A tent trailer in the Colorado Rockies was home for a week earlier this month. My wife and I threw responsibility to the wind, doing nothing we did not care to do (and some of the time, nothing was precisely what we cared to do). But the initial days of relaxation gradually gave way to the call of high country trails.

In our first day on the trail we logged a little more than 12 miles, walking a circuit that included Bierstadt Lake and then hiking up Glacier Creek past Alberta Falls and Loch Vale to the base of Timberline falls. Along this second trail, brilliant wildflowers intertwined with a torrent of white water to create a wild symphony of sound and color.

The next day we set our sites on alpine country and the summit of 12,324-foot Flat Top Mountain. The early part of this trail winds through dense ponderosa pine and Douglas fir forest interspersed with stands of trembling aspen. As the trail continues to ascend, lodgepole pine becomes more common, then Engleman spruce and limber pine. Still higher—above 11,000 feet—the only trees that grow are scrawny, wind-sculpted spruce and fir, their roots probing among granite boulders for nourishment.

Finally, near 11,500 feet elevation the growing season for the hardiest of trees ceases to exist, and even the toughest spruce and fir give up the fight for survival. But timberline is not the termination point for all vegetation. The trees simply yield to an untamed explosion of wildflowers.

At timberline, thousands of white and lavender Colorado columbine surge across the granite landscape. Stretching on toward the sky are carpeted islands of blue alpine phlox and white jasmine punctuated by golden alpine sunflowers and purple fairy primrose. Buttercups are everywhere. Many more species fill in the gaps.

As Donna and I marveled at the spectacle, it occurred to me that plants appearing to be the most delicate are the ones that thrive in the harshest conditions. It is where pine, fir, and spruce no longer survive that the fragile blossoms flourish. Jesus suggested that we have things to learn from the flowers (Matthew 6:28). Here is what I learned among the alpine wildflowers: Circumstances are not nearly as important as what is made of them.

An amazing array of circumstances confronts members of the human race. Some no doubt seem better—or worse—than others. Some situations provide abundant opportunities for growth; other situations may appear difficult and forbidding. But circumstances simply are what they are. If I am not pleased with my life situation, I can lament the unfairness of it all and become a victim, or I can take a lesson from the wildflowers: I can grow where I’ve been sowed.

Emily Dickinson, a fragile flower of a girl born in Amherst, Massachusetts in 1830, grew up introverted and reclusive (I’m guessing that if she were alive today she might be said to be autistic). Fearing to encounter people except by writing letters, she was seldom able to venture outside her family home during her 56 years of life. Nevertheless, she found ways to express herself from within this apparently limited life, and came to be considered one of America’s most loved poets.

Not an especially delicate flower, Sonya Carson lived in a Detroit neighborhood where drugs and gangs were more influential than schools. As so often happened in her neighborhood, she became a single mom, but she determined that her son’s lives would be better than her own. Almost illiterate herself, Sonya Carson knew something about growing where she was sowed. She insisted that her sons do their homework and also read books from the public library. One of those sons is Dr. Ben Carson. Recently honored at the White House with a presidential medal, Carson gave his mother much of the credit for his graduation with honors from Yale medical school and his appointment as Johns Hopkins Hospital director of pediatric neurosurgery. He was only 33 at the time of the appointment. It’s a position he has now held for more than 20 years, saving and improving the lives of countless infants with his surgical innovations.

Life’s circumstances often create daunting challenges. But the circumstances are not nearly as important as the attitude. Jesus suggested we consider the flowers. This is one good lesson from the flowers: We can grow wherever we’ve been sowed.

B.W.