The wildflowers are blooming beautifully this year, and my husband Russell and I are driving around, pursuing them with our cameras’ macro lenses. Below is a beautiful columbine, for example. . . .
We stopped one day to photograph some elusive Firecracker Penstemons, We stopped one day last week to photograph some elusive Firecracker Penstemons, glowing with the brilliant scarlets of deep summer. We had easily spotted them as we drove by. We set the cameras up, but the wind wasn’t cooperating, so we decided to wait to see if it would settle. After a few moments, I was astonished to see another beautiful purple wildflower just a few steps away, one that we hadn’t seen from the car as we scouted the area. I took some amazing shots, and then noticed a rare yellow Indian Paintbrush, glowing in the sun, then another flower hidden among the sagebrush, and another. Soon we were overwhelmed by the seemingly endless variety of stunning blooms we had somehow missed, some known to us and others a mystery. We could hardly shoot fast enough to catch the waning rays of the sun as we stood in a wildflower paradise.
I wish that our schools could let go of the testing pressure enough to allow teachers and students to stand in one place long enough to see all the flowers that are really there, to turn this photographic journey into a metaphor. I wish this especially for elementary classrooms, where “further up and further in,” to borrow a beloved C.S. Lewis quote, may take our learning into deep and fascinating realms, at least once in a while. 
