For eight years now, we’ve been taking the same hike on my birthday. Some years we’ve pushed the calendar a little, but most years, it’s been on the day itself. And it doesn’t get old–not for me, anyway. Much as I love to take new hikes, this one, I could do over and over. As the kids have gotten older, the hike’s gotten shorter–longer in distance, shorter in apparent duration. 
The flowers are always glorious–larkspur, mariposa lily, creeping flox, paintbrush, penstemon. Some years, trillium or glacier lilies. That’s part of the draw–taking the same hike every year on the same day (almost, almost. . .), we see the variation: some years there’s been snow, other years it’s already dry. We’ve been glad of gloves and raincoats; we’ve gotten sunburnt, lounging at the old lookout site, photographing the view. By now, we’d hardly need the camera–we’ve taken most of the view shots, the flower panoramas, time and again. But we like to pose at our traditional lunch spot–if we do a Christmas card in any given year, that’s generally the shot we choose.
Anyway, repetition of photographs (or avoiding same) isn’t the point. It’s the looking again, the being there. No snow this year. Not a trillium in sight. But larkspur, always–and how I love that blue that’s sometimes purple, sometimes fading. And the flower names–mariposa lilies that are also “elegant cat’s ears.” Is a cat’s ear ever less than elegant? Is it ever elegant at all?
It’s usually our first big dayhike of the season, but this year we snuck in an early season (for us–we’re bound by the school year, remember) hike in northern California. Cliff-rimmed lakes, small waterfalls (good for the collector). And a lily pond.
The waterlilies showed up close to the end of a two-day hike. Meadow-middle, hot sun, floaty, ethereal, grounded in algae and muck–all of those. I’ve been writing about ponds, revising a story with fish and aquatic plants and a whole family of conflict and reconciliation on shore. It was a hot day, and the surroundings were stunningly beautiful, and still we were tired, and hot, bug-bitten. And still the pond was absolutely worth trudging to, and toward, and past.
Home on the deck now, I’m smelling the neighbors’ lighter fluid–long past supper time, but maybe they’re grilling a midnight snack. I always say early morning summer breakfast on the deck feels like camping, but may night writing can, too (aside from the laptop). [And an aside just now from my daughter: “What yumminess are our neighbors concocting, and how can we get them to give us some?”]
I’m not sure why the lily pond struck me so. Because my story has fishponds? Because I 
like waterlilies? Because it looked so composed and yet so necessary: so in place, in its place? Because of the layers, maybe, a whole story close-in, or several stories: sturdy, suspended leaves that might be camps for fairies, platforms for frogs; zippy, neon-blue dragonflies just visible; tight yellow buds opening, and who knows how long they even last; a little reflected cloud, floating in the air or in the water or both, not shaped like much of anything, yet, but full of possibility.