What a clear-cut really looks like.

On Saturday at work, I saw this neat site. I followed the birding trail down towards the stream from the ridge line, until it got too steep.

You can imagine a watershed is shaped like a triangle. By definition, a watershed is the contributing area from which a stream drains, so think about how a valley is "v-shaped" and then imagine that "v" has a back-- presto! A triangle. The way in which the stream comes over the land is a "Y" super-imposed on that "v"-- at least, in my watershed, and many around here, that's how it looks.

Okay, so that is preface for where this photo was taken, standing at the intersection of the three prongs of the "Y" looking upward, It looks like a "hemispheric lens" from this angle because that expanse of triangle is all, naturally contributing to this point, and for just a second the visual and the functional are captured together.
The big dead stump is a douglas-fir-- the smaller trees also are douglas-fir-- these trees were planted about 55 years ago. The little guy on the left is Rhododendron, or as we call it "rhodie". You can see some rhodie also growing from the stump. In the foreground is "salal"-- a spiky plant that grows almost everywhere. That guy is so prolific that you can burn the entire site and it will resume it's previous cover within 1 year!

The mosses, I do not know their names. But I have heard there are more than 40 different types of mosses out there. Did I mention that this site is classified as a "clear cut"?