Joy in the Tulip Fields

Springtime is rejuvenating, and little enthralls me the way a visit to the Skagit Valley Tulip Festival does. I can well understand Tulipomania, the Dutch phenomenon in the 1630s that led to wild speculative prices for particularly hoarded hybrids. Here in the Northwest, many await the opening of the tulip cups with similar enthusiasm, and this year we've waited longer than I can remember--Al Gore's Global Warming brought us an icier winter that delayed the fields' splendor nearly a month.

But we who consult Tulip Maps like astrologers plot the planets were overjoyed to find this weekend peak. And so my husband, son and I got in the car, singing along with oldies, and drove the hour north of Seattle to the Mount Vernon flats.

Unfortunately, pent-up eagerness for the flowers' bloom brought out masses of fans of fringed, parrot, Triumph and double (a great number of them, for reasons I can't really understand, East Indian, many in sparkly saris and other delightfully-hued garb). Out in the fields, where narrow roads transverse open acres, cars were lined up helplessly, stopped dead for quarter-hours at a time. We were among them, frustrated. But quiet about it.

The sun wove between the clouds and haze, and even infrequent advancement was bearable on a Sunday where your fellow traffic victims join you in such a pleasant purpose. Admittedly, Skagit Valley is far less hospitable in its April display than it had been in the early years we attended, 1996, 7 and 8. In those days, more farmers opened up their fields freely. Cars parked alongside the fields or on the host's turf; there were no fluorescent-orange-vested traffic directors, no ticket booths, no merchants offering $6 packs of tulip-themed paper napkins, lawn pinwheels or imported-from-China trivets painted with quaint European street scenes.

There was an art show in a a barn (which continues) and a grower who let kids pet his tame alpacas. More family farms carried on the Dutch flower-growing traditions, and welcomed yours to stroll into the field, gawk at the rows of color, and chat a bit.

Now, only two farms remain, and they've made tulip-admiration into almost as big a business as bulb-vending. Parking lots are cordoned off into rows, and entering the fields or displays requires a fee, $4 at Roosengaarde, and $5 at Tulip Town. Cut flowers and especially, bulbs, offered with "deals" like a fifth bunch free, or 20 extra bulbs when ordering others, are for sale by plentiful clerks. Kiosks for Kettle Corn, corn dogs, nachos and other fair fare provide a pungency more conducive to nausea than communing with nature.

But pass the distractions and there are the flower fields. Even when lined with tourists, God provides there a breathtaking spectacle. Astonishing rainbow rows of intense color bring smiles, gratitude and praise. Families squat, smiling, arms linked for the camera, among the sturdy stems, vibrant bowls of vivid petals enveloping them, joining them together in exhilaration.

Everyone is snapping photos, eager to capture the intensity, the brilliance, the astounding beauty. I've made the tulip pilgrimage many times; how many ways can you photograph a flower? "Say cheese!" "Don't move!" my verdant subject cooperates and I giggle, grateful for digital cameras and giant photo storage. It's all here for the imbibing, the enjoying.

That's why the interminable traffic was bearable. Little is troubling when God colors the world.

Unless You're a Photo Nut, Skip This Post

I'm an avid photographer. I figure if life is worth living, it's worth remembering. Well, most of the time.

So, to my family's fatigue, I snap photos of what we do together. If we're on a vacation, I'm recording it all; I download these moments and relive them on my slideshow screensaver with great delight. My middle daughter, to my heartbreak, will allow herself to be in one or two photos during an entire trip away. If she sees me raise camera to brow, she puts forth her open palm to block out her face. I must have hundreds of photos of "the hand," ruining my reminiscences of family gatherings.

Though before going digital in 2003, I'd lug my Nikon D60 with Nikkor 28-200mm lens with me everywhere, since then I've become spoiled by the "throw my camera in my purse" joy of a Kodak DX7590 with 10x optical zoom. It does away with carrying a separate video camera, recording my daughter's performances and our family by the pool--limited only by the size of its SD card. I love that I can control the flash, deciding when I want natural light (just don't open it) or fill (an easy button on top). It focuses smoothly and accurately.

But, it's only 5 megapixels, and it takes FOUR SECONDS between pressing the shutter and taking the picture. I've lost way too many photos that way. Cute expressions on toddler nieces just won't wait that long.

I've been looking to update for a long time. I even bought a Kodak P712, 7.1 megapixels and 12x optical zoom. But I hate it. I didn't know that it has an automatic flash; in order to override it, you have to go deep into menus. I don't have time to do that when the groom and the bride are being hoisted on their chairs at a wedding. Also, that camera has a jerky zoom; when I see a photo, I want to just go there; I don't want my zoom to keep moving in too close after I've stopped pressing it.

So it's been several years since I've bought a camera, since nothing's been made that addresses my needs. My husband, who hears my muttered curses while I wait the four seconds between pressing and shutter release, keeps urging me to buy a replacement that's faster. I keep looking for a toss-in-my-purse mega-zoom cuz I won't return to the lens-toting or changing of an SLR.

I thought I'd found it when I came upon the Nikon P80. With 18x optical zoom, a flash I can control, 10 megapixels, compact size--all the specs united to send my heart a-flutter. Then, when Costco put it on sale in a package with case and SD card, I caved.

I read the manual carefully and last week went out with my husband to the Skagit Valley to view the flocks of snow geese and swans that over-winter in the barren tulip fields and other farm-y expanses. Snow geese congregate in enormous white masses, commonly 50,000 or more. Trumpeter swans' white swaths are fewer birds, but they're fatter and far grander when they fly. A swooping raptor can set them into a magnificent tizzy.

It was a frigid and mostly overcast day, but being out in the open fields was energizing. We followed the course suggested by a newspaper article on the geese, and indeed, there they were, gathered in a formidable line just closer than the horizon. That wasn't good enough--we went on the proverbial wild goose chase, seeking to come close and watch their group ascent.

Not to be. But I tried out my new camera on fluttering birds on a nature preserve pond, views of Puget Sound, winding trails bordered by pink-branched bushes just barely budding. I saw two enormous eagle nests, and some herons flapping across the sky.

The photos are dark, their elements blurry. I can't figure out how to turn off the auto-view that pops up when I want to keep shooting, showing me the photo I just took. I am not happy with this camera. Every picture I took--outside!--needed editing. I'm headed back to Costco. And my husband, once more, will start his nagging for me to find a new camera--or stop muttering.

Tulips in my Own Back Yard

Every year, our family makes the hour-and-ten-minute drive northward to Washington's Skagit Valley to see the annual Tulip Festival. It is the highlight of my year, signaling the advent of springtime, and renewing in me the exhilaration of the outdoors, as a gasp-worthy display of brilliant blooms undulates with the boggy terrain spread to the ends of a massive valley. If anything can revive a perfunctory relationship with God, it is this mega-dose of grandeur and beauty--stripes of intense reds, yellows, purples under a cerulean sky of lilting clouds.

My photographer's eye dances from one shot to its superior. My photographed children grimace. Eleven years ago, when we first made our tulip trek, they were cooperative, posing in the rows of flowers, their own fresh bloom happy and perfect. Over the years, however, they grew weary of this ritual, and ever more reluctant to smile while squatting in the mud. This was, of course, frustrating to me as I switched from film to digital, since now I could click unlimitedly, putting them to ever greater duress and torture.

This year, to my consternation, we missed the Tulip Festival entirely. The flowers came out two weeks late, I was deep into writing deadlines, and Passover inserted its 10-day interlude, when we were in Los Angeles, far from the swaying color-cups of the Skagit.

But--we grew tulips in pots on our patio! And one closeup of a tulip is as good as another! So, I took photos of the flowers. But, sigh, not of my squatting children, who now are much more assertive about refusing to fulfill their mother's wish.

There is no way to capture the beauty of the the tulip fields, and no way to recapture the children who skipped through the dirt aisles picking up broken flowers, collecting them into a bouquet and presenting them to me. Come on, Mom, time to move on. Here's a glimpse of my patio...