On a Sunday evening in June 1973, the skies broke open above St. Peter's Church in Bombay, India, declaring the start of the monsoon season. Black umbrellas formed a tent over my head as I stepped out of the car, the pleats of my white-and-silver sari bunched in my hand. At the altar, my bridegroom from Baltimore waited. Tucked in the best man's pocket was a copy of our vows, should we need prompting. But with the rolling thunder, the splatter of rain, the honking of rickshaws, the churn of ceiling fans, and the sweet voices of my family echoing in the half-empty church, we barely heard ourselves speak.

We met in graduate school in St. Louis. The first time I noticed him, he was sprawled diagonally across from me in class, half-listening to the drone of our biochemistry professor. He wore a beard and hair not quite long enough for a ponytail. We began studying together in the library. I lived two bus rides away in the home of an American family with four young children, where, in exchange for room and board, I cleaned the kitchen and gave up most of my weekends. It seemed only natural that I would fall in love with a yellow Volkswagen Beetle that was handsomely equipped with a chauffeur.

That June in 1972, at the close of the semester, he transferred back to his hometown of Baltimore to pursue a medical degree, and I remained in St. Louis to complete my doctorate in microbiology. One Saturday in late August he returned. That crisp afternoon, we drove to Babler State Park, a rich forest of tall white oaks, walnut trees, and sugar maples nestled in west St. Louis. We walked under a lush canopy of bright yellow and orange trees and, as twilight fell, climbed up an embankment overlooking the stream in which we'd set Cokes to chill. We leaned against a tree listening to the gurgling stream, the silky rustle of wind in the trees and the evening songs of the birds. Beyond that, there was only the sweetness of silence. It was then that he reached into his pocket and pulled out my engagement ring.

Our marriage bloomed for thirty-two years before it folded. Two years after our divorce, on what would have been my thirty-fourth wedding anniversary, I cast about for something extraordinary to do. I could not let the day pass in mundane obscurity. So, on this Sunday afternoon, I set forth on a wildflower hike at Soldiers Delight Natural Environment Area in Baltimore County. Once home to a mine supplying much of the world's chromium, Soldiers Delight is now a refuge for more than thirty-nine species of rare plants, as well as uncommon insects, rocks, and minerals. It is the largest serpentine barren (from the Latin serpentinus, meaning serpent rock) in the state, some two thousand geologically unique acres.

An extremely rare plant—Agalinis acuta, commonly called the sandplain gerardia, grew in the barrens. I'd seen pictures of this humble little annual, some five to fifteen inches tall, with its beautiful pink cone-shaped flowers, barely a half-inch long, and its long, thin green leaves growing sparsely on pale green stems. Tiny colonies of this species exist only in Massachusetts, New York, Rhode Island, and in Soldiers Delight. It's been on Maryland's list of Threatened and Endangered Species since 1987. Each plant blooms for merely one day between the months of August and September.

On this, my wedding anniversary, only one solitary gentleman and I showed up for the hike. Our sprightly 78-year-old guide, Emily Durkee, tapped her sturdy staff on the iron-speckled serpentine rocks, and we fell in behind her along the gentle slopes of Serpentine Trail. We paused often to see pixie-cup lichens and reindeer lichens, already-bloomed pussy toes, and sassafras that, as Emily said, looked like a mitten. Lyre-leaved rock cress, hair cap mosses, and serpentine chickweed hugged the trails. Yellow sun drops and Deptford pinks wove flowery patchwork quilts.

The area's name, I learned, may have come from patrolling soldiers in the early 1700s, who were said to be delighted by the sparse terrain because it provided no protective underbrush for hostile Indians. Others claim that Civil War soldiers liked camping there because local ladies brought them cake. What is certain is that Berry Hill in Soldiers Delight, the site of the first hanging in Maryland, is named for John Berry, who in 1751 was executed for murder on the highest point near the scene of his crime.

Despite a Recovery Plan initiated by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in 1988 and the restoration efforts of the Maryland Department of Natural Resources, attempts to save the fragile environment of Soldiers Delight have been thwarted, ironically, by its own popularity: Visitors have picked or trampled upon endangered wildflowers to the extent that conservationists now downplay their very existence. Also to blame are urbanization of the Eastern Seaboard and the rampant growth of invasive shrubs and trees. Left to grow unchecked, Virginia pines, for example, form a stifling, sun-blocking canopy over the tender plants beneath. At Soldiers Delight, managers have brought back periodic low-intensity burnings to simulate natural conditions. On our walk we saw charred areas of carefully marked ground; I could imagine the crawl of fiery red waves where a few blackened tree stumps still stood.

We didn't find any sandplain gerardia. Its absence was conspicuous, and although I hadn't expected to see the plant in bloom, I wanted a glimpse of the promise of things to come.

"It's just been so dry," Emily said, sensing disappointment. I grew wistful as our walk ended. Still, I consoled myself, I'd conversed with a stranger, peered into the mouth of a old chromium mine, and listened to Emily's girl-like excitement each time we found a patch of modest moss or some unassuming lichen. The noon sun was pouring down as I drove home. It occurred to me that despite our best efforts, in time, much of life—youth, health, love, even memory—is endangered by outside forces for which we have no names, or at best, inadequate ones. 


When I was growing up in India, my father took me on class trips with his college students. A professor of botany, he loved the natural world, and I inherited that trait and chose this subject as my university major. Perhaps that's why, in difficult moments in my life, I tend to seek solace in the company of green things.

Late one winter evening in 1979, I got into my car and drove off. Tears lurked around the corner of my eyes. I can't even recall what triggered this meltdown: I was a new mother and a full-time research scientist; my husband worked long hours; my parents from India were living with us, and it was a few days before our son's first Christmas. I ended up at Garlands Garden Center in Catonsville. Just a ten minute drive from my home, it had evolved from a pile of brick and concrete blocks into a haven for plants. That night, the garden center was ablaze. Christmas trees laden with tinsel and lights, baskets dripping with blooming Christmas cacti, and pots of red, pink, and cream Poinsettia filled every corner. I turned away from the festivity and walked out into the rear parking lot. A few balsam firs and Scotch pines stood along the fence. I looked up at the sky; it felt like impending snow. Turning, I walked back inside when all of a sudden there they were—my father and my husband, their eyes sweeping the aisles; my mother carrying my bundled-up son. My heart turned cartwheels inside its cage.

Back home my mother took me to task. "What happened? You didn't tell anyone you were going out?"

I shook my head, no.

"Why? I was worried."

But my husband hadn't worried. He'd gathered up the family and driven straight to the garden center. When I asked him how he knew, he said, "I just did."
 

The summer passed, and still I was haunted by the memory of my little frugal flower at Soldiers Delight, and by a feeling that something important had been left undone. So on a Sunday in September, I joined Emily for the second wildflower hike of the season. This time there were nine of us, including photographer Alan Gilbert and his wife, Nancy. Emily had called me the day before our hike to assure me she'd seen a field of pink.

After starting along Serpentine Trail, we veered away on a route different from the one I'd taken in June. An hour into the walk, however, I was still trudging in the heat. No sign of the elusive sandplain gerardia. Grateful for patches of shade, we walked in twos or threes, pausing to photograph moss or chickweed, adjust hats or backpacks, refer to wildflower guides, or just tilt back our heads for long, cool drinks. Several species of grasses waved in the occasional breeze. Up ahead, Alan, Nancy, and a little posse of hikers climbed a hill. I fell in line with a guy in an orange hat. As we moved up onto wide, flat terrain, Emily shaded her eyes with her palm, looking left and right. "I must have missed a turn," she said. "I thought they were here."

My heart sank; it was as if we were on a tour of Northern India and this little bell-shaped flower was the Taj Mahal. "You mean we won't see any sandplains?" I asked.

"There's a stream; we'll find some there." 

Promises, promises.

Stubbornly, my mind's eye clung to an image of rolling acres of pink fields. But then we reached the stream, and, finally, there they were: Sprays of blushing cotton-candy pinks and regal purples cascaded down the embankment—not as many as in my imagination, but real. A few sandplain blooms, severed from their stems, floated on the water. Balancing on flattened stones, I tiptoed a few feet up and down the stream, picking up the fallen floating flowers. In my palm, they were soft and tender, more delicate than any picture I'd seen.

Alan crouched to photograph the flowers, his knees and shins buried in damp earth. I turned to Nancy. "Do you always go with him?"

"No," she said. "I don't, most often. But today is our twenty-third wedding anniversary. And it's the only way we could spend time together."

I felt something fold, and something open, within me. I looked around. There was life everywhere here—among the mosses, lichens, wildflowers, and insects, within the thirsty streams and hard chromite rocks and charred, burnt clearings, and in the skies above us. And there was love, too, just as there was love on the wet Sunday in Bombay that had ushered in an extraordinary blossoming of my family. I lingered by the stream, counting sandplain blooms.

This ancient annual preceded man on this Earth by an incomprehensible span of time—some fifty to a hundred million years. It has persevered against incredible odds, living in tiny pockets of barren soil, opening its blooms for a single day in late summer so that its few remaining natural pollinators can help it reseed for another year. Time, it seems, is inconsequential, almost peripheral, to this little plant's sweet existence on Earth.

As temperatures drop this winter, sandplain will fold into the landscape again. How blessed we'd be if, like sandplain gerardia, we too might live in grace for one or as many seasons as we
are given.

Reluctantly, I walked away from the stream, hoping I would return, perhaps next year.

—Lalita Noronha's short story collection, Where Monsoons Cry, was published in 2004. She is a science teacher and the science department chair at St. Paul's School for Girls.

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