Following Up on Awe
Exhibit A of a "small" experience that yielded big awe was finding this wildflower while hiking around Badlands National Park. This is the Fritillaria atropurpurea more commonly known as the leopard lily. A now retired botanist told me they are hard to find. The guidebook Plants of the Black Hills and Bear Lodge Mountains which includes many prairie plants despite its title states "Leopard lily also occurs infrequently in the prairie surrounding the (Black) Hills area but nowhere is it common in the region."
Coming across an infrequent and uncommon plant feels like a gift. Literally on my knees and prostrate before this fading plant to take photos, I felt gratitude that I got to see this small thing that most people in the world will never see. And when I consider that the flowers were fading (and good luck to me to find it without the flowers) and that I almost missed it—my husband's sharp eye spotted the plant—the gratitude swells to humility.
I get the lure of panoramic expanses. And I completely understand the almost visceral need to walk up to the edge of the majesty and power of nature. But finding an uncommon plant that is fading which I almost missed leaves me feeling humbled and awed and refreshingly without ego.
I don't know if I will ever again see a leopard lily. I saw one, just one, two years ago. It may be the same or longer till I see another one. The lily's power is not in its size or strength but in its uncommonness. Seeing a lily is a small thing. Knowing it is uncommon? That is a big thing that creates awe.
