Shining Light on the Prairie - Summer, Part 2

Through most of my photographic life, I've struggled to see through the high summer season's obscurity of abundance.

Superior wilderness or oak savannah and prairie alike, green is green. Ubiquitous green is all but blinding, at least first glance.

As a kid, I knew to look close at the natural world. To see what most children didn't search for.

Probably what I appreciate best about digital capture is that it's got me seeing small again.

Generous low light tolerance helps a lot.

Plus, harsh summer light no longer being an inevitable destroyer of high contrast images is an absolute joy.

The periodic deluges of early summer continued well into July.

I was particularly pleased to find splashes of fresh fungi along the forest floor. Previously, that'd been absent.

Then the rains ended.

By mid-August, local life was somewhat worse for wear. What does one call a swallowtail with no tails left?

The landscape remains 'abnormally dry.' Or is that a new normal?

I don't know. A few years running much like this, at any rate.

But as the rich season ends, most things are about as they should be. Prairie and oak savannah are remarkably resilient.

This was the summer I relearned to see beyond all the green.

Yesterday, the first autumnal cold front swept through. That blasted away a spell of unseasonable heat.

Now we wing our way fast toward fall.