short article naming this plant Ilex serrata for the saw toothed leaf margins. Trouble was, I had not checked previous literature closely enough, and this name was already occupied by a living species of holly. So, a friend of mine published another article in which he changed my fossil’s name to Ilex rushforthii. This happens all the time, but it tends to embarrass biologists.”
“That story,” Scott smiles, “confirms the vague sense I’ve always had of you as related to a saw-toothed fossil.”
17 April, Great Western Trail, Mt. Timpanogos
Another peaceful ride today—warm, sunny, lazy. Three teen-aged boys race past on their bikes. Normally we would respond by picking up our pedaling cadence and pass them when they start to feel the climb. In our mellow mood, however, we maintain our speed. “We’re figuring this out,” Sam says as he pedals a little faster. “We’re learning to control our competitiveness.”
“I was thinking the same thing,” I reply, shifting up a gear. “We’re pretty smart to make that decision while it’s still a matter of will.” Just before the top of the relentless hill, we pass the panting youngsters.
Hundreds of white-spotted black butterflies flutter around a budding maple tree. I am tempted to grab one to examine it more closely. I remember a painting I saw in the National Gallery: John James Audubon’s “Golden Eagle.” Audubon bought the live eagle in Boston, agonized over whether to kill it or set it free, made several attempts to kill it without harming its appearance, then worked so feverishly on the painting that he suffered some kind of seizure. In the bottom left-hand corner of the painting, Audubon depicted himself high in snowy mountains, crawling across a chasm on a tree trunk with a rifle and a golden eagle strapped to his back. I leave the insects alone.
A pair of yellow and black Bullock’s orioles. A meadowlark. And on a high electrical wire near town, tail bobbing, the first kestrel we’ve seen this year—Falco sparverius, American kestrel. We sit our own tails on a warm slab of blue limestone.
“What the hell are we going to do?” I ask Sam.
“Do about what?” he responds. “About our kids? About the planet?”
“I mean about BYU,” I say. “We’ve got colleagues who are just keeping their heads down till they can retire. We, in contrast, have raised our heads so high that everyone would notice if they fired us. And it hasn’t been exactly easy. Remember when we were preparing for the arrival of the AAUP investigators? I dreamed I was holding a lit stick of dynamite. While the fuse burned, and it was burning way too fast, I made excruciatingly slow calculations to figure out how long I could hold on before throwing it into the administration building.”
“Yeah,” Sam adds, “and I dreamt that Nanc and I were tending to a sick horse. I had a monster syringe full of medicine that was sure to cure the horse. Before I stuck in the needle, Nanc warned me to move away from the horse’s ass. ‘When the cure comes,’ she said, ‘the horse is going to blast shit everywhere.’”
“We’ve had some fun,” I say, “and we’ve done what we thought was right, but I’m not looking forward to spending the next decade working for someone who doesn’t want me around. You should know that I’ve applied for a couple of jobs, even had a campus interview. Hope something pans out.”
Sam is quiet for a minute. “Shall we soak up a little more heat from this wonderful limestone?” he finally asks. “And then let’s get our asses off this mountain.”
18 April, Great Western Trail, Mt. Timpanogos
The inconspicuous yellow flower we’ve seen several times during the past couple of weeks is common today—bur buttercup, Ranunculus testiculatus. If we weren’t such delicate fellas concerned about the sensibilities of our readers, I would mention the shape of the fruit for which this plant is named. Have a look next time you are on the hillside. It’s a common early flower, often emerging with storksbill. Bur buttercup is another introduced species, entering the U.S. in the last century from southeastern Europe. Like several others we have seen this spring, this species is toxic to sheep.
We’ve been looking for glacier lilies along this upper trail for three weeks now. Scott and I split up to scour areas near several small patches of remaining snow. Scott shouts—he’s found something. It’s not a glacier lily, but equally wonderful: a yellow bell, Fritillaria pudica. It’s a fine discovery for me, a plant I have seen only a few times across the years. Surrounded by spring beauties, the striking flower with its three solid yellow petals and three identical sepals nods on a single stem. I tell Scott the spring beauty bulbs are edible and he soon grubs a thumbnailsized bulb out of the black earth. “Are you sure about this?” he asks. I tell him grizzly bears love them. I clean it and we each eat half. Scott thinks it tastes like a hazelnut. When I remind him I am primarily a stream ecologist and that I’m dredging notions of all these plants out of deep memory, he blanches.
19 April, Great Western Trail, Mt. Timpanogos
Riding this afternoon, having learned the name “bur buttercup,” I have a new eye for these rather inconspicuous plants with their testicular fruits. Names can abstract from the thing and thus deflect careful observation, but in this case the name helps me see more exactly.
I find a five-petaled pink flower.
“The first phlox of the year,” Sam says. “We’ll see a bunch more of these in the next few weeks. Phlox longifolia, I think. Sweet William.”
“Phlox! Phlox! Phlox!” I explore the feel of the word in my mouth. I see the odd-looking word in my mind. “Where does the name come from?”
“It’s the Greek word for flame,” Sam answers.
We stop at the maple tree that attracted so many butterflies the other day, hoping to get a better look at the insects. A few of them are still around, but in two days the scene has changed drastically. Prominent buds have opened fully and bundles of flowers hang down from long stems. Today the tree swarms with shiny orange ladybugs, most of them copulating. One male wiggles his hips energetically and we laugh aloud. “We are not even in their conscious world,” Sam says. “We are nothing to them. We don’t exist for them. I like that feeling.”
29 April, Great Western Trail, Mt. Timpanogos
Sam’s in New York City for a conference on biodiversity, so I’m riding by myself today. My mood is tending to a not unpleasant melancholy when a skunk (Mephitis mephitis) ambles out from behind some rabbit brush next to the trail. Its small head swings around, its tail swings around, I swing around. The skunk makes its way back into the brush with an undulating gait that makes the white stripes on either side of its fat back ripple like waves.
I ride out of the canyon ahead of a rain squall. The air above the river is alive with swallows. I stand and watch the long forked tails open and shut like scissors as the agile birds fly jagged lines from insect to insect. They are barn swallows (Hirundo rustica) with red-orange chests and dark heads and backs, recently back from Argentina. How is that possible?
I’ve
