The First Pasqueflowers of the Season!

"The chance to find a pasque-flower is a right as inalienable as free speech."

 Aldo Leopold

Today I found the first Pasqueflowers of the season IN FULL BLOOM! This is a week earlier than I've ever seen them flower. I hiked up into a forest fire burn that occurred three years ago, and that's where they seemed to jump out at me :)

Photos: Pasqueflowers and Ladybug, Hewlett Burn, Roosevelt National Forest, CO, March 14, 2015

The chance to find a pasqueflower is a right as inalienable as free speech

 

"The chance to find a pasque-flower is a right as inalienable as free speech."

Aldo Leopold

Photo: Yesterday - on the first day of Spring - I found the first Pasqueflowers of the season in the backcountry of Lory State Park (CO)! ; March 20, 2014

The chance to find a pasque-flower is a right as inalienable as free speech.

"The chance to find a pasque-flower is a right as inalienable as free speech."

Aldo Leopold

Photo: Pasqueflowers blooming in Horsetooth Mountain Park, Larimer County, CO; March 30, 2013

When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect.

"We abuse land because we regard it as a commodity belonging to us.  When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect."

Aldo Leopold

Photo: A community of Engelmann Spruces, with Crown Point in the background; Medicine Bow Mountains, CO; March 2, 2013

The chance to find a pasque-flower is a right as inalienable as free speech.

 

"Wild things were taken for granted until progress began to do away with them.  Now we face the question whether a still higher 'standard of living' is worth its cost in things natural, wild, and free.  For us . . . , the opportunity to see wild geese is more important than television, and the chance to find a pasque-flower is a right as inalienable as free speech."

Aldo Leopold, 1949

Photo: The first foothills pasqueflowers of the season!  Young Gulch, Roosevelt National Forest, CO, March 20, 2012