Looking Down, and Seeing

I've done a lot of trail walking over the last few months, mostly to and from my riverside cottage.

Portions of the trails are rocky requiring one to look down to avoid tripping.

I previously described seeing fallen trees necessitating a certain distant perception.

But in this oft-rainy location, moist earth yields other visual delights, randomly appearing, usually individually, at ground level, left and right, very close by.

Some are pleasantly conspicuous, there in plain sight.

Others are smaller, close to the ground, adjacent to a rock, almost hidden by grass.

Yet others almost, or do, evade detection, being so similar in color, or very close in proximity, to adjacent vegetation.

And then...

I'm reminded of the Where is Waldo challenge, familiar to radiologists.

I think my pattern recognition experience in chest radiography has somehow helped with these.

Not so hard, you say...

My favorites, I think, are the communities on trees.

And, very uncommonly, on stumps.

Last year, I walked the Coleridge Way, named after the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge. He often walked hereabouts with his friend, William Wordsworth. I like to think Wordsworth would readily have perceived all of these.