indian paintbrush

orange hawkweed

Sunny and warm. The orange hawkweed are in bloom. When Allyn & I first moved to Vermont in the '70s, it was to work at Mount Snow in southern Vermont during the ski season. We stayed for the summer after the skiing had ended. We found a little cabin in the woods that we were able to rent for something like $125 a month. I had heard about skiing in Vermont, but was unprepared for the summer. It was heaven. I had grown up and spent my summers in California where brown is the operative word during the warm summer months. Vermont was a different world; greenery, thunderstorms, fireflies, and wildflowers of every color and description. The one that made the biggest impression on me was the orange hawkweed. I knew it as Indian paintbrush at the time; a much more evocative name to be sure. Its orange and yellow color was intense and ubiquitous. How could something be so common and so beautiful? Little did I know that some 40 years later, Vermont wildflowers would be one of my consuming obsessions.