Trout Lilies

Trout Lily
also known as Dogstooth Violet, Adder's Tongue
or Fawn Lily (Erythronium americanum)

Yesterday was the perfect day for wandering, and we covered several miles, criss-crossing the Two Hundred Acre Wood along various deer trails, clambering up rock faces and slithering down steep hills, watching the sun through the trees, looking for wild flowers, listening to grosbeaks, flycatchers and various hawks hunting in the clear air above our heads.

Black flies were out and about in profusion, and we were accompanied by clouds of them wherever we went, but one cannot have a northern spring season without black flies, and this spring was a perfect one for engendering black flies.

The trout lilies were out too, and there were colonies of the delicate yellow woodland bloomers everywhere we went. The two photos are a trifle blurry because of the wind, but that same wind occasionally dispelled the black flies.

I could have stayed out there in the sunlit woods for ever, and this morning, it is quite impossible to describe the feeling. I only knew, and with perfect certainty, that this is my native place — this is the place of my belonging, and where I should be. These trees and birds, these hills and coves — they are home, and I need no other.