This purple flowering weed grows wild all around Sitka. It is a way the local people measure the length of summer.
The fireweed starts blooming at the bottom, and as summer progresses, the blooms creep up to the very top. As the new flowers open on the progression upward the lower blooms die and drop off the plant. When summer is over, the last blooms open on the very top of the plant in one last desperate attempt of hanging onto summer, all the blooms below are dead and have fallen to the earth.
This has been a summer of death for myself and many of my friends as we have watched the older generation pass away. I have lost three of my great mentor friends, Jewel, Larry, and Phil. Two of my good friends have lost their parents this year.
Summer whisked by here in sitka. The weather on the ocean has been the worst I can remember, pounding us almost daily in storm tossed waves. It has taken very tough guides and even tougher clients to catch fish this year, yet the fireweed has bloomed so brightly.
I look at my departed friends lives and can see many similarities. Nothing has come easy for any of them. Life has a way of pounding each of us with the daily roaring waves of trouble.
My childhood memories are of my parents and other adults just coasting through life in one big easy fun time. Now I understand there is no easy way to get through life. Each of us face our own battles. some are battles of health, some are relationships, some are faith, but each person I know has battles in life.
I grew up with a group of friends that were very tight. Our parents were close so us children depended on each other as well. Like the cluster of fireweed, we bloomed bright in our early years.
Our parents were blooming in the center of their lives and bursting with the color of good lives lived in Godly examples.
I now see my age group blooming in the center of their lives and our parents bursting forth in the final blooms at the very last of the summer of their lives. I watch with fascination as I still see the bright blooms in people in their 80's and 90's. I am even feeling that they are perhaps blooming brighter than the younger ones of us during this period of our lives.
Summer is on for my age group. Fall is quickly upon our parents.
I am so proud of the bright burst of blooms coming from our elderly parents.
I can only hope I can carry on the torch and burst forth in blooms in my elder final years.
Each one of us needs to make sure we finish strong. Like the runners of a long race with a burst of kick to pass others at the final finish line, we need to make sure we strive to be our best, bloom our brightest on our final lap of our human race.
The fireweed leaves me with a great example of how to finish strong and go out with a burst of color.
fireweed at the start of summer
fireweed mid summer
fireweed at the end of summer
