September's Gentians

Day 341: There is a story I like to tell...not a myth, not a legend, just a story...about how Gentians got their color. As you may know, Bee is a creature of the sky, particularly the blue summer sky. Bee was given a very important task: to make sure that the sky couldn't slip away from the Earth and go somewhere else. This job puzzled Bee until he remembered the deep white cups of Gentian where he often gathered precious pollen in the autumn when all the other wildflowers were gone. "I know!" said Bee. "I'll take hold of the sky, and slip down inside a Gentian blossom. When the flower closes up at night, the Wind won't be able to pull the sky away because I'll be holding onto it, and the Gentian will be holding onto me." Bee put his plan into action, but when he woke up in the morning, he saw that the blue sky had stained the blossoms. That's why our Gentians today are blue.

Hikers in the autumn backcountry may encounter support for this tale by taking time out in their travels to sit by a patch of Gentian and wait for the "minarets" to unfurl. It's not uncommon to see a surprised Bee take wing from deep inside the cup where overnight, it has been trapped.