In An Alpine Meadow, Beside A Ditch Filled With Show-Melt Water, These White Blossoms Pop-Up Everywhere!

…. “Only Grass Everywhere Filled With Little Pink And Blue And White Dots Of Intense Color.“

….[ “Soon stunted pines disappear entirely and we’re in alpine meadows. There’s not a tree anywhere, only grass everywhere … We’ve reached the high country, above the timberline. “ ] “ Soon we are between banks of old snow, the way snow looks in early spring after a thaw. Little streams of water run everywhere into mossy mud, and then below this into week-old grass and then small wildflowers, the tiny pink and blue and yellow and white ones which seem to pop out, sun-brilliant, from black shadows. Everywhere it’s like this! Little pins of colored light shoot forth to me from a background of somber dark green and black. Dark sky now and cold. Except where the sun hits. On the sun side my arm and leg and jacket are hot, but the dark side, in deep shadows now, is very cold.“ [There’s not a tree anywhere,] “only grass everywhere filled with little pink and blue and white dots of intense color.“

~1.5 Straight Line Miles SouthSouthEast Of Rock Creek Vista Point, First Roadside Rest Area, Beartooth Highway, MT. Even the above Narrator’s beautifully phrased flower descriptions of ZMM page 110, are poetically getting us ready, by analogy, for the ZMM Narrator’s “High Country of the Mind“, where there are “Little pins of colored [philosophical] light shoot forth to me from a background of somber [every day normal thinking] ...little pink and blue and white dots of intense [philosophical thinking] “ !!
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The ZMM Narrator’s Flowers =>
…The flowers here appear to be Mountain Marsh Marigolds (Caltha leptosepala) also known as White Marsh Marigold, Broad-Leaved Marsh Marigold and Elkslip. As the the name suggests, these flowers thrive in wet areas, such as the snow-melt ditch in the picture above, or the mossy mud described in the passage from Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Considered harbingers of spring, Mountain Marsh Marigolds are plentiful after snow-melt and bloom early spring through august in alpine and sub-alpine meadows in the Rocky Mountains. Actually from the buttercup family and not a true marigold, Mountain Marsh Marigolds are a treat for foraging moose and elk.
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During My 2002 ZMM Route Research Trip, I Captured In Photographs An Example Of Practically Every Flower I Saw.
…. However, as you can see in this “Flowers” Album, my photographs in the highest elevations of Beartooth Plateau, do not correspond to Te ZMM Narrator’s Colors, such as the area of the /\ Above /\ Photo at this WayPt =136 at 9554 feet.
…Here, and at higher elevations, are where I looked for but did not see the ZMM Narrator’s “pink and blue flowers“. In fact, I did not see such flowers until well after the snow fields and return to elevations below 9500 feet. What could be the reasons for this absence? Reasons could be =>
..1) My travel through here was almost a month earlier in the season than the Narrator’s.
..2) The Narrator must compress into a few short paragraphs a vast travel experience, many different times and elevations.
..3) Each ZMM Traveler can expect to see the high country “differently”, whether philosophic or in reality.

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Certainly, In These Quick Sketches, We Catch The Narrator’s Thrill Of The High Country =>

…. The Real Physical Landscape Scene.

And By Analogy & Metaphoric Bridge Connection =>

…. The Mental & Philosophic Landscape Scene.

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(Photo = 106-0619 ...... ZMM Page = 110 ...... WayPt =136`|k|' 9554ft)