Usually, I reserve Friday mornings for Word Press and open the Daily Post promptly at 11:00 to see what the photo challenge is for the week. Yesterday, however, I was camping in the Whisker Lake Wilderness area in northern Wisconsin. I was up just before dawn, roused by a chorus of woodpeckers and swans, red-winged blackbirds and Canada geese. The early ecophony (a great term Steve recently ran across in an environmental essay: a portmanteau of ecology and cacophony) was only slightly less raucous than the previous moonlit night’s melee of frog song.
Have you ever wondered at the intricacy of co-habitation in an eco-system? Around Perch Lake there were mammals, birds, amphibians, insects and reptiles all doing their interconnected dance with time and space in the most amazingly complex overlapping of rhythms. The full moon, the night frost, the dawn mist, the swelling heat of day: the ebb of one activity and the flow of another as time marches forward spins a never-ending tapestry of living.
On a single rock on the side of the hiking trail, I found another intricate web of life, a microcosm of mosses.
And in a single catkin about to burst into bloom, the green fire of life glows in a delicate pattern of possibility.
The Earth is a multi-layered, intricate web of pattern, design, and interconnection. How marvelous to look at even one tiny corner!
© 2015, essay and photographs, Priscilla Galasso, All rights reserved
scillagrace 
Beautiful photos Priscilla.. such gorgeous colours in that top one and lovely detail in the other 2. Certianly fits with the challenge.
Ps – The only ecophony I know is a medical term, did you mean cacophony?
Thanks, Helen. I didn’t know ecophony was a medical term. The way it was used by the environmental writer was as a portmanteau of ecology and cacophony. I see there’s an egophony definition – something about lung sounds. Is that what you were thinking of?
Love the mosses, very intricate.
Thank you! They were completely covering that rock….like a fuzzy, green blanket. 🙂
The more we look, the more we see, wonderful photos focusing on nature’s rich tapestry…
Thank you!
Lovely post…
Thanks, Sally!
These are just breathtaking, Priscilla. I love looking closely.
Thanks, Victoria. I’m sure it’s very different from your part of the country, especially with the drought. In the North Woods, you practically can’t turn around without hitting a lake!
Dear Priscilla,
What a perfect example for this week’s photo challenge! The lake is so beautiful!
Thanks! I just wish I could also have an audio clip of the intricate interplay of calls, songs, and other activity!
Oh, yes! All the senses–I can almost smell the water, or the freshness of the dew on growing things, and the interplay–the scent and swish of the grass when brushed by a hiking boot.
What a beautiful interpretation of this week’s challenge! The world is so full of things, more so than we can imagine and some of the most beautiful things are the ones you’ve shown us in your photos 🙂 I love the misty lake shot best – love the reflections and the overall haunting yet calm feeling of the shot. It looked like a great camping trip for you 🙂
Thanks, Mabel! It certainly was a special spot. I wish I could have gotten a fair representation of what it looked like in the full moon, too, but I’m not that good a photographer!