Rogue Photo

I took a walk in the woods today, to clear my head, and to be for a little time in the company of nature. It's fall here, in the Pacific Northwest. Early September. It was as it often is in September here, sunny and, in relative terms, hot. I went not to be with myself, or with my camera, or with my thoughts. I had no problems to sort through. I went to be with the forest. It's a small forest, in the center of town just up behind the university, but it is a more or less properly wild northwestern coastal forest. It's fall here, and so the trees and the shrubs are starting to go to sleep. The leaves are starting to brown off. There are few birds, not much animal life awake at midday, only the trees and the shrubs and the plants, the mosses, the fungi, and the lichens. This is a rain forest, at the end the dry season. The fecundity of spring which follows hard on the heels of a winter of rain has long passed. There is no water above ground here, though the ra