Youth is looking and finding only ghosts, a haunted house in the woods, love, fairy rings, a book from the library. But hang with adults! They complain about losing their keys and wallets and minds, but they know the flower they came for will lurk near the crab pots.
Mimulus likes wet soil: stream cuts and waterfalls—and the rocky spit sheltering the port. How does one expect to find a small, yellow flower amid a tangle of ship line and off season buoys and chains, hedgerows of fireweed, king crab pots stacked like office blocks? The proud flower goes to seed in between, berthing in the pits between the iron and the nylon. Hitching rides in both steerage and first class cabins, this plant has spread round the world on account of its good looks.
—Thanks to National Geographic; University of Stirling, Arctic Institute of North America; Columbia University; National Science Foundation; UA Museum of the North Herbarium (Dutch Harbor, 2016)
R. Topp 