Lichen and tortoiseshell

All that lives in this picture is some orange-yellow lichen on sticks. The dry leaves and twigs of spent vegetation bear witness to green that’s gone, now reduced to detritus fit for new life to be conjured.

A tortoise died here after years of nibbling leaves in its extended performance of adagio movements. Maybe it parented some offspring that still do the rounds among the bushes where undisturbed time waits to welcome. Living an observer existence in a style a tortoise just knows because it was born tortoise.

Like the photographer, this tortoise did not understand the complex world it lived in, but lived. The last human on earth will also die without fully grasping the magnificence of nature. May he or she still share the beauty around that this tortoise could.