What are blurred images good for?
Are they just there to cover up blemishes of reality or the lack of skills of the photographer?
Or is having more information always better? Shouldn’t at least something be in focus, always?
Or better, everything, with absolute clarity, so that nothing is hidden and no question remains?
Sometimes, I think, it is necessary to reconsider everything.
The canyonesque nature of the Fern Canyon State Park makes one forget that this place is next to the coast, which empasizes the contrast between the complexity of the ferns and the simplicity of the beachscape.
This is a place to enjoy the lack of presence, which has dissolved into a beautiful grainy gray.
Time passes gently,
and allows for modest reflection.
After the brief excursion to Northern California, we are back to Indiana. This state also has a Fern dedicated nature preserve, the Fern Cliff Nature Preserve, located a little west of Greencastle. Things are a little different, though.
We do have a lot spooky cliff and very little path, mostly dead ends. 
But this means one can explore, and the patient visitor will find ferns that mingle with liverworts.
I took these pictures 9 years ago, but I don’t expect that much has changed.
A little bit off the (beaten) path are some views of the sandstone cliffs I really liked:
I will pay this place another visit as soon as the eternal heat wave ends.
After the modest ferns from last week, let’s indulge. One of the places to be is the Fern Canyon in the Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park, which lies, alas, in Northern California.
Most people who make it into the coastal redwoods that far north don’t bother to take the windy detour to that state park and trail head. Here is what they miss.
The vertical walls of the short canyon are packed with ferns.
Their gentle motion is impossible to capture in a photograph.
At some places, they appear to float before a darker background.
After seeing this, you will keep dreaming of a house with walls like this.
Green’s Bluff is a small Nature Preserve near McCormick’s Creek State Park.
The trail leads through woodland to a cliff above Raccoon Creek.
On-site information is a little vague.
Not many people visit, in particular not during the hot summer days, when one of the attractions is in full growth.
Ferns are not unusual in Indiana, but the Hay Scented Fern is pretty and not common here.
Last November I mused whether the Sycamore trees would, over the years, take over the quarry in DePauw Nature Park. My recent visit made me skeptical.
There are still lots of little sproutlings, but what I thought looks like early fall coloring in the top picture and below,
turns out to be something else up close.
At least one half of the younger trees are affected by leaf loss and dead branches, and the brown color look rather unhealthy.
It might be that these trees are affected by Anthracnose, or that just the generally problematic ground cover of the quarry causes malnutrition, as Bryan from DePauw University suggested. We will have to wait.
Some views and places, like the arching tree above (still there!), about which I have written before in one of the more often revisited blog posts of this remote little blog, lend themselves easily to metaphors. Others, like the one below, are more hermetic.
The spot is the same as in one of my earliest posts. Back then, the composition off fallen tree on rock before a steep canyon wall kept intriguing me over several seasons, triggering something I can’t put into words. After a seasonal flood swept away the tree, the place became less fascinating, until I noticed that something was happening. Two little Sycamore trees had taken possession, visible already above.
If they survive a few more years rock fall, floods, and human mischief, they will have outgrown the canyon and dominate the scene for years beyond me and you.
By the way, read that book in the title. It is better than I think.
In 1993, I went to Berkeley for a year. Among many other things, I went backpacking quite a bit, and I will share some of the images over the following months, celebrating the 25 year anniversary.
The second hike I went on (the first I already wrote about) was in Yosemite, to the Ten Lakes basin. To get there, you have to cross a plateau with gorgeous views.
The scenery is serene, and there is almost no way to get lost. Just don’t make the mistake I made, trying to get from the slower group to the faster group by following the trail. The faster group had stepped off the trail for a minute to enjoy the view, so that I rushed past them, getting more and more nervous towards the evening because I couldn’t find anybody. 
I was only mildly relieved when a few campers told me I had indeed reached the Ten Lakes area, where I waited nervously for two hours until the rest of the group finally arrived.
There are two clear indications that you hike with people from Berkeley: They bring text books and actually read them, and they go skinny-dipping in every little pond. Well. Above is partial proof.
On the way back you have to get up to that Plateau again, and then it gets interesting when you entire the granite fields transformed by the afternoon light.
The rocks that are scattered around there cause suspicion that they have been purposefully placed,
and it is up to us to decipher the message.
For me, this was easy. It meant Come Back.
This is a tomato plant. You can call it misfocus of the cheap digital camera I grabbed quickly, or well-staged dramatic suspense, because, as you will have noticed, there is something in the background.
A few minutes earlier my daughter had spotted an egg case out of which cute little monsters were emerging.
Praying mantises are fascinating. It seems so easy to say: Oh, that’s not one of our species. But then, why do we project aggressiveness into everything they do – hunting posture, sex life, the way they look?
One thing clearly distinguishes them from us: They are ready for life seconds after birth.
Whatever you think, that tomato plant was free of all other insects a few minutes later.
Among the more pleasant creatures who thrive in the current heat and humidity are the butterflies. My daughter’s obsession with them started when she was five, with a little moth.
It then took off in Michigan that summer, where the rustic campground offered plenty opportunity to look for cute little critters in all the unspeakable places.
It takes no time to figure out that the thing to do is to collect the caterpillars, feed them and watch them molt.
The tricky part is to find the right host plants for your caterpillar collection. So we focussed on monarchs and de-leaved all the milkweed plants in the neighborhood. 
You put them in a box, and a stick on top of that box instead of a lid when the caterpillars get fat and restless.
If you are lucky, you get several of them lining up on the stick, and then you can see them molting one by one. The act of getting out of the cocoon is pretty dramatic.
When the wings are pumped up, be sure to have the food ready.
The Inner Frame 