On a fine morning in late August, a weathered cedar stump along the trail into the deep woods sports a colony of haircap moss (Polytrichum commune), also called common haircap, golden maidenhair and great goldilocks.
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 right edge of the photo, a crab spider waits for a fly or other insect 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, complete within itself, its glistening raindrops holding 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 it. A tiny cosmos in the sunny woods, teeming with life. Its own history. Its own mythology. Its own stories. Astonishing. Breathtaking. Radiant. Perfect.
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