Carrizo Plain National Monument – March 2017

Carrizo Plain National Monument, CA
March 2017

The main event was yellow. Pale yellows, golden yellows, lemon yellows, schoolbus yellows. Acres of yellow carpeted the wide flat plain, yellow crowned the foothills, yellow stretched up the mountain sides, yellow was underfoot everywhere. It reminded me of the spectacular autumnal display of yellow aspens in the Rockies and Sierras but here there are no trees, the color flows along the ground.

The next color in competition was green. There were at least fifty shades of green (and much sexier than gray.) It was our first trip to Carrizo Plain but I knew that green is not its usual color. Most of the year it is dry, dusty and brown. It is semi-arid natural grassland (the last great stretch of it in California) and the annual rainfall is only 9 inches per year.

Other shades of the rainbow were blooming too, if you looked closely. Purples made a show of it and highlighted the yellows. One hillside was painted sky blue with baby blue eyes. Pinks, oranges and whites were scattered about. Below the taller plants, tiny many-colored flowers vied for their place in the sun close to the earth.

After an exceptional season of rain and previous years of drought, it is a superbloom of tremendous proportions. In the Santa Cruz Mountains where I live, this rain brought down trees and power lines, washed out roads and triggered land, mud, and rockslides. We are gradually cleaning up the mess and rebuilding our roads. But in the deserts in central and southern California these rains created great masses of flowering plants. The most stunning superblooms are supposedly in the deserts much farther south, but we could only fit in the four hour drive to Carrizo Plain.

I was in my bliss and glory among the blossoms!

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