Beautiful World // Alpine Wildflowers

A serendipitous follow-up to this post.

When Cory and I headed out to hike Mt. Beirstadt on July 4th, this was the last thing I was expecting.  I’ve dreamed since moving to Colorado about the alpine wildflowers and their peak-season glory…and though I’m no authority, I can’t imagine it getting much better than this.  Flowers.  Everywhere.

Oh, my photographs definitely don’t seem to do any justice to how stunning this was.  So many brilliant colors and shapes and sizes.  I love how much inspiration can come from just examining the tiniest flowers (these blue ones below were maybe the size of a pencil eraser, and I’m probably being generous).

And perhaps my favorite part is how persistent these little guys are – the alpine tundra takes years and years and years to grow, and these gorgeous flowers pop out of the rocks like champions.  Gives you hope that something lovely can come of something rough, right?

Those little succulent-looking plants were my favorite, the shape is perfect and they were covered with the sweetest white blooms.  Apparently the first week of July is a great week to be at 14,000 feet.  I guess I supposed with the weather we’d been having, that most of the flowers would have bloomed ahead of schedule, but maybe they were just waiting for me to visit.  At least, that’s what I’ll tell myself.

I’m amazed that, when you’re thinking surely things can’t possibly get much more difficult, if you take your eyes off your own feet for a few seconds, suddenly there’s plenty of pretty to be found all around you.  Sad to say I missed most of this on the way up and couldn’t stop to appreciate it until the way down – but it was there all along.  So small you could miss them if you blinked.

Life is full of surprises!