in the grasses because all around us are lupines. They’re upright, tall, and an intensely deep purple. And they’re everywhere! It feels like we’ve stepped back in time to the days of the early settlers who described valleys of wildflowers as far as the eye could see. The lupines are on the hillsides, they’re on the hilltops.  They’re blooming among the grasses and there are tiny yellow lotus flowers growing at their feet. The bees have found the lupines too and a happy buzz is all around us.

We walk further downhill to look up at the lupines and see them against the sky.  We walk around them, we walk among them. We can’t stop smiling there are so many. I laugh. What a sight for two hikers from Kansas and the Bronx. Such a beautiful place this is, wild California, right here in Knowland Park.

Here is a link to the trail map for Knowland Park:

http://www.saveknowland.org/getting-there/printable-trail-map-of-western-knowland-park/