March 9, 2026
Author: Phyllis Root
Photographer: Kelly Povo
While federal ICE agents still lurk in Minnesota, a warm spell has melted most of the other ice and snow here in the twin cities, which means it’s time to go looking for skunk cabbage. For years now we’ve gone down along Minnehaha Creek or Nine Mile Creek to see these first wildflowers emerge, melting their way up out of the ground by generating their own heat.
This year we wanted to find a new-to-us location, so after research on I-Naturalist, we head out for Spring Lake Regional Park. The map of the park shows trails among the trees, but, as sometimes happens, maps and reality don’t always agree. We follow the trails we can find, but the one we want that should take us to the skunk cabbage doesn’t appear anywhere on the ground. Time to bushwhack.
Bushwhacking is usually not our favorite way to get where we want to go. This time, though, the ground is unusually open and looks as though a giant maw has chewed its way through downed trees and branches and bushes, leaving splintered remnants behind. (Later in the day a conversation reveals that it was probably the work of a machine called a masticator.)
Skunk cabbage likes wet places–in the past we’ve seen it growing in little runoffs and rivulets, and we’re hopeful that we’ll find some in a little inlet past a beaver lodge where the land slopes down to the lake. We don’t hope in vain. In a narrow water track, partly covered with soft ice and partly muddy, we find the first small shoots of skunk cabbage, some no higher than an inch out of the ground. A few shoots look nipped at the tips, whether from brush clearing or perhaps from a hungry critter, but we know soon their maroon flowers will emerge, followed by cabbage-like leaves.
Mossy rocks dot the ground with green, and the air smells of wet wood, damp leaves, and spring unfolding around us. Somewhere a gaggle of geese gabbles. We are almost giddy to be out among trees and by water with our first wildflower sighting of the year. Who could go home when we’re close (as flower chasing goes) to Hastings Scientific and Natural Area where another early bloomer, snow trillium, grows? We head over to Hastings, and although it turns our we’re too early for even the first tiny buds of snow trillium, we do find last year’s sharp-lobed hepatica leaves and the first miniscule sprouts of this year’s growth. In a week or two we’ll come back for the delicate pale flowers, after which last year’s leaves will die and this year’s leaves will come in, and perhaps snow trillium will have made its elegant appearance.
We are pretty sure winter isn’t done with us yet, and we know ICE agents aren’t done, either. We’ll continue the work we’ve been doing for justice, helping to keep our neighbors and community safe. But we’ll also be on the lookout for spring unfolding, and seeing these early flowers makes joy sprout in our flower-chasing hearts.
Get a “We Can Melt ICE” decal from AppalachianWeird on Etsy and 100% of the proceeds go to the Immigrant Law Center of Minnesota https://www.ilcm.org/donate/.
