startling

it, quite literally, stopped me in my tracks - well, my car's tracks - at the sight of this in this deep, dark spot in the forest. i gasped, put on the brakes, backed up, parked, and then scrambled across a little creek to get a closer look.

 

i'd just come from gathering bunches of bright chartreuse wolf lichen (letharia vulpina), blown down onto the forest floor in a recent windstorm.

this growth - moss? lichen? - was far brighter, like nothing i had ever before seen.

Done