Hope

January 15, 2022

Author: Phyllis Root
Photographer: Kelly Povo

Since December 31, 2000, we’ve sat down together with notebooks to make a list of goals for the coming year.  The following January, we get out the notebooks, look at which goals we’ve accomplished (or haven’t), and make a new list for the coming year.  Last year’s list of 2021 goals for each of us began with HOPE, and this year’s goals for 2022 begin the same way: HOPE.  

In a way, just making a list of goals, especially in hard times, is an act of hope. Some of this year’s goals involve working for racial justice, some involve our jobs, some involve family and other folks we love.  

And many of our goals involve wildflowers.  

Here, while cold grips our state and snow buries the ground, are our hopes for flower chasing this year:

We hope this is the year we see ball cactus in bloom.
We hope to finally find bog adder’s mouth.
We hope to go to the North Shore and see encrusted saxifrage and auricled twayblade.
We hope to visit lots of bogs, including our favorite floating bog at Long Lake Conservation Center.
We hope to see Great Lakes gentian and pleated gentian in bloom.
We hope to see northern slender ladies’-tresses.
We hope to see brittle prickly pear in bloom.
We hope to see all the orchids we haven’t seen yet, (only four more to go) that are possible to see in Minnesota.
We hope to keep chasing native wildflowers and spreading the word about them.

Most of all, we hope.