Interruptions

September 19, 2024

A rainbow of living interruptions seen on a walk in the woods

The polka dot white freckles on the tan hide of a young deer, cautiously tearing at leaves as it makes eye contact with me, fifteen feet away on the trail, it’s mother a few feet to the left. Would I make a move? Is it safe to continue feasting? What is that flash of navy, my raincoat, one color in this animal’s limited visible palette, in a kelly green world? Interloper, I am, intruding on her ordinary forest day. It watches me, still, as long as I remain in my place. I take a step forward on the path, it bounds further into the wood, mother following behind.

The beating heart of a cardinal flitting out from a tree ahead on the trail, a bright flash interrupting the monotonous green understory. It darts back into the trees and disappears, foliage too thick for the red to pulse from deep within the tangles of crisscrossing branches.

A cluster of orange fungi growing from the base of a tree, popping out in a circle like a mushroom bouquet, swathed in the verdant dark green leaves of a climbing vine. The individual fungus look like shitake mushrooms, but a google search after the fact makes me suspect it’s in the Armillaria genus, the long-lived ‘honey fungus,’ which forms the largest living fungi in the world (in Oregon, 2500 years old). It’s dangerous in its ability to feed on dead plant material which makes it willing to kill its host, which parasites who require a living host cannot do. (A reason I never before considered to appreciate mosquitos, lice). But it’s beautiful too, soft honeyed toadstools popping against the shiny leaves.

Tiny streaks of shimmering dispersed puddle where the water bugs lift off after I dip the end of a leaf into the water, interrupting their repose. What will happen when I poke at the surface tension of this small pond? They do not sink, they fly, jumping into the air to escape my disruption. The puddle closes over the gap in seconds, returning to a mirror of the gray sky, waving branches shimmying over dots of insects figure skating across its surface.

Flashing silver fish, inches long, skinny as worms, curling in quick circles in an otherwise still part of the creek, ignoring the shadow above them my resting body makes as I watch.

Luminescent blue berry-like pods dangling from the invasive Porcelain Berry bush, magenta, cornflower, violet–unreal colors in this green sameness, stunningly beautiful, harsh and ugly in their invasion and occupation of this territory. Hard to believe something so beautiful is also so terrible.

A row of wildflowers, really, weeds in bloom, along the fence line of a field, disturbed open ground where the path briefly skirts more tame forms of civilization, yellow daisy-like petals of a wild cosmo encircling a spiky heart, already going to seed before the last petal falls; rounded blue ears of a creeping Asiatic dayflower, tall thin rods of lady’s thumb bejeweled with tiny pink beads, small snowball clusters of White snakeroot, dangling brown-green parallel pods of northern wood-oats, also known as “fish-on-a-fishing-pole” swaying in the breeze. They may not belong here but they are beautiful, an accidental rainbow.