Fireweed

Sunset near Fish Creek - September 11, 2024

Fireweed - August 2024

I’m on one of my favorite trails in the deep-woods silence of late afternoon, my shorts soaked through from rain-drenched leaves. The rain has stopped but the dark grey clouds hover overhead, fitting for my state of mind. 

It's a few days before Charlotte heads off to college, and my heart is sore with the anticipation of how much I will miss her. Of course I’m happy for her to leap into her life. Of course I remind myself of how truly blessed we are - a thriving child heading to college is not every family’s good fortune. Still, I grieve. 

There are still plenty of flowers amidst the profuse growth of shrubs and ferns. I note the colors - purple, white, yellow - and the petal shapes - elongated, spiky, clustered - but the names are lost on me. Charlotte would know the names. One of her many passions is identifying flowers in the field guide she carries on hikes, snapping a picture, then drawing them later in her flower journal. Sometimes I call her Charlotte Muir. 

She must have gotten this love from my mom, who is another flower identifier. When I was around nine or so, my mom took me on a Saturday morning wildflower hike. The ranger leading the walk talked for at least an hour pointing here and there at the various plants, naming them and explaining their uses. I don’t remember a single flower name from that day. When we returned to the visitor’s center, there was a spider I was encouraged to hold. Harmless, the ranger said. Perhaps. But it was black and hairy and awfully large. It was a tarantula - that, I remember.

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I’m now on the return leg of my hike. The trail wends its way between huge trunks, branches towering above me blocking much of the sky, and it is so quiet. I’m in the company of some very old beings, with their hardy roots snaking every which way, creating little stairs in the path. Just past this there’s a wall of dense shrubbery that is waist-high. Rising above all that olive green is a single magenta flower - fireweed. I know this name, because Charlotte pointed it out as we drove the Million Dollar Highway just a week ago. 
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Fitting that fireweed should brighten my day. Fireweed (Chamerion angustifolium) is the first blaze of life following a forest fire. Its rhizomes lay under the forest soil and begin to colonize territory that has been left open to the sky and sunshine due to fire. In post-World War II Great Britain, it was known as bombweed because the rosy purple plant grew in the remains of wooden buildings decimated in the fire bombings. It is thought that St. Anthony used the plant for healing, and thus also known as St. Anthony’s laurel.​

Patience, optimism, resilient spirit, healing. Fireweed is all of these things. It seems a hopeful omen and a Charlotte smile, this pink bloom - the only one around. Just then a ray of sunshine shines directly on the fireweed, and the fuchsia is vivid and aglow in nature’s spotlight. 

Smiling, I head down the trail, my heart and my step a little lighter. 


Learn More
Colorado Native Plant Society Article: Fireweed: the Fire Follower

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