oconee bells are ringing

it wasn't supposed to be a surprise. unlike avid botanists of over a century before, we knew the prize would be blooming before us. rumor that the bells were in bloom was in the air and an elderly couple we encountered as we set out told us to expect a pile of them blooming down by the creek.

yet as we descended the rolling, wooded trail, still very rusty and brown from winter, the anticipation mounted. i felt a wave of excitement upon first glimpsing a patch of these white, bell-like flowers rising on thin stalks above their shiny, dark green, ground hugging leaves.

tiny blankets strewn along the lip of narrow creek banks, a few ranging slightly upslope, suggestively tugging at the roots of trees, a few others barely hanging on, suspended over the water. inside the white bell, a cluster of stamens, golden clappers at the end of the tongue, i half expected them to sound if the flower was lightly shaken.

but i didn't ring them, couldn't bring myself to touch these delicate, flowers that had elicited such a special feeling. are they untouchable, special because they bloom in so few places in the wild? because of their storied history involving their initial collection, discovery in a herbarium in paris, and subsequent decades of searching to rediscover the source of the unidentified specimen? because their blooms are fleeting? because gillian welch wrote a tribute to "acony bells" on her revival album?

i suppose it was a combination of reasons that lent the experience a more serious, important quality. i'd like to think that if i'd been wandering this trail without expecting them, their beauty, their carpet of spring would be moving enough in a still, wintery woods. i'd like to think i'm not just following botanical fashion, ecological fad.

they represent spring. unlike the similarly fleeting serviceberries hovering ghostlike amid bare branches of the mid-canopy, they can't be tracked in the coming weeks. the serviceberry, or amelanchier, will bloom from warmer to cooler places, lower to higher elevations over a span of weeks, even months in the region.

the bells won't last longer than a week or so and aside from the county i'm hiking in to view them, can only be found in a few places in a handful of others. they were once further afield, though their range was never likely wide. in the early 70's duke power flooded a river valley teeming with them to create lake jocassee. some were saved and transported to home gardens. an unknown quantity of oconee bells vanished beneath the waters with the houses and left behind objects of relocated lives.

this trail near the boat ramp of the lake is protected. oconee bells seem to thrive along the sliver of creek. i don't know if this remnant population is diverse enough, healthy enough to withstand the challenges that a changing climate might bring. the band of lake shoreline exposed by the drought makes me wonder about this, about this tiny creek, one of many that wasn't sufficiently filled to properly feed the lake this past year. what bell can we ring?