Tulip Festival Skagit Valley, WA

Tulips
Everywhere
Fields of them
Ephemeral

Apparently there is an annual Tulip Festival in the Skagit Valley
Of Washington State
Up near Bellingham.
Who knew?

So off we went to see the Tulips
I am playing Tiny Tim singing “Tip Toe Through the Tulips”
on Repeat in the car

We park and head into a field.

Mud
Dirty, Wet and Deep
It takes a Lot of sloshy Messy Mud
To make So Many Beautiful Tulips.
Messy March yields a Beautiful April.

People who’ve been there before wear Knee-High Rubber Boots.
Those of us First-Timers Celebrating the Messy March Extension
Are in Canvas Sneakers.
Messy.

Beauty all around us.
Infinite Beauty

We can photograph Tulips
Paint them
Plant them
Appreciate their Beauty
Even make a scientific study of the Bulb and the Stem,
The Stamen, the Sepal,
Peduncle, Pistil, Petals, and Pollen
(I remember all those terms from High School Freshman Biology.)
We can know their place in the ecosystem
But the Flower is unaffected by this.
We can know how all the parts work
But we cannot ever know its essence.
It is not permanent.
Two weeks, maybe.
A Blip on the radar. And they are gone.

Like us.
A few years
Maybe a few decades
Maybe even a hundred years
A Blip on the radar
And we are gone
Like all these Tulips, we are impermanent
But, Oh, So Beautiful.
And our Essence is somehow never captured by another
Nor completely understood.
Can we even ever really know ourselves?

Science can understand, for example, the eye
Every Part of it and how it works
The Lens, the Retina, the Cornea, the Pupil, the Aqueous Humor; the Vitreous Humor; the Optic Nerve…
(I remember all those terms from High School Freshman Biology, too)
Science can disassemble and explain all aspects of it
Except One.
They cannot say what makes us See.

We can take countless photographs of these Tulips.
Make Puns about them.
Walk ankle deep in the Mud and Admire them.
But we can never capture their Essence.
It is not to be held.

And Perhaps that is the Beauty of Spring.
That it is a Moment in Time
An Essence
To Be Fully Present is the only way we can truly connect with it
And if we are Willing to empty our minds, and become one with it
It’s Impermanence matching our own
We might have in that a Glimpse of Eternity.

So Many Tulips.
So Beautiful.

And here I am Tiptoeing through the Tulips in Skagit Valley

# # #