Amy Hunter

Wasn’t sure I was going to get to any Glacier pictures this week. I’ve been having some work done on my house–including new windows–and my belongings have been in the middle of the rooms for weeks now. It’s all turning out even more beautiful than I imagined, but it’s also exhausting. And it’s far from done–I still have to decide what to do about window treatments, and I already know I’m planning to sew a bunch of the curtains. I’ve also had training at work this week, which has been intense. And now it’s becoming cold and dark here in Minnesota.

In short, all I want to do is curl up with soothing music and a slice of cinnamon bread–not muck around on my computer with pictures. It would be a shame to never get through my images of Glacier, though, so tonight I opened up Photoshop.

I’m glad I did. The world seemed warmer and brighter with the first image I processed:

I think those are something like Harebells or Purple Penstemon, by the way, but I’m too dang tired to look it up at the moment. If I get a chance, I’ll update this post with the correct information. Fortunately, on the day these pictures were taken, I had plenty of energy, so I started on the trail that winds up from the Avalanche Creek viewing area. I wasn’t very far along when I stopped to look over the valley behind me and take this picture:

When I look at views such as this, I imagine myself walking across the scenery before me. It looks so easy, so peaceful from a distance. Yet I realize that the distances before me are bigger than I imagine and the terrain considerably more challenging than it appears. It would take days, perhaps weeks, to go the routes I take in with a glance. I guess that’s part of the fun of looking at mountains. You simultaneously feel both smaller and bigger than you really are, when you see them at a distance.

Up close, of course, mountains contain so much more life than you realize when you see them from afar. All kinds of lichens, mosses, and other tiny plants find whatever bit of rock they can cling to:

Such plants don’t need much more than a surface to grow on, and they begin the process of breaking down the rock and building soil. Soil that other plants, such as the fern in this picture, need to grow. Those plants, in turn, help build even more soil and nutrients, which allow yet bigger plants to grow until eventually even trees can thrive. Trees then fill an area until a large disturbance from wind or fire clears some of them out, which allows the plants below them to receive more sun and take over. Until the trees once again grow and shade them out.

This transition from one set of plants to another is called succession. Many things shape which plants come when–and you don’t get the same plants on a mountain as on the planes, for example. Even in the mountains, there are different plant communities at different elevations, for example. But in each case, the plants that come before pave the way for the plants that come after. Not intentionally, of course. In fact, plants fiercely compete with each other. For light, for space, for water, for nutrients. What we see as a peaceful landscape of green is actually a scramble for survival with different tactics and strategies employed by the various players.

I failed to appreciate plants very much until I learned all of this. Now I wish I’d paid more attention in my botany classes! Anyway, try not to think too much about the struggle for survival going on in these pictures. Instead, I hope you experience the serenity I felt when I was there, surrounded by it all.