Three Plus One Is Four

Day 209: Imagine yourself beside me in lushly green Pacific Northwest forest. Mosses blanket the ground, ferns and other vegetation rise above them in the understory, and even the trunks of the trees are covered in greenish lichen. We have come to find a rare wonder, a tiny orchid, the smallest of the Corallorhizas. Corallorhiza trifida is also green, both in stalk and flower. We are operating from my personal memory; I know where I've seen them before, behind *that* log, hidden by *that* clump of fern. A certain one of us can't recall whether a long-time friend wears glasses or has a moustache, but can remember with great precision the lay of the land and yes, *that* log and *that* fern. Unerringly, our mission draws us to one slight depression in a woods anyone else would describe with the words, "It all looks the same to me." Then the search begins. We go down on hands and knees carefully away from the core area, and with eyes as close to ground level as the projecting ear will allow, we sight across the microtopography. There, rising a whole four inches above the soil is a miniature asparagus spear, its diameter no greater than the lead in a common pencil. Now crawling with faces to the ground, we navigate the circumference of an eight-foot circle. Yes, there are three more asparagus spears hidden in a tangle of fern fronds and stems. Three plus one is four, not the sixteen found last year...but it's a beginning.