Resilience
Thursday, December 8. 2005
Kilauea, HI (Nov 4, 1005)
Life is resilient. Driving to the Hawaii Volcano National Park we encountered several places where the road was crossing lava flows, black streaks of solidified glassy material that had obliterated everything along their slow, inexorable path to the ocean. Some of them relatively recent, sterile environment were apparently no life can get a foothold. Only apparently... a closer look reveals that even those glassy crevices teem with little ferns, grasses, spiders. Life is resilient, and does not takes long to reclaim its space even from seemingly inert environments.
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I like the duality and paradox, the delicate and the rough. Transient life and the seemingly eternal hardness of the lava. Great image!
Too neat! If I remember correctly, isn’t volcanic soil super-rich? But nevertheless, it must take a hearty seed to survive in a lava floe!
It is super-rich only after it is transformed into soil by the first wave of organisms that manage to colonize the rocks and volcanic ashes, and use the minerals to create organic material. Before that stage is like a shattered glass desert, and one would think an impossible place for life to get a foothold on. But clearly even when the place still looks like a sterile wasteland, micro-organisms are already at work to trasform it.
You had to go and mention spiders. Why did it have to be spiders?
Things are beginning to grow again down here again, after the devastation. Not nearly as impressive as your image, but many tree stumps are showing green again.
Things are beginning to grow again down here again, after the devastation. Not nearly as impressive as your image, but many tree stumps are showing green again.
Paul, I mentioned spiders because I actually saw them. It is quite impressive, in some areas where there is absolutely no vegetation, there were spider webs between the black rocks, with black spiders waiting for unlikely insects to fly by (well, I guess there should be these insects, even though I didn’t see any). In these areas spiders where the only animal I could see.
wow ... its a beautifully contrasted photos and makes me think that it is like turning your lens all around, there is life and beauty that requires one to look closer than a mere glimpse ... love this one!
So many great patterns too...It`s a beautiful photograph, Massimo. If I stare too long, scary faces appear. Am I the only one seeing them ?
...and, nature is an artist. Yes, a lovely example of how life persists, and the contrast is quite striking.
Very nice texture variation and the monochrome background really emphasizes the vibrant green of the ferns. This could be an illustration for some epic fantasy or sci-fi novel. Great stuff.
La foto parece una obra de arte, la verdad es que la naturaleza es maravilloza
More beautiful photos accompanied by beautiful words - a joy to read and imagine. I’d love to go to these places.
Massimo - this is just gorgeous. Almost looks like selective color.
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