SOLSC '21 Day Four: Getaway Monday, part one

 

I am participating in my ninth Slice of Life Story Challenge run by the team behind the Two Writing Teachers website.  We are challenged to write a blog post a day throughout the month of March.

I drifted in and out of deep sleep, alternately lulled by the sound of rain and awakened by lightning flashing through my eyelids.  The morning broke as gray as the day before. 

Indoor lighting felt too bright.  The provided lantern illuminated my morning pages without interrupting the dawn outside my window.  

The rain let up, and the road outside my cabin beckoned, leading me to a looped trail at the top of the hill.

Yes, I am in the Piney Woods of Texas.

The sky still gray and misting, I found myself looking down as I hiked the well-marked path.  Fungi mimicked tree rings in their fanned shingles.

Bright green moss softened the sharp-edged rock faces.

More bright orange fungi caught my eye, co-existing with stalked green cousins.

It covered these branches, creating gloved skeleton fingers reaching for the sky.

A tall stump twisted from its roots, its gaping maw looking like a painful cry.

Serpentine vines seemed to strangle branches as they climbed upward.

A half-nut on a flattened log--a table setting for a squirrel, perhaps.

Can you see it--the branch hanging in midair, parallel to the young tree that caught its fall?

The trail continues.