Upper Beaver Meadows

Before the onslaught of tourists who come up to Estes Park to see the fireworks and nothing more, Mary Jean, Scott and I, were able to squeeze in an evening hike up in Rocky Mountain National Park. The area that we were in, Beaver Meadows, is still considered a montane region of the park. At the beginning of July, these meadows are still full of wildflowers that we see here in Pinewood Springs only in June. There are shooting star flowers everywhere and of course penstemon and red Indian Paintbrush. We were also pleasantly surprised to see a baby grouse making its way tentatively across our path to join its mother who suddenly popped up from under the long, wet grasses. She puffed and clucked at us until we passed. Around us were the groves of strange bent huge-trunked aspen sometimes mistaken for another type of tree. The trunks are so blackened by the continual barrage of elk, there is not a single swath of white left and the leaves are a dark dark green. By the end of the hike my boots were soaking wet and all the way down the canyon I drove through eerie low stratus clouds more like ghosts, wisps of some phenomena I see only in dreams.