Secrets Beneath the Surface: Rain Lilies

Today I was greeted by a joyous curiousity: rain lilies or prairie lilies popped up all over our yard, as if from nowhere. They glowed from every roadside and pasture on my morning drive, and the patches of white that jumped out from the fog covered fields stretched as far as the eye could see. But where did they come from so suddenly and why?

The blue-green leaves, which emerged from a bulb, have been hidden in plain sight for weeks, nestled in between the tall grasses. Waiting. As dusk approached last night, the rainy conditions were just right; the buds began to open slowly. By morning the clusters of flowers looked like fallen snow. In a few days the petals will transform from silky white to  pastel pink and then fade.

Every photograph of the rain lily had an eerie glow around the petals today.

Tucked away in dark places, the Hill Country holds many secrets like the fleeting rain lily. Some of them make their way to the surface and surprise us, like bursts of blooms or springs or holes that lead to enormous underground caverns. Other secrets remain hidden.

The subterranean world has become something I think about often. (Ask my family and they will tell you it is more of an obsession.) Fragile. Precious. Water-filled. A mysterious world beneath my feet. It is a place that people don't often learn about, but it is a place that is key to our survival. People are connected to the subterranean in hidden ways.

Since my first visit to Canyon Lake Gorge nearly two years ago, my eyes and my imagination have been drawn to rock and to living things that find home in impossible places, belowground and aboveground - rocky habitat with little soil, sporadic water resources, and intense heat. How do these plants and animals adapt to shifting conditions? What can I learn from them?

Stories, like the rain lilies, pop up now and then and I have an unrelenting urge to follow them. Yet, at the same time, the darkness, the solitude, and the tight spaces terrify me. It is mind-boggling, but I know there is a reason I keep going back to the world of limestone, keep looking for signs from below, like the rain lilies.