Young evergreen and moss mushrooms

Today is election day, and while the campaign leading up to it has been the most vile I've experienced in the four-plus-decades I've been a voter—after the Supreme Court ended restrictions on contributions, we're now a government of the money, for the money, and by the money—I made sure I voted. I'm not convinced it mattered, but I did it anyway. Then, I went out of a walk to the Bell Cedar Swamp refuge. I got as far as the graveyard, and there, I spotted something that buoyed my spirits. Emerging from the carpet of Hair Cap Moss were lots of these curious mushrooms, which may well be moss-obligates, as well as seedling White Pines. Maybe this eruption of new life is a kind of sign—a manifestation of Barack's "hope and change" mantra that filled many of us with so much optimism at the beginning of his first term in 2008. It's been replaced by a rear guard entrenchment and a genuine anxiety about the future of this nation, but there are these new trees. Maybe there's yet reason to be hopeful.