By rights there should have been nothing special about the woods that I came to visit today. I was no longer beside Lake Superior. Pictured Rocks was just a fond memory. Today the forest canopy was the only scenery.
I rambled happily enough from dawn until late afternoon, hiking nearly twenty miles through the west unit of Hiawatha National Forest this day.
It was pleasant hiking, to be sure. Weather was cool and cloudy, yet the mosquitoes were absent. I would have come away satisfied, though perhaps the sameness of the forest would have begun to wear on me by afternoon.
But that was not to be my fate on this day. Like the dangerously potent cardio-sedative toxins in white baneberry, Actaea pachypoda, also called 'Dolls Eyes,' the sights I saw today could have stopped my heart.
Small things leaped out to dazzle me. The Dolls Eyes and that distinctively colored toad were just the beginning. At every turn I encountered micro-landscapes that surprised and delighted. The persistent summer rains were to blame. The fungi had come out in force.
So without further ado I present seventeen of the best micro-landscapes from this day. Seventeen because that is, for me, the number of magic, of wild nature (think cicadas), and of perfection.
To conclude I present, as always the GPS track for the day. To save space here, I included today's hat of the day, and a few of the early morning foggy scenes in my previous post.
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