2023: Collecting HOPE

 

One Glide Wildflower Show collecting team had a pleasant surprise this year. Here is their story.

Almost 20 years ago, we started collecting for the GWS. Jeanne Moore asked us first to help her with the collection route at Wright Creek, then to take it over. Dozens of plants were collected on this 1-1/3 mile hike on the North Umpqua Trail. We felt honored that Jeanne Moore was our personal mentor. Since that beginning, our route expanded to start at the Narrows Wayside, just east of Idleyld Park Trading Post, to run upriver to Illahee Road and up that road till we were stopped by snow. It usually took us 2 ½ days to collect from a dozen different stops.

That all changed after the 2020 Archie Creek Fire. From the Narrows to Steamboat Inn, every place we had collected burned, including the twenty acres of our own forested land. Collecting for the 2022 show, we ventured back to the old familiar haunts, but found few plants and went away disheartened.

This year, on our way upriver, we decided to stop at Baker Wayside, right in the middle of the Archie Creek burn. This used to be a wonderful collecting spot, but after fire, logging, and lots of heavy equipment, it looks terrible from the highway.

When we got out to walk around – what a surprise! We were amazed and overjoyed.

 

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Red flowering current in all of its magnificent glory was popping up everywhere.



A huge Smith’s fairy bell is fully flowered.



We encountered a large false Solomon’s seal getting ready to bloom.



We saw a single fawn lily and breathed a sigh of relief that such a delicate thing had recovered.



The evergreen huckleberry had been huge and vigorous before the fire, a row at least 8 feet high and 20 feet long.
Now there are a half dozen waist-high plants in full bloom!



But the greatest surprise was the huge patch of fawn lilies spilling down the hillside to the river!!
Not just the one we first saw, but masses of them.



The tenacious tall Oregon grape was there in its beautiful, prickly glory.




A single river lupine looked ready to bloom.



A lady bug was crawling on its leaves.




A bluff was covered with monkeyflower.



A wild strawberry getting ready to make fruit for wildlife.




Then we ran across a wonderful thing, a sign of new life and renewal.
A bird’s nest from last year nestled in the top of a young maple tree. The birds have also returned.

The place isn’t as lush as it used to be, but the native plants are returning. New beginnings are happening now. We will not see the forest of old in our lifetimes, nor will our great-grandchildren, but it is on its way. Mother Nature is starting over again! She is showing us that after disasters, there is always renewal and hope. We drove away to our next collecting spot with a sense of optimism and joy.