It is summer in Yellowstone. Finally. Not just a cool and rainy late spring slowly giving way to warmer days, but instant overnight firecracker hot summer. The prickly pear are blooming on the dry hills outside of Gardiner, and a cloud of young grasshoppers scatters at every step. It’s so bright, it is difficult to focus.

Bears and tourists are everywhere, and the ensuing bear jams provide textbook examples of jaw dropping stupid human behavior. For thirty years, I have often contemplated this overwhelming fascination with bears. Big ones, little ones, black bears, grizzly bears; for so many, it seems the only reason for a trip to Yellowstone, although a few visitors are also interested in wolves. The beavers on Swan Lake Flats have recently engineered a lovely little dam right next to the road, creating a perfect reflecting pond, but no one notices. There have been five ruddy ducks at Floating Island Lake (even one is a big  treat), doing their best to convince the girls to have their babies by displaying an amazing ability to run across the water. I am the only one who stops. But getting out of the car with binoculars creates an instant traffic jam with people asking, Where is the bear? Please don’t misinterpret, I also love the bears, but there is so so much more to Yellowstone. The fauna, all of them, the flora, the quiet parts, the personal moments, the geology and topography, the profound interconnectedness of it all. This is Yellowstone.

And right now, this Yellowstone, is as much about wildflowers as it is about bears. Or wolves. Or anything else. Spectacularly so. Long sweeping vistas of yellow hillsides carpeted with the last of the balsamroot and the first of the helianthella. Meadow upon undulating meadow of lupine and sticky geraniums and Indian paintbrush. Tiny rivulets lined with bog orchids. Hedges of wild roses. Cliff sides of penstemon. Rocky ledges punctuated with bouquets of yellow sedum. June’s cool and rainy weather has provided perfect conditions for one of the best wildflower displays in recent years. Did I mention spectacular? This past weekend on the northern loop, which included the Blacktail Plateau Drive, I recorded nearly fifty species of blooming plants, all within fifty feet of the road. Imagine if I had ventured further. They are listed below, in no particular order, for your botanical pleasure.

This Yellowstone. This is Yellowstone at its best. Verdant and voluptuous. An explosion of reproduction at all levels – so little time to fledge the chicks, teach the cubs which rocks to flip, wean the elk calves onto the temporarily lush grasses, blossom and set seed between the last and first frosts.

High summer in Yellowstone – so very grateful to be able to enjoy the experience firsthand. And, if you’re also able to be there, don’t forget to put the non-charismatic megafauna on your radar screen. Go to a talus slope and watch for pika. Check out that amazing blue beak on the ruddy ducks. Admire the craftsmanship of the beaver dam. Stop and smell the flowers. If you’re really lucky, there just might be a bear grazing through that meadow of lupine. You’ll think you won the lottery. And you did.