By HDN staff
by Alkali Springs Correspondent
The Havre Daily News
Thursday, May 13
There is no question about it at all. Spring must be the most beautiful season of all in the Beautiful Bear Paws. Yes, we know all about fall and the colors of aspen and reds of brush. Yes we know all about winter and the crisp, clean lines that snow and contrasts make. But now, can there be anything more beautiful anywhere than Beaver Creek Park? If there is, we have not seen it. Yes Glacier has its grandeur, its lakes and mountains, but for anyone at all interested in just sheer beauty, take a short drive out to Eagle Rock and just stop and look. Eagle Rock is located on the east side of Beaver Creek Park. It is the first rocky butte coming into the park from the north entrance.
These days the brilliant greens of Bear Paw grasses sweep majestically right up to the rocky ledges of the mountain. And throughout the greens of the new grass are large patches of wild sweet peas of such a brilliant yellow as to make it difficult to look at this awesome picture without wearing sunglasses. Could Ireland ever be any more green than this? We think not but gentle readers do hurry out and do your looking now for one thing about the beautiful Bear Paws, as with much of Montana, it can all change in a hurry.
If the greens are not enough for you to feast on, there are the June berry blossoms. Driving through the park and adjacent lands and on the tops of mountains as well as all along creeks, in gulches and broad valleys, everything is white with blossoms.
An added benefit to seeing all this incredible beauty that millions of June berry bushes provide, this makes a dandy time to get out and locate your favorite spot to come back to later and pick those incredible delicacies, the June berries. So beautiful to look at now and so good to eat or put in pies later on.
Not only that but whole mountainsides and valley floors now are carpeted with roosterheads, yellow bells, larkspur and prairie smoke.
We write frequently about some flowers but you know, seldom do we write about larkspur and it is as beautiful a dark blue flower as you can find in bold patches around the mountains. We have a patch just north of the road getting to the cabin and how showey and beautiful it is.
Dee Stricklers flower book, Prairie Wildflowers says this flower is called Montana larkspur. She comments that some authors call low species larkspurs and tall ones delphinium while others consider annuals to be larkspurs and perennials delphiniums. The deep and rich blue flowers can be found in the mountains and out on the prairie from the Northern Rocky Mountain region all the way into Saskatchewan. These flowers are most happy in the beautiful Bear Paws and let themselves be seen from now into the summer.
One of our favorites of all flowers is the strange and not very flowery at all flower with the very intriguing name, that being Prairie Smoke. Most Prairie Smoke we have seen is brick in color and rises above the ground about eight inches. Usually there are three flowers on the top of a stalk that as one author says, not gracefully in the prairie breezes.
What about that name? Well, we have always heard that a whole hillside of this flower looks like smoke hovering a tad above the land. But Dr. Strickler in her book alludes to the fact that the fruit of Prairie Smoke becomes puffs of long feathery plumes that travel on the wind. Whatever the reason for the name, the flower is grand and worthy of our mountains.
Dont delay and dont take our word for anything. Get out and bask in Bear Paw bosky dells for yourself this spring and enjoy, enjoy, enjoy.
