Golden Canopy

Lie flat on the ground in a place like this and the whole forest leans in over you. Tens of thousands of poplars planted by hand in rows on an Oregon tree farm, every one of them turning gold in the same week each autumn. The farm is gone now. The trees came down not long after this.
From down there the trunks stop being rows and become spokes, all of them running to one point of open sky. The leaves had thinned just enough to let the light through, so the canopy reads more like stained glass than foliage. In the gap at the center, a jet crossing at altitude, carrying people with no idea what was underneath them.
The whole frame depends on being properly centered and properly flat. A few degrees off and the spokes stop converging and the effect collapses into an ordinary picture of branches. So I lay in the leaf litter and worked it until the trunks agreed with each other, wide enough to take in the full circle and stopped down enough to keep the small branches sharp all the way to the edges.
For anyone who still lies down under trees. Printed and finished to gallery standard, made to bring height and warmth into a bright room. A piece of that same lost forest to keep, this time from underneath.