Dream Trip 2009

Great Travel Moment

I was genuinely moved by this plant-covered stump when I came across it in the forests of Glencoe, Scotland. I've seen moss growing on stumps before, but this one had an entire ecosystem supported on it! It made me ponder, for a moment, the elegance of the natural cycle, to see life springing so exuberantly from death. There's so much beauty in Scotland that I was already on sensory overload, but this moment was a special one for me, particularly because of the bloody history of Glencoe. Thinking about the 17th century massacre there, and all the souls who lost their lives on that land, it was easy to imagine that their deaths had laid the ground for other life to spring up, much as this stump provided opportunity to the plants that now engulfed it.