The species that defined the bloom was Desert Gold, a knee-high sunflower whose massed golden blossoms lit the sky.  Its seeds had been slumbering for decades – in some cases, perhaps for a century – among the rocks, only to be awakened by the record six inches of rain that fell on the desert this year.  While those seeds slept, television and computers spread across the world.  The first atomic bomb exploded, followed by many more.  The Cold War began, and ended.  Smallpox was eradicated, and AIDS appeared. Mankind left the earth, walked on the moon, made marks on Mars.  Genes were discovered, then mapped, and are now being modified with frenzied abandon.  The human population of the planet tripled. 

Through it all, the seeds waited with … what?  None of the worrisome words that describe the waiting person apply; not hope, or patience, or courage, or despair.  No, the seeds of Desert Gold simply endured, their expectation of rebirth calibrated by the experience of thousands of generations.  Seeds do not wait with hope.  They are hope.  Seeds do not wait for a miracle.  They are the miracle. When the conditions were right, the seeds responded instantly, and returned the beauty of their flowers to the world. 

My reverie was interrupted by the exuberant whoops of a crowd of college kids piling out of a van to frolic through the blooms.  This sort of thing was happening all the time along the Death Valley roads. The crowds, the intense but mellow energy, the high spirits, and the sense that this was a once-in-a-lifetime happening, all contributed to an atmosphere that can only be called the Woodstock of Wildflowers. 

A few of the participants would have looked right at home grooving to Jimi Hendrix and the Jefferson Airplane all those years ago.  But most were inhabitants of a very different reality.  SUVs had replaced VW buses as the vehicles of choice, and immense RVs formed a fortress-like city that seemed to loom over the sprawling, dusty parking lot that was the “overflow campground” – home for lowly tent dwellers like us.  Still, for all the variety of values among the attendees, our search for beauty made us one -- the Republicans and the Democrats, the old and the young, the drivers of Hummers and of hybrids.  As I admired the flowers alongside a couple with National Rifle Association stickers on their RV, I suddenly felt hope bloom, a hope as unexpected and overwhelming as the blossoms. Hope that beauty might be the key to bringing us together at last, and that together we might yet save this ravishing, ravished, and beloved world.