The Schwing Of Spring!

The Schwing Of Spring! April 20, 2008

My recent foray up the North River was a duplicitous ploy to get up into Vermont and come down the Green River, namesake of our local Teeming Megalopolis of Greenfield.

I wanted to do this because, in addition to being a soul-soothingly beautiful little river running through yet another deep, verdant valley, I had also noticed that the dirt (read: mud) road which parallels it is flanked on its uphill side by myriad small blasted road-cuts through the world’s crappiest deteriorating schist (rock climbers notice this kind of thing,) and that these little escarpments are festooned with a variety of mosses.

Now, if you’ve been paying attention for any length of time, you know that I have Moss-Wood. Since beginning my forays into photography, I’ve discovered a whole ‘nother world in the forests of moss and lichen which glide unnoticed beneath our strides, some so fragile that a poorly placed boot can end its existence.

Forever.

So I’ve taken it upon myself to document, insofar as my rudimentary skills allow, the Universe of Tiny Things which I encounter in my travels, and the phases which they go through in their life cycles.

So back to The Green:

Here’s some moss which is just emerging from its winter cloak of snow and ice. In fact, just below the photo there’s a chest-high ice bank, the reminder of a banner snow year.

But what caught my attention (because I was looking for it!) was the appearance of some sort of reproductive parts (hereafter referred to as “sexy bits”) which had escaped my prior notice, despite having spent much of my conscious life looking at nature:

See it? No? Look closer:

Fifty years of tromping through the deep verdancy of New England’s splendid forests, of bedding down for the night on lush carpets of this stuff as a kid, of scraping it off of rocks as a climber, and I never saw this before.

It makes me wonder what else we’re destroying, or at least taking totally for granted, as we pursue our human mission of conquest and development and plunder.

I seriously think we need to slow down before we’ve paved Paradise to put up that parking lot.