192 Comments

I've been intrigued by your writing. Did you feel stifled by your position as an anchor? I'm asking because it's evident to me that you have much to share when you write, and I appreciate your thoughtful reflections. Continued blessings to you!

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Thank you Dan for starting my day with the beauty and color of wildflowers. Some days it’s hard to keep a perspective, but 2 good things this week..

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Excellent narrative, the bit on gardening reminds me of Michael Pollan’s Second Nature: A Gardener’s Education which I am currently reading. I was hiking today and captured a gorgeous, if understated, Sonoran Desert native, the Climbing Milkweed Vine or Fringed Twinevine. So lovely, especially in the quickly drying desert. Thanks for your inspiring words.

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Beautiful.

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Your writing is as beautiful as wildflowers. Thank you.

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Over the past 8 years, I have driven varying routes between Washington State and Oklahoma and have observed this beautiful country in every season's mantle. The wildflowers in Spring and Summer are so diverse and beautiful. The changing colors of the trees in fall and winter's frost, ice, snow, and hibernating foliage remind us to slow down and shelter for a time. It is all perspective.

These are the things we can turn to as we grieve those things that are so sad that we can't get past until we have dipped deep into our emotional well and let it flow. Then we can look at such beauty around us and rise up to the heights of joy.

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A beautiful story that we all needed right now. Love the photos! Mr. Rather I have always loved your work. Keep us steady!

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I love wild flowers.l They are beautiful ,dreamy,and so independent.,not under the obligation of humans to plant them,water them ,take care of them.They bloom and wither on their own free will .Independent and free!,definitely better than us.

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Here in my homeland, the western slopes of the Appalachian Mountains of eastern Kentucky/southwestern West Virginia/western Virginia, we are blessed with an abundance of wildflowers. Even those that are escapees from long-ago cultivation bring joy to the heart & reflection to the soul. Wandering among the wooded hills, one sometimes comes across a little landscape of daffodils, peonies, or daylilies run wild. Or a copse of bright red quince cups or the glowing yellow bells of a forsythia bush early in the spring, where someone's house, long gone, once stood. Often there will be stones upon which the house once rested, or a larger stone that served as the home's doorstep. I treasure these places.

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I'm another upstate New Yorker. Where I live, we were hit with a whopping 41 inches of snow this winter and I was unable to get on the back porch to feed the squirrels, birds (bluejays, cardinals and a motley of others including a random hawk here and there)--and a couple of homeless cats for four days. Apparently my furry and feathered friends didn't mind much since the squirrels were trapped somewhere, and I saw nothing beyond white on white for all those days.

We'll get a little more snow on Thursday, I hear, and perhaps my first glimpse of the ground hog that visited last year will be renewed since I'm no longer afraid of that one. It seems he liked peanut butter sandwiches! As for wildflowers, I have no garden outside, only an enormous now 3-yo basil bush in the house.

And on top of all that, Dan, your vivid, melodic phrasing in these daily moments of reflection are refreshing like a cool breeze on a hot summer's day. It will be a while before we see summer here in the NE, but that makes you all the more precious then, doesn't it?

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Amongst the Wildflowers spewing their delicious and wonderful fragrances our nose will crinkle and instantly recognize the sharp smell of the wild garlic.

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Thank-you for mentioning First lady Johnson, she always inspired me towards sowing wildflowers in the neighborhood.

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On a walk down a country road back in 2005, near the foothills of the Rockies in Colorado, on a classically sunny day, a tiny glint on the hillside caught my eye, and I was compelled to scamper up its bank to discover its origin. Perched there, on this otherwise bare hillside, was a lone young ponderosa pine with a lovely blue-purple springtime Colorado Columbine nestled at its base. A natural kinship. And there, sitting on the ground keeping these two company was the source of my curiosity—a wee piece of time eroded regional granite, and encased within its rough texture was the shiny evidence of an alluvial gold nugget🌟 I stood there, with these three, holding a treasure from state history in my hand, in awe of this moment, this special reveal by Nature to solitary me...16 years later, my wee treasure remains with me. And someday, post covid, we will go back together to visit that very spot.

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What a beautiful change in our landscape that we sometimes overlook. Thank you for the reminder to stop, look and enjoy...as winter ends finding those early flowers peaking out is such a sign the cold and snow are coming to an end.

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So refreshing to read the beautiful words describing the beauty of flowers in nature, wild and untamed. Nothing is quite as beautiful as a long stretch of untouched bluebonnets in the hill country or really anywhere in Texas. Thank you for respite from the often unsettling news of our human nature.

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Thank you for bring us back to what our world is.

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