"The Stratagems of Green Things"
While layers of litter may speak to the messiness of our world, when we speak of chaos in Nature, what's meant more often is the natural state of discord among living things, the mayhem of wills in conflict.
Even within the docile plant world, war is hell. The slow-motion battle to commandeer light and land never ends, and is fought to the death, a war not so much of all against all, but of elaborate lattices of alliance among millions of species and billions of individuals.
When it is limned in winter snow, one can see more clearly the arc of each competitor's stratagem, laid forth in shivering limbs with crisp needlework. In this particular moment of fresh snowfall, the shape of struggle among creatures - almost an arabesque - emerges as something exquisite and pristine.
TITLE - "The Stratagems of Green Things"
WHERE - Bert Flinn Park, Port Moody , B.C. (2016)