Sensing Forward

I could smell the Carolina lilies before I could see them. Just the day before, hiking along the Bartram trail upslope from Martin creek, I had been taken by surprise and wonder to find a single lone beauty standing left of the path, where never before I had seen one. I bent to meet her and soaked her fragrance into my whole body. I could feel the core of my being drinking in that sweet melody. I felt the honey slide down from nose to tail, infusing secret places I had forgotten were there. Now, along the winding switchbacks between Otto, NC and Standing Indian campground, the rocky dirt road is bejeweled with the look alike Turk’s Cap lilies and the bright almost quinacra violet-red seed structures of umbrella plants in moist places under black boulders. I pause many times along the way to get closer looks and whiffs of a variety of wildflowers. 

 

The deeply fragrant Carolina or Michaud's Lily (Lilium michauxii) (looks very similar to the Turk's Cap) 

and the Umbrella Leaf(Diphylleia Cymosa) with seed berries