From a modest bench above Taughannock Gorge, Cayuga Lake shifts from distant glimmer to presence—a quiet invitation to pause, breathe, and follow the water down.
From the south rim of Taughannock Gorge, Cayuga Lake appears like a distant strip of sapphire, framed today by a soft veil of hemlock and oak. The overlook here is modest—a fence, a bit of open sky—but someone wisely added a comfortable bench, an invitation to pause between gorge and lake, rock and water.
I stood in front of that bench, resting the camera body on the fence, fingers braced against the wood to steady the shot. This is not the grand, sweeping vista of a postcard. Instead, it is a quieter, more human vantage point, the way a person actually encounters the lake after walking the rim: emerging from the trees, breath easing, eyes adjusting to the light on water.
From here, the trail descends toward Cayuga’s shore, each turn bringing you lower and closer, trading the lofty perspective for the intimate sounds of waves and stone. In Distant Sapphire I and II, the lake was a glimpse—caught between branches, distant beyond the gorge. Now, in this “Bench View,” the water feels nearer, almost within reach, as though the landscape itself is drawing you gently down.
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Cayuga Lake Bench View
I’ve gathered the three photographs—Glimpse of Cayuga Lake, Gorge View with Oak Leaves, and this Cayuga Lake Bench View—into a small gallery, a progression of approach. Each frame is a step closer: from suggestion, to invitation, to the quiet promise of the bench, waiting for whoever needs to sit and look a little longer.
A gallery of the three Cayuga Lake photographs for comparison.
Glimpse of Cayuga LakeGorge View with Oak LeavesCayuga Lake Bench View
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Copyright 2025 All Rights Reserved Michael Stephen Wills
Cayuga Lake from the south rim of Taughannock Gorge, seen through a veil of hemlock with a carpet of fallen oak leaves, foreground. This is a companion to the previous post, both were handheld. For this the foreground was included to increase interest. For added stability, I rested the camera body on the fence bracketed with my fingers.
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Gorge View with Oak Leaves
A gallery of the two photographs for comparison.
Glimpse of Cayuga LakeGorge View with Oak Leaves
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Copyright 2025 All Rights Reserved Michael Stephen Wills
A span of 10,000 years spreads between now and the first possibility of settlement on the island of Eire, then swept clean to bare rock by the weight of ice. Current scholarship of the Dún Aonghasa ruins, Inishmore, County Galway, the Irish Republic place a settlement within the inner of the four dry stone rings after 6,500 years (1,500 BC or 3,500 years ago). By way of scale, the first settlement took about 30 times the duration of the U.S. Constitution ratification through 2025: the last state, Rhode Island, ratified the Constitution 1789.
By 700 BC, 2,700 years ago, a series of upright, closely placed stones, were erected between the second and third rings called a cheval de fries field (“Frisian horses” in English) today, this defensive structure evokes the enormous scale of the struggles around this place of defense.
This is a portion of that field, I believe, taken as Pam and I approach the inner ring entrance, walking a wide path cleared of barriers. Click the photograph for a larger image with caption.
A contemplative walk along Monkey Run where Fall Creek writes the valley’s history—sycamores, bridges, and Devonian stone speaking across seasons in Cornell’s living classroom.
On a morning in late March, when the hills about Ithaca still hold the night’s frost in their shaded folds, I took the path called Monkey Run and went to see how Fall Creek spends its winter earnings. The air had the bright sting of thaw, a kind of vernal austerity that keeps a man honest in his steps. Along the high bank the sun spilled its coin onto the water, where it broke and flickered like a school of silver minnows. A rim of snow clung to the shale ledges, and the leaves of last year’s oaks—curled, fox-red, and faithful—whispered as if to keep the woods awake until spring fully claimed them.
Sunlit bend of Fall Creek viewed from a high bank at Monkey Run in early spring.
Monkey Run is one of the outlying parcels tended by Cornell Botanic Gardens—once called the Plantations, and now, more fittingly, named for the living charge it keeps. These gardens do not end at beds and borders; they encompass the wilder rooms of the county, more than a thousand hectares of glens, pastures, and ravines where the university’s first and oldest teacher—nature herself—still holds class. Fall Creek is one of her principal lecturers. Rising beyond the high country of Cayuga Heights and slipping under stone and snow, it shoulders its way across the campus, idles a while in Beebe Lake, and turns turbines of memory at Triphammer Falls before shouldering on toward the lake that receives nearly everything here—Cayuga—long, deep, and glacial in its thinking.
Tall white-barked sycamores leafless against a blue March sky at Monkey Run.
If you would learn a valley’s mind, walk a meander. The creek here composes with easy cursive, laying down a bar of gravel, nibbling at a bank of clay, then sweeping back to consider its work from the opposite shore. The geologist says the rock is Devonian, pages laid flat and damp with time, and the ice of ten thousand winters ago scoured them into the open. A creek is a patient mason, working without rest and never in anger. I admired these sycamores—their clean bones shining through the leafless canopy like the ribs of an old cathedral. Winter reveals their whiteness; summer grants them shade. A stand of white pines keeps a dark counsel in the background; on the muddy edge, green tongues of skunk cabbage push up, pledges made by the swamp to keep faith with the sun.
Rust-stained steel pier above calm water on Fall Creek along Monkey Run trail
I came down to the water near an old steel pier, a bridge remnant, hanging on each end without purpose. It wears graffiti the way a boulder wears lichen; human wishes, briefly rooted, coloring what they can. The river accepts it all, the pilings and the scribbles, the cast limb and the bottle’s glint, and continues its one unarguable gesture downstream. That is the old instruction of Fall Creek: use, refuse, endure. Before the university drew students from every quarter, the creek turned wheels and powered the small ambitions of a frontier town. Even the name Triphammer speaks of iron struck to purpose. Now the water powers something quieter: the studies of herons, the almanacs of kingfishers, the quick arithmetic of minnows over limestone.
Looking back while climbing the steep bluff
Steps cut from logs ascend the bluff, each tread pegged with iron, each rise a short confession of breath. I climbed to the ridge, paused halfway, and through the gray lace of March branches saw the creek shining at a bend far below. A man cannot help but measure his own life against such a course. The path goes up and down in obedient red blazes, but the water keeps its own counsel. Where the bank slumps the river shoulders through; where the bottom rises it lays down a mirror. In my youth I wanted the straight run, the short work. Now the curve pleases me. To go with the current and not be carried away—that is a lesson suitable to the grey in my beard.
Clear, shallow run of Fall Creek with shale bottom and pine stand in distanceBluff overlooking Fall Creek in summer
When I returned five months later, on August 23, the same path had forgotten the word austerity. The cathedral of sycamore was fully leafed, the white pillars now vanished behind a nave of shade. The pines perfumed the air without trying. A new footbridge—clean timber arching like a bent bow—spanned one of the wet flats. Its braces, black-bolted and handsome, looked as if they would hold the weight of an ox team or a file of schoolchildren. Such crossings are a kind of promise from the present to the future: we found a way through here; may you, too. Below, the floor was upholstered with moss, oak leaves, and a scatter of pinecones—the slow currency of the woods accumulating interest.
Arched wooden footbridge in summer forest on Cornell’s Monkey Run trail.
Summer makes a confidant of every plant. Ferns unrolled their scripture at the bridge abutment; jewelweed held its tiny lanterns along the seeps; a kingfisher rattled downstream, blue lightning with a bill. The creek, glassy over its shale pavement, showed every wrinkle of its stride. I waded a little, feeling with the sole what the eye could not—where the current took an extra thought around a stone, where it forgot itself in a warm eddy. Trout lingered in the dimmer reaches, quick as commas; a great blue heron lifted off with that surprising tidiness of wing, ungainly only in our imagination.
In all seasons the trail carries two histories: one written in rock and water, the other in the footfall of people. Cornell’s founders, Ezra and Andrew White, believed the university should place the hand near the thing studied; here that principle is plain. Botany students take their lectures in leaf and bark; geologists read the creek banks as if the pages might soon turn by themselves; children learn the oldest calculus—how long a stick will float before it catches in the weeds. The caretakers from the Botanic Gardens mark, mend, and interpret, but they do not overtalk. The woods speak enough.
Moss, grass and pinecones on an overlook of Fall Creek
As the afternoon eased toward evening, I climbed once more to the bluff. The light had gone honey-colored and the leaves of the maples, those careful accountants of September, were just beginning to weigh their green against gold. I looked down on the bend where I’d stood in March—cold, bright, expectant—and felt the year’s circle gently close. As John Burroughs wrote, “The power to see straight is the rarest of gifts… to be able to detach yourself and see the thing as it actually is, uncolored or unmodified by your own… prepossessions… that is to be an observer and to read the book of nature aright.” Monkey Run obliges that humility. The creek moves as it always has—glacially taught, mill-forged, campus-wise, and freedom-loving—and the trail, with its modest stairs and honest bridges, invites us to walk beside it, to match our breath to its turnings, and to leave, if we can, a lighter trace than we found.
References
Ways of Nature (1905), “Reading the Book of Nature,” pp. 275–276 (The Writings of John Burroughs, Riverside ed., vol. XIV, Houghton Mifflin)
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Morning clouds hang over Dryden Lake as hills kindle first color; reflections hold breath while a lone walker reads the valley’s glacial and human-written past.
He came to the water before the people woke, the road a still ribbon of cold tar snaking beneath the low hills. Mattocks of cloud hung over the valley and the lake took in the sky like a mirror dropped yet not broken. The trees were beginning to color. A patient fire working from within the leaves. He parked where the grass ran down to the shore and stood a long while without moving. Birds made small sounds in the reeds. Somewhere a single truck labored up the grade and was gone. The surface held the hills with a steadiness the hills themselves could not keep. He thought how the quiet of a place can be the loudest thing it owns.
He went along the margin along the damp sedges where old drift lay silvered and light as bones. A drowned trunk angled from the shallows. The lake was old in the way of things made by ice and time. A kettle in the outwash of the last glacier, some men said, a bowl left when the buried ice eased away. He pictured the ice receding into the valley heads, the meltwaters choked with gravel, a hand larger than memory scribing the floor of this country. The earth never told it plain but the lay of it was witness enough. Across later centuries men cribbed a dam across the outlet and drew the water to a shape that pleased them and served their work.
A trail ran the length of the water on the old rail bed. The ties were long gone and the iron and cinders buried under years of leaf fall and gravel. He had walked it as a boy beside his father and now he walked it alone. Benches stood at half-mile intervals like waystations in a country of small pilgrimages. The signs told what once was here and what remains. They had renamed the path for a townman who argued it into being after the railroad had passed from the world and the right-of-way grew up with sumac and rumor. It was an easy trail and he carried nothing. His hands hung at his sides as if the day might place something in them when it was ready.
In another era the lake was a workshop. Men whipsawed timber in the wet air and fed small mills with the grove’s dark boards. Winter flowed over the flats, and they built icehouses and set the blocks within like blue stone, an industry that died when cold could be called from a switch. The hills have learned to forget the noise of it, though on certain mornings the fog takes a shape and you could believe rising from the ponded sawdust and the lading of sleds. He thought of the labor of those gone hands and of how work is a scripture every place keeps in its own tongue.
Before any of that, the ground here was a summer camp. People came with the season and went with it, laying their fires in the lee of the knoll and taking fish where the cattails thin. He could feel them in the open places, not as ghosts but as the first understanding the land ever had of itself. The words used for them now are museum words, yet the wind still crosses the water as it did and empties the same smell of iron and leaf into the lungs of whoever stands to breathe.
The town took its name from a poet long dead, a scholar’s choosing in the years after the war for independence when this tract of country was parceled out to soldiers of that same war. Virgil lay to the east as if they were shelving Latin across a map. The creek that bears that name threads the villages and finds Fall Creek at Freeville, and the combined waters go their own slow way toward Cayuga where the glacial hand scooped deeper yet. He said these names under his breath and they tasted of chalk and river stone.
A kingfisher rattled across the cove. The fish rose in rings that spread and vanished like time seen from above. Out on the water an old man pushed a skiff with an electric motor that hummed like a trapped bee, for the lake allows no gas engines now. The wildlife area ran around the shore in a ragged collar of field and wetland and alder, near two hundred acres under the state’s keeping, and the lake itself a little over a hundred. He watched the man aim for the lily line and thought how rules arise from the wish that a thing endure, though nothing does. Still we make the rules and we keep them as if the earth were listening.
Wind came down the slope with a smell of rain. He turned back and the hills lay again in the water, entire, and for a moment he could not tell which world had claim to the other. He thought of the rails pulled up and the mills gone to weeds and of the icehouses fallen into their own shadows and he thought of the people before all that and of the long winter pressing its thumb into the land and lifting it away. He thought of his father walking the rail bed beside him a lifetime ago and saying nothing. There are places where the past crowds close and will not be argued with. He stood until the first drops dimpled the surface and the reflection shattered and reformed. A train no longer runs here. The only sound was the soft percussion of rain on water and the slow turning of the earth beneath both. He put his hand to the damp trunk of a fallen tree and felt the grain and the coolness and the old patient labor of rot. Then he went up from the reeds, his pockets full of acorns, and out to the road where his truck waited and the day, austere and sufficient, came along with him.
Standing before these two trees on a unseasonably warm autumn day, I am struck by the intricate patterns of their fallen leaves. Against the vibrant green of the grass, the golden leaves form halos around the trunks, as if nature herself were sketching mandalas. There’s something profoundly mathematical about these arrangements—a quiet order amidst what might initially seem like chaos.
The first tree, its barren branches reaching skyward, stands on a carpet of yellow that radiates outward in near-perfect symmetry. The leaves have fallen in such a way that their density decreases as the distance from the trunk increases. It reminds me of the inverse square law—a principle in physics that governs how light, gravity, and sound diminish with distance. Here, instead of energy dispersing, it’s the leaves thinning out, their graceful scatter dictated by the wind’s whims and gravity’s pull. There’s an undeniable harmony in this seemingly random process, a convergence of natural forces creating an elegant gradient.
Stewart Park, Ithaca, New York
The second tree presents a different story, yet one equally mesmerizing. Its leaves, still clinging in part to the branches, form a looser ring at the base. The distribution is uneven, hinting at prevailing winds or the sheltering influence of nearby buildings. But even in this asymmetry, I see fractals—the self-similar patterns that repeat at different scales throughout nature. Look closely, and you’ll notice clusters of leaves mimicking the broader structure of the canopy above. It’s as if the tree’s essence is echoed in the ground below, a reminder of how deeply interconnected every part of a system can be.
Robinia pseudoacacia, commonly known as the black locust
These patterns invite reflection on the mathematical principles governing our world. Fibonacci sequences, golden ratios, and fractals—abstract concepts are not confined to textbooks. They are etched into the fabric of existence, visible in the spiral of a sunflower’s seeds, the curve of a nautilus shell, and the fall of leaves beneath a tree. Even the chaos of autumn is underpinned by order, a dance choreographed by countless variables: the angle of the branches, the strength of the wind, the moisture in the air.
I find myself wondering about the unseen forces at play. How many leaves fell straight down, obeying only gravity? How many were carried aloft by a breeze before settling farther afield? Could we model these patterns with algorithms, tracing the arc of each leaf’s descent? Would the data reveal a perfect equation, or would it remind us that some mysteries resist full comprehension?
As I stand here, I feel a deep gratitude for these natural equations. They ground me in the present moment while also connecting me to the infinite. The pattern of leaf fall is a reminder of life’s balance: chaos and order, randomness and structure, fleeting moments and timeless principles. The trees, now shedding their golden crowns, invite me to pause, observe, and marvel at the beautiful mathematics of autumn.
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On a serene autumn afternoon by Beebe Lake, a solitary red maple stood out against the backdrop, showcasing its vibrant colors and resilience, symbolizing autumn’s fleeting beauty.
It was one of those serene autumn afternoons that linger in memory, the kind where the sky seems impossibly clear, the air crisp and gently scented with fallen leaves. I stood at the edge of Beebe Lake, my gaze first drawn to the textured concrete dam holding back the water, its weathered facade contrasting sharply with the soft reflections shimmering across the lake’s calm surface. Beyond, the wooded hillside rose gently, a tapestry woven with the warm hues of autumn—golds, greens, oranges, and reds mingling like brush strokes on a canvas.
An October Glory, turning before all others
Yet amidst this collective beauty, one tree captured my attention, singular in its brilliance—a solitary red maple standing proudly on the lakeshore. Its leaves had turned a vivid crimson, blazing brightly as though defying the muted earth tones surrounding it. Even from a distance, framed and partially obscured by larger trees, its vibrant reflection cast a fiery echo on the water, rippling softly in the afternoon breeze.
The maple, Acer Rubrum, seemed perfectly at home here, thriving robustly at the water’s edge. I remembered reading how adaptable red maples are, able to flourish in conditions ranging from dry uplands to swampy shores. This spot, near the edge of the tranquil Beebe Lake, seemed to showcase its resilient character perfectly.
Up close, the maple’s glow was even more striking. Its leaves cascaded in fiery clusters, hues deepening from bright scarlet at the tips to a darker maroon closer to the branches. This dramatic gradient seemed symbolic of autumn itself—beautiful, fleeting, and subtly tinged with the melancholy reminder of winter’s approach.
The Red Maple (Acer Rubrum) to tolerant of diverse conditions, making it a perfect choice for this spot on the short of Beebe Lake.
A memory surfaced of early spring in the Finger Lakes region, a time when maples, including this red maple, generously share their sap. Though not traditionally tapped like its sweeter cousin, the sugar maple, this species’ sap can indeed be boiled down into syrup, a surprising sweetness hidden within its sturdy trunk. Standing in its shadow, imagining those early spring days, it seemed astonishing that the same tree could offer both the delicate sweetness of syrup and the fierce beauty now on display.
Curiously, the transformation of the tree appeared methodical yet whimsical—it changed colors from the top down, its upper branches already bare, exposing slender twigs pointing skyward. Like an artist carefully removing layers to reveal something deeper beneath, the maple unveiled its upper bare bones first, as though reminding observers of the quiet strength supporting its autumn splendor.
This Red Maple (Acer Rubrum) turns from the top down and has already bare for most top branches.
As I lingered, taking in this turning tree, joggers passed by along the path, their rhythmic footsteps a gentle percussion beneath the rustling leaves. Briefly, they glanced toward the vivid maple, perhaps drawn, like me, by its striking contrast to the surrounding foliage. It felt like we shared a secret admiration for this singular tree, recognizing in it a quiet assertion of individuality amidst conformity.
Eventually, I viewed the maple once more from afar, framed now by broader sweeps of branches and leaves, partially obscured but no less vivid. Through layers of leaves and dappled sunlight, it glowed like a distant flame, a beacon that seemed to encapsulate the entire mood of the season—warm yet cool, bright yet transient.
The Red Maple (Acer Rubrum) is the first to flower in spring and the first to turn in autumn.
Walking away, the image of that maple lingered, its reflection shimmering gently in the afternoon sun, a moment suspended between summer’s lush vitality and winter’s bare stillness. Beebe Lake had offered scenic beauty, a quiet meditation, a reflection mirrored not only on its tranquil surface but in the heart of an observer captivated by a single tree’s fleeting glory.
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At Ashford Castle, swans glide on the Cong River’s glassy waters, weaving together myth, history, and cinema in a timeless reflection of Ireland’s enduring spirit.
Headed south from Cong Village, past the venerable Cong Abbey then Saint Mary’s Church of Ireland, the road bends into the Ashford Castle estate. Time seems to shift here. The stonework of the abbey lingers in memory, only to give way to manicured parkland, ancient trees, and the shimmer of water. The road itself, aptly named Ashford Castle, carries the traveler to a place where history, nature, and imagination meet.
I do not recall passing a guard box on my first visit, though one now stands firmly on the roadside, manned and proper, as though the estate were never meant to be entered without ceremony. In truth, Ashford Castle has always carried the air of a threshold—between village and wild, past and present, myth and reality.
Soon the road brings one to the banks of the Cong River. Here the water widens, flowing calm and sure, and across it rises the battlemented silhouette of Ashford Castle itself. Its towers, turrets, and stony walls seem to grow from the riverbank like something inevitable, a fortress transformed into elegance. The castle’s mirrored reflection on the water doubles the grandeur, as though the real and imagined castle exist side by side.
It is no wonder filmmakers found inspiration here. Scenes from the classic 1952 film The Quiet Man—the tale of Sean Thornton, played by John Wayne, and the fiery Mary Kate Danaher, embodied by Maureen O’Hara—were shot on the far bank of this very river. To watch them walking by these waters is to see Ashford Castle woven into Hollywood’s Irish dreamscape, a backdrop both romantic and enduring.
Yet long before cinema, the river was already a stage. The Cong River is a natural marvel. It emerges from the same Carboniferous limestone that shapes the Burren of County Clare—an austere landscape of limestone pavements etched with fossils and caves, where rare alpine and Mediterranean plants thrive among ancient tombs. Through fissures in this ancient bedrock, the waters of Lough Mask find their way underground before rising again at Cong. This subterranean journey, through stone filters laid down some 350 million years ago, leaves the water clarified, luminous, and cold. By the time it slides past Ashford Castle, it has the purity of glass.
It is in this clarity while walking the opposite bank on a different morning I found a parent swan and its cygnet feeding. The adult glided, immaculate, its long neck bowed as drops of river fell from its beak. At its side, the cygnet paddled with earnest strokes, gray down still clinging, a fragile shadow of what it would one day become. Together they traced a quiet path across the water, ripples fanning behind them.
Few images so perfectly match their setting: a medieval castle, guardian of centuries, reflected in the same waters where these swans carried on their timeless rhythm of nurture and growth. It was as if the river itself composed the scene—a blending of stone, water, bird, and sky that belonged nowhere else but here.
The swan has long been a symbol in Irish lore. The Children of Lir, cursed to live as swans for nine hundred years, are among the most haunting figures of Celtic mythology. To see the white bird with its offspring before Ashford Castle was to glimpse that myth breathing still, alive on the Cong River.
Photographers know the difficulty of capturing water and stone without losing the life between them. On that morning, however, the river gave freely—its surface alternately smooth as glass and dappled with breeze. Stones at the water’s edge appeared like stepping-stones into history. Each frame revealed another face of the estate: the wide reach of the Cong, the castle framed by trees, the play of cloud shadows across the current.
The castle itself, though reshaped as a luxury retreat, still speaks of older times. Founded in the 13th century by the Anglo-Normans, Ashford passed through centuries of conquest and change before becoming, in the 19th century, a romantic Victorian pile. Today its battlements remain picturesque rather than defensive, but the sense of continuity—of lives unfolding along these banks—has not faded.
Standing there, camera in hand, I was struck by the layered meaning of this place. The Cong River flows from unseen caverns, purified by limestone older than memory. It nourishes swans, reeds, and trout alike. It reflects both a castle and a sky. Along its opposite bank, legends of cinema and Celtic lore alike find footing.
As the swan and cygnet drifted slowly downstream, I thought of them as part of the same enduring thread. Parent and child mirrored castle and village, past and future, permanence and change. The ripples they left widened until they touched both banks, an unbroken gesture across centuries.
In a shaded hollow of Sapsucker Woods, where the hush of ancient time lingers like mist among the trees, the Interrupted Fern rises from the soft, damp floor with a quiet grace. Its fronds, broad and arching, seem less grown than unfurled—as if unrolling a memory held for millions of years.
The plant’s name, Osmunda claytoniana, carries echoes of two worlds. “Osmunda,” perhaps once spoken in the sacred groves of northern Europe, is thought to honor a forgotten god—Osmunder, one of Thor’s names, a guardian of strength and storm. The species name pays tribute to John Clayton, an early colonial botanist who walked Virginia’s forests centuries ago and recognized in this fern a quiet marvel worth remembering.
And so this plant, whose lineage reaches back more than 200 million years, is rooted not just in soil and stone, but in language and lore.
The fern’s common name—Interrupted—describes the curious habit of its fertile fronds, which rise briefly in midsummer, dark and beadlike, then wither and vanish, leaving a ghostly gap midway up the blade. It is as though the plant had paused mid-sentence, letting silence speak where others would persist. In this interruption, the forest itself seems to take a breath.
The roots of Osmunda claytoniana twist into fibrous mats beneath the soil. These rhizomes, dense and springy, were once harvested as osmunda fiber, prized by horticulturists for cradling delicate orchids—a gentle reminder of how often nature’s strength serves human fragility. And though the Interrupted Fern is not celebrated in pharmacopeias, its kin were used by Indigenous peoples as poultices for wounds, or brewed into mild tonics to ease internal aches—suggesting a long, quiet partnership with humankind.
Forest Floor in Sapsucker Woods on a summer afternoon
There is little need for blossoms or fragrance here. The beauty of this fern is in its restraint. Its fronds do not shout, but rather whisper of deep time, of shaded ravines and glacial meltwaters, of forests that once stood where oceans now roll. Some said ferns were touched by magic—that they bloomed only on Midsummer’s Eve and vanished before the eye could see. The Interrupted Fern, with its appearing and disappearing fronds, might well have inspired such tales.
And so, in the filtered light beneath the canopy, this ancient fern lives on—not as a relic, but as a quiet thread in the fabric of the living forest. To stand in its presence is to feel a kind of reverence—not for what is rare, but for what endures.
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Copyright 2025 All Rights Reserved Michael Stephen Wills
Michael Stephen Wills Photography 