“Ah! sunflower, weary of time/ Who countest the steps of the sun,/Seeking after that sweet golden clime /Where the traveller’s journey is done...”
It took us a while to find them. We drove to the McKee-Beshers Wildlife Management Area on River Road where my wife Barbara had seen them in past years. We walked to the field and all around it. Just a lot of tall grass. We started back to the car, meeting along the way another seeker. She hadn’t found them either.
Back in the car, we drove another 5 km down the road to another entrance to the WMA. There were many cars parked there, which seemed promising. An older man with a floppy hat, photographer’s vest and a large birding scope was headed back to his car. “Do you know where they are?” we asked. He pointed us toward a trail. “Follow that path,” he said.
The path took us past a marsh covered with algae and lily pads. Frogs spoke unseen from the water. Then the trail turned into a wooded area bustling with butterflies and damselflies. A crawdad made its way across the overgrown track.
Then we saw them. The field of sunflowers nearly 500 meters long and perhaps 200 meters wide. That’s when we realized that we were a week or two late. The sunflowers were still in full bloom but fraying at the edges, a bit bedraggled in the hot summer air, no longer at their peak.
It is a cliché that life is short but if that is true for a human being it is all the more so for a flower. The life of a blossom is counted in days and these sunflowers, which had been in the full blush of youth just about a week ago, were now preparing to enroll in Medicare. Yet, in that short time, they had fulfilled their reason for being. Each of those thousands of flowers had produced hundreds of seeds, potential sunflower offspring carried to the four winds in the guts of birds and other critters or simply fallen to the ground to take root in whatever soil they find. Reproduction, the mission statement, for every species on the planet, the path from the present to the future, had been executed in breathtaking beauty by these cheery pagan sun worshipers.
Like me, a little past its prime.
But although their core purpose was complete, they were not yet ready to relinquish the summer. Today, as the sun appeared, each of those blooms turned its face toward the source of life and followed it across the sky as if rejoicing at the chance for another day.
“They are a little past their prime,” my wife said.
“I know the feeling,” I replied.
As I said it, it occurred to me that more than just a quip, I had stumbled upon a truth about my own existence. I too am a bit past my peak. I too have largely fulfilled my purpose. My own seed has been scattered and taken root in other soils (in the Denver metro area as it turns out).
“It’s a long, long while from May to December,” the classic tune, September Song tells us and I have without a doubt arrived at the eponymous month “when the days grow short.”
But a short day is better than no day, and so, like the sunflower, I awaken gratefully each day eager to see what it will bring. I go into the morning air (after coffee, of course), turn my face toward the sun and the Source of Life, and follow them until nightfall when I fall back into bed.
But even in sleep, I face east, anticipating the moment when the sun and I will turn our countenances toward one other once more and I will greet her again — at least as long as we both continue to rise.
The world’s a narrow bridge; fear nothing.