Backlit Xmas Fern, Bell

The malaise continues, and it's taking forever to get anything done, from actual writing that pays the bills to hiking that buoys the psyche. Honestly, about the only thing I'm good for at present is boosting the cough-medicine-sector of the economy and dragging myself out to the wood pile to keep the stove going. But I did manage a quick walk in the late afternoon when the sun started turning the bare woods golden and the warm-looking light—an illusion on a chilly day—reached down into the leaf litter and turned the Christmas Ferns to glowing. There wasn't much else obviously alive in the Bell Cedar Swamp refuge woods, so these bedraggled evergreen ferns made my photographic focus easier. Autofocus made it possible to compose and capture a picture between bouts of coughing and sneezing.