by Lori Balue, Traveling Health Coach
The wildflower superbloom season of 2019 was spectacular! I have always lived in California and perhaps taken it for granted that you could drive in any direction and get to a different environment within a couple of hours. I have been told I am lucky to be near so many beautiful flowers. Living in the high desert, I have the brilliant, orange poppies and other wildflowers to see and walk among. They are so close I could do this weekly during spring–and I did. I never really appreciated how much they could help to reduce my own personal stress. I knew I liked to walk near them and visually enjoyed them; moreover, a pathway attuned to nature for self-healing and aging successfully.
Our sympathetic nervous system responds to heightened, daily stress. It can make every stressful situation stay turned on. This can be invasive and without an outlet to relax it could be something we end up living with daily, which unwittingly may cause our health to weaken. Our sympathetic nervous system is part of the autonomic nervous system and is called the “fight or flight” response. It is involuntary. It is turned on during our life when we are in physical danger or perceive our life as dangerous, I.e., stress which increases blood pressure. Even though we don’t have a hungry tiger coming at us, we do work to provide for ourselves and families and have deadlines and responsibilities that can seem overwhelming. To our brains this is an emergency. This can be something that happens regularly turning off and on continuously completely overwhelming our health and our ability to fully relax. This is aging and disease in the making and not a place we purposely choose to be in. So, how do we reduce this involuntary protective mechanism our brain and body creates? We find ways during the day and as often as we can to find something beautiful to look at and to be near to relax us into the parasympathetic nervous system state that is also an involuntary response. The parasympathetic nervous system is the part of the autonomic nervous system that controls the functions of the body at rest. It helps maintain homeostasis in the body. It causes muscles to relax and heart rate to decrease. This is the “rest and digest state”. This is what we want to strive for and we want to be successful at this because this is our health and a way to diminish disease in our bodies to keep from aging rapidly.
Why chase wildflowers? I found myself overwhelmed with the balance of work, life and learning a new career and business. It magnified right at the height of wildflower season. So what did I do? I got in the car and drove. I consider 3 hours a good, productive day trip easily accomplished from dawn to dark. I needed to clear my mind and reset. I needed to cry, breath, laugh and smile. I needed color, blue skies, the sun on my skin and the breeze enveloping me. I first had to see the California poppies in Lake Elsinore and planned a quick getaway. After a noisy business weekend, I got on the freeway and instead of going home, drove there, got in line to get off the freeway, finally parked and had a big smile on my face. I noticed everyone else had these same smiles. We could all talk to each other and know we were sharing something special. It was invigorating! I was able to get a good walk in along the trail besides the poppies and purple wildflowers. I was relaxing. I was hooked.
So the next weekend, off I drove to see the super bloom in Anza Borrego State Park. It was a good drive and I had time to practice my school work by phone with a partner, had a good talk and did some crying. It was productive and releasing as I drove through the fog and drizzle to the sunny green hills of inland San Diego towards the low desert. It seems the more we dwell on something (large or small) the bigger the stress can grow and feel. I needed to let that go. I needed to grow and change. As I drove through beautiful, green rolling hills I started to look forward to the day. I had been planning and dreaming about this trip for years and never committed to it. Now was the time. The wildflower superbloom. Hello, beautiful flowers–carpets of them on the side of the road. It was mesmerizing and very hard to not take just one more photo. I found myself rushing and had to slow down. The colors were deep and yellow. There were patches of white and carpets of pink wildflowers. I just needed to capture all of it and walk amongst it. I passed an immense section of yellow spread out for miles on the other side of the street. I told myself I would go back. The visitor center road was closed to this crowd so I parked on the side of the street and followed all the other flower seekers to the state park. It was all worth it. I don’t mind walking with the crowd. I am sharing with them. We are all one with the earth, like bees and butterflies to the color and pollen of the flowers. We are driven to see, feel and relax. I walked the Borrego Palm Canyon trail after already having walked 4 miles back and forth to my car to get water. I am so happy I did. The carpets of tiny little wildflowers were abundant and eye-inspiring. Every bend I took was another beautiful eyeful of color. Yellow predominated with white, pink and red/orange flowers. The skies were clear and blue and the air a wonderful 80 degrees. I was in my element and thinking of nothing but the path ahead of me and seeing more flowers. I was hooked. What a wonderful day. I didn’t want to go home. So I buzzed through Joshua Tree National Park–it was kind of on the way home (I convinced myself). To my surprise, the southern slope of the park was covered in blue lupine! I got there an hour before sunset and the colors were sparkling. I was excited. It knew I would have to come back because it would be dark soon. I drove through and out and got home exhausted but happy.
For the next four weeks, I continued to chase the wildflower superbloom. I walked all the trails at the Poppy Reserve in Lancaster taking pictures and videos of the best profusion of flowers yet as the poppies were in full bloom. I drove back to Joshua Tree National Park to see it during the day, marveling at the carpets of yellow and smiling as the car behind me kept getting out at the same stops and we couldn’t help smiling as we had eye contact. We couldn’t stop taking pictures.
The following week was the bonus trip. I had visited the lower desert first and explored the flowers near home and now it was time to explore Carrizo Plain National Monument further north. I had never been there, having always driven near but never in. I left at dawn. What an amazing drive going up over the mountain with carpets of purple flowers around every curve. As I came down the hill into the valley there were hillsides carpeted with yellow flowers. It was hard to drive forward as I and everyone else kept pulling over for one more shot with our cameras. Nature at its most spectacular! This day was the cumulative of my wildflower chasing. It lasted all day inside the valley, up a small hillside, around the lake, through the flower patches, up the mountain trail to catch the palet of purple flowers amongst yellow and orange flowers and into the late afternoon when all the colors became more vibrant and began to sparkle. All the sightseers around me were happily snapping pictures. We were all taking a break from our cares and worries; releasing accumulative stress from our bodies. Nature at its most compelling as the sun, the breeze, the colors and sounds of the birds put us all into that parasympathetic, rest and digest state.
I spent five weeks chasing the wildflower superbloom, feeling grateful to have the time to see it. It was one of the best investments in my health and by the end of this time my stress felt manageable and I was stronger and more enlightened. To this day I see the flowers and trees around home and yearn to have those plants for my own home garden to encourage me to rest, sit amongst them and relax; a garden haven for me, the bees, butterflies and birds. I have a lot of gardening to do. And yet there will be more wildflower blooms to chase. Next year, perhaps, Death Valley.
Join me next as I explore ancient canyons of Arizona; the vast canyon lands and unique arches of Utah; into the mountains of the Rockies in Colorado along the highest paved road in America; and down to the Black Canyon of the Gunnison and along the million dollar highway to Durango and home to where my heart is–the grandest canyon of them all. It’s going to be epic!
Age Successfully! Be Vibrant!
Lori Balue, Adapt Certified Functional Health Coach
