My friend Roy Callahan, for example, cannot differentiate red and green, creating problems with traffic signals. But the Pingelap residents lack all color perception. They live in a world of those gray scales. A world that is just like this morning as I cross the marsh. However, even lacking color and with their leaves curled up or blown away, many wildflowers are still identifiable.
Twisted chicory stems bear little knobs at each joint.
Queen Anne's lace racemes are depleted but still intact. The prickly pods of wild cucumber swing delicately in the light breeze. I stop to send a final one on its way drifting like another snowflake. Cattail heads are disintegrating into fluff for their own kind of seed dispersal. Tall yarrow spikes stand like widely separated sentinels, one of them overseeing a tangled group of teasels.