Sweet Meadows

Tucquala Meadows in early summer: a perfect mix of spikes and umbels, globes and plumes. Author’s photographs

. . . the essence of gardening per se is really an interpretation of the pleasures of the countryside, of floral delights of waysides and woodland, encapsulated and expressed in the garden milieu. And it is always a very personal experience, between man and nature.

John Feltwell, Meadows: A History and Natural History, 1992

At Tucquala Lake, I parked my truck in a riverside campsite. The acrid cloud of dust that had followed me for ten miles up the Forest Service road settled. I walked out into the meadows surrounding the lake and hugging the lazy meandering upper Cle Elum River, which runs between the Cascades and the Wenatchee Mountains. It was late June, yet it was still spring here. The trickle of wildflowers that dotted the dry landscape along the road became a deluge. The flower-flooded terrain tingled with a verdant freshness already gone from the lowlands. I set up camp quickly, as dusk took over the valley with the shadow of Goat Mountain. Wandering the graveled dirt road that follows ...