Beauty Beside the Road: Orchids on the Highland Scenic Highway

John Muir once wrote: "To the sane and free, it will hardly seem necessary to cross the continent in search of wild beauty, however easy the way, for they find it in abundance wherever they chance to be." Guided by the words of Muir, my wife and I are always on the lookout for “Wild Beauty.” It seems Wild Beauty comes naturally to West Virginia where nature is always at work casting beauty in unlikely places.

For instance, last Tuesday (August 9, 2016), we went in search of a purple fringeless orchid that had been spotted on the Highland Scenic Highway by a member of the staff at the Cranberry Mountain Nature Center. Having a rough idea of where the orchids were located, we slowly drove the Highway looking for them. On our second pass, we caught sight of them. Growing on a tall central stalk they stood out from the grasses and ferns growing by the side of the road.

Purple Fringeless Orchid

Purple Fringeless Orchid

That’s what amazes me about Wild Beauty. Like gold, it’s where you find it. In this case a perfectly beautiful and relatively uncommon orchid was just growing beside the road not more than 20 feet from the pavement. You just never know where and what you’ll find when you go searching. What’s more even common flowers can appear uncommonly beautiful. For example, we found some field thistle growing in the berm of the road, too. It was beautiful in its own right. So was some St. John’s wort.

Thistle

Thistle

There’s just so much beauty scattered about we could easily trip over it. More about the beauty at our feet and by the roadside in future blogs. 

St. John's Wort