Mitchell Trail Revelation

Took the briefest hike today (1.75 miles RT) with the Betty Ehart Senior Center Friday morning hikers on the Mitchell Trail. Leader said this was to see the recovery that’s taken place since the 2000 Cerro Grande Fire. The Mitchell Trail was severely burned, exposing the rocky spine of the land. Someone pointed out the Natural Arch way up high which was clearly visible at just the right spot on the trail. As we started from the trailhead, I could have kicked myself for leaving my camera behind. The mountains didn’t look burnt at all. They were draped with green shrubs and grasses in various states of green and gold. The sky had a rain-washed clarity that, with a mix of sunshine and dark clouds, made the mountains larger-than-life beautiful.

Here’s some of the flora we saw on the Mitchell Trail: scarlet bugler, scarlet gilia, buckbush, dogbane, puccoon, golden eye, cutleaf coneflower, blanketflower, yarrow, butterweed (not much in the floral department but produces plenty of tall, green foliage), nodding onion, tons of different grasses (I’m hopeless with grasses), blue flax, incredibly showy purple horsemint (the women were all coveting it for their home gardens), magenta vetch, loads of the reddish purple James’s geranium, salsify, the purple daisy that I confuse with asters, raspberry bushes, loads and loads of Gambel oak, New Mexico locust, evening primrose, wild rose, mullein, and that’s only the ones that I knew or that someone else pointed out. Truthfully, I jogged my memory by looking in the index of Dorothy Hoard and Terry Foxx’s Flowers of the Southwestern Forests and Woodlands--an invaluable resource for flowers in the Los Alamos area. (This book is being revised but I have no details.) The only fauna I saw were lots of bees and butterflies and a black beetle named Sam which took a free ride on a hiker’s hat. Only that in spite of my hopefully scanning the Gambel oak covered hillside for bears!

I know it’s cliched but the Phoenix rising from the ashes comes to mind when I see all the profusion of plant life on the Mitchell Trail.