Where the Forest Opens

 I had found the house-sized boulder I was searching for, tucked deep in the Northwoods. But wedged into the depths of the forest, how was I to photograph it?

Scattered across much of the forests of Maine, erratics are the sand-like kernels picked up by glaciers in the last ice age and dropped as they melted and the climate warmed thousands of years ago. Unique among these grains of sand, actually a giant boulder, was a large yellow birch tree, sitting atop, straining toward the sun. Some of its roots dangled below. After circling twice, I sat down, unsettled. No unique perspective was immediately apparent.

Then I saw it from below. The sun greeted me through its leaves. I had found a gangly striving tree appropriating the flat top of the erratic, gaining the room it needed to reach skyward.

You couldn't invent this. Here, amidst the scattered giants of stone, a gangly yellow birch has claimed a house-sized erratic as its own, sending roots thirty feet deep into the dark earth to find purchase where none seems possible. It leans back, drinking the light through its leaves while trusting that life persists even in this impossible place. I had found life at the edge thriving.