How the woods fool me time and again! One time several years ago I came across a great showing of columbines, their bright redness floating above the foliage below. Every spring since I have hoped to come to the woods at the right time to see again such a display.

On a fine March day I came down the Homestead Trail, hoping to see columbines, looking for a splendor of red. There were no flowers, but there was red.

Right by the trail was an outcropping of red rock. For all the trips I have made on this trail, I'd never noticed this exposed rock. It seems curious to me, because all the other rocks I've been aware of in Homestead Valley are blue. Think of Cowboy and Castle Rocks, for instance.

But this rock was red, like the rocks in Tennessee Valley and Wolf Ridge, indeed, all the way to the Golden Gate. I looked it over carefully; it had obviously not just been dropped into place, or just erupted from the ground. I have to admit that I've been walking by it for years and never saw it, that I often walk without being as aware as I'd like to be.

So, on this day there were no columbines, but at various places up and down the trail there were, shooting stars, two kinds of iris, mariposa lilies, blue dicks, poppies, trilliums, footsteps-of-spring, paint brush, and hound's tongue.

The next time I went up the trail I failed to notice the red rock. But further down, I did see two columbines, exquisite flower that they are.

April 1987