Medusa, clinging on

I'm mixing metaphors here but, on a recent walk, I was reminded of the Greek goddess Medusa. She had snakes for hair and the various tree roots, writhing around unseen obstacles, reminded me of snakes - or perhaps an octopus. Not that hair - or snakes or octopuses - would cling on so tenaciously to the hillside, I suppose. Yet, these trees do manage to cling on, miraculously, even though in places along the path you could see empty 'bowls' where a tree had obviously once been. The wonders of nature. 

Also miraculous, the teeming life colonies on the fallen trees... Mosses and lichens fur the dead limbs; grasses, ivy and creepers curl through the branches that once reached for the sky. And who knows what woodland creatures, large and miscroscopic, find comfort and a home in the rotting wood.