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We parked the car and strapped on our backpacks at Canyon Vista Campground. We strolled down Sandy Canyon where the trail ran parallel to Walnut Creek. At the Walnut Canyon Junction of the AZT, we headed left making our way through Skunk Canyon and back through Fay Canyon, before looping back to the car. * We hiked in an easy rhythm of forty-five years. Kevin usually led the way as I continually stopped for photos. Of a mountain chickadee. Of Indian paintbrush. Of a heart-shaped, tufted evening primrose. When I got too far behind, Kevin stopped and waited for me. The morning was typical for late June. Sunny, in the low sixties, with temps rising in the afternoon. However, the variety of wildflowers we passed was not typical. I documented over fifty-four different flowers, from the common sweet yellow clover, to a first-ever sighting of silvery rock lettuce. “What’s that bright yellow plant?” Kevin asked, pointing to
a vibrant plant with clusters of yellow-orange flowers. “I’m not sure,” I said. “I’ve never seen it before.” A quick search on a plant app revealed the answer. Butterfly milkweed, one of almost thirty milkweed varieties that grows in Arizona. We also documented poison milkweed and antelope horn milkweed. Arizona is located within the Monarch butterfly migration route. Milkweeds provide essential host plants for monarch caterpillars who only feed on milkweed plants to survive. Talk about picky eaters! As a girl growing up in Minnesota, I recalled a time I had walked the ditches along the country road near our home. I had searched for tiny Monarch caterpillars under the leaves and pink flower clusters of the common milkweed plant. The milky-white sap had run over my fingers as I had snapped off stems, placing them in a glass quart jar for an elementary school science assignment. At school, we had continued to add fresh milkweed until the caterpillars had entered the chrysalis phase (a jade-green shell with a row of tiny gold dots). When the orange and black butterflies finally metamorphosized, we had watched the Monarchs fly away over the school playground. Science at its best. Halfway across a continent and decades later, I was still
out in nature looking for new moments of wonder. But now, Kevin was with me, humoring my love of flowers. Forty-five years ago, I’m sure he never saw this in his future, a wife who obsessed over birds and plants. Twenty-and-a-half-year-old me certainly never imagined a life of politics. One of the secrets of a lasting marriage is falling in love more than a thousand times, but always with the same person. Not only who they are, but who they are becoming.
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