As the summer passed up here a flower started to take over the landscape. For some reason I have fallen in love with it. Fireweed is the first flower on newly disturbed landscape, hence the name. It starts blooming at the bottom of the stem and slowly opens new flowers above as the season progresses. Finally there are just red stems left without flowers. Then a cotton develops with the seeds in it and the wind blows it off the stem and carries it away. The cotton while speeding along on the train looks a bit like snow. Finally, like everything else up here now, the leaves begin turning and then it is gone.
The story that the progressive blooming tells is definitely the most interesting part. When the bloom gets to the top it means that the first snow is only about 4 weeks away. In Denali the Fireweed started blooming out about 2 weeks ago and down in Seward it was just a few days ago. So if Mother Nature is on track it looks like I will see snow before I depart.
Believe me the photos above do not do this flower justice. I adopted this flower as my symbol for my groups name tags for most of the summer. I finally have given them up now that the flowers are gone and have adopted stars. Of course I couldn't use the stars before since we never saw any. Both the departure of the fireweed and the appearance of stars means that my time up here is drawing to a close. That will be a whole other post.
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