Nature Patiently “Adopts” Human Artiface

I’m always fascinated with the way that nature sculpts, paints, and generally redesigns, our buildings, our machines, and our various artifacts.

While wandering around with my camera one day I captured wild peas slowly reconfiguring and gracing the relic barbed-wire fence around our orchard.

Wild Peas Love Barbed Wire

There’s an Inuit creation myth that the first Man was born from a wild pea pod.  The story can be found at the bottom of page 452 of the book “18th Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology,” where the story is relayed as it was told to the ethnographer.  You can find it on Google Books.

Speaking of barbed-wire, here’s another pic showing nature working hard on someone else’s fence down the road, at an entirely different season.

Barbed Wire and Frost

Nature also loves to work on pavement, etching it with fascinating calligraphy and painting it with moss, lichens, and fallen leaves. This is something I often enjoy observing, especially in old school yards or abandoned factories. Watching nature lovingly enfold human creations is a hopeful and joyous thing, and seems somehow to reveal the patient, ancient understanding inherent in the world.

Parking Lot Slowly Transformed