Small Wonders, Dancing Filaments

On a fine morning in late August, a weathered cedar stump along the trail into the woods wears a carpet of haircap moss (Polytrichum commune). The delicate wonders emerging from the thatch are dancing sporophytes, fragile strands topped by seed capsules wearing raindrops and filaments of spider silk. Just beyond the photo, a crab spider waits for a fly to put in an appearance, one fraught with peril.

How often does one wander along a trail and not notice such wonders? I suspect the answer is, most of the time, for this old hen anyway.

My moss colony is a miniature jeweled world, and its glistening raindrops hold the whole sunlit forest in their depths, upside down of course. For the life of me, I can't come up with the right words to describe such an incandescent state of being.

A tiny cosmos, teeming with life. Its own history and mythology. Its own customs and traditions. Its own stories. Astonishing. Breathtaking. Radiant. Perfect.