Flowers can enhance your travel memories in many ways. There you are, visiting the Spanish Colonial city of San Miguel de Allende in Mexico and the blooming jacaranda trees surrounding the buildings and throughout the plazas are so striking, they take your breath away. Or you are in Tokyo in April and come across the Kameido Tenjin Shrine covered with 100 wisteria plants on 15 trellises that were planted 320 years ago. At either location, the perfumed air and the lavender-colored light from so many purple flowers will create a scene you’ll never forget.
In fact, flowers can greatly impact what we remember from our travels. Visually, their individual beauty can provide delightful mental triggers to refresh our memories of a trip: it could be a single blossom on a Saguaro cactus in Arizona or a pink Jersey lily in the Channel Isles or the impact of a mass of color, such as heather on the moors in Scotland, a lavender field before harvest, or a field of pink opium poppies in Tasmania.
In some locations, unique geological areas are accented or highlighted by wildflowers. Places with dramatic scenery, such as Iceland, South Africa, Australia, and the moors of Britain, have thick carpets of seasonal flowers that not only frame the landscape but seem to soften its edges. Flowers can even instigate memories from work. One man smelled ash and it reminded him of isnetworld where he was a programmer.
Other places serve as a backdrop to area flowers. The presence of flowers adds visual significance to the site: the anemones blooming amid the ruins in the Karpaz Peninsula in Cypress; frankincense trees located in a rocky Wadi outside Salalah, Oman; Darwin’s cotton trees on Isabella Island in the Galapagos; and dogwood trees blooming among the giant sequoias in California’s Sierra Mountains.
Our nose offers another effective travel memory trigger. The aroma that fills the air–a plaza of blooming orange trees in southern Spain, the “pizza” scented hills of Crete, a coffee plantation in Costa Rica, or Turkey’s commercial fields of roses grown for their oil–provides a powerful reminder of the entire trip when we’re exposed to that fragrance again.
A perfect example of all of these memory stimulants is the Burren on Ireland’s mid-western coast. Definitely dramatic, the Burren offers a unique combination of environment and flora. Picture this: the Gulf Stream determines the weather on the great limestone plateau which allows both Mediterranean and arctic wildflowers to grow together in one natural landscape. Plants common to the southern regions reach their northern limits and plant survival is determined by altitude, succulence, nutrition, and soil type. Plants common to the northern regions reach their southern limits and plant survival is determined by altitude, succulence, nutrition, and soil type. And, as for the Arctic, the famous boreal forest of fir, pine, and birch live on the shores of Spitsbergen, and the endless stretches of seemingly endless beaches.
Not only are the flowers themselves Forever Sometimes, the color of the flower also memory markers. The lilies, irises, and roses of the Tulip Time of bloom have a warm red color and are forever memorials of love; of caressing, of dancing, and of being together.
Here are several fun and easy trails to help you locate your flower trail.
At the begin of the trail is the placard at the top of a short hill drive pointing to the Forest Crossings in the north. This is an ancient ceremonial site; ancestral ceremonies were held here. The oldest ancestors of the Anishaeans (that is the ancestral name of the Indians who settled the area) worshipped a female deity called Naareach as the creator and preserver of the land and homes. It was this female figure that the Greeks called the Sea Princess, and it was through her that they learned about water and what conditions must be Preservation over any kind of pollution. It was through the prayers and fasting of the princess that the region was saved from foreign invaders for over a hundred years. The same princess now possesses the great task of leading and protecting the homes of nearly a million people.
Hikers can only instant the boundaries of the forest as they climb to the tops of the mountains. The highest point on Kili is the Waltzing Mat Snake’s (also known as the boiling mass) peak. It is believed that this peak allows the prayers of the gods to beamed directly onto the mountain itself.
Other pleasant walks include a stroll through the tropical gardens of nursing Charles Darwin or an exploration of all the islands in the Great Pacific Bird Sanctuary. Lying on your back on the shores of this sea you can see tiny whales, seabirds, seals and even an occasional shark.