The wildflowers here in the foothills outside Boise have been pretty spectacular this spring.
One of my favorite wildflowers — wild flax — has started blooming:
Wild flax is amazing because it is blue, and I have a perpetual hard on for all blue flowers, like these alpine forget-me-nots. It is also amazing because it is one of many species first described by Meriwether Lewis on the Lewis and Clark Expedition.
The Cabin Idaho asked me to teach a writing camp for kids this summer in conjunction with The Peregrine Fund’s World Center for Birds of Prey. Yesterday afternoon I and two awesome Cabin staff (Katie & Ashley) met with the education coordinator at the center for a tour and planning session.
I mentioned that I found the book A Feathered River Across The Sky about the extinction of the passenger pigeon deeply moving and was planning a writing activity around passenger pigeons and other extinct bird species.
The education coordinator mentioned that though they deal primarily with birds of prey, they had a passenger pigeon in their specimen collection.
Naturally, I got super excited when he mentioned that we also might be able to swing by the specimen collection to view it.
