Photographs and text by Ryan Long
Stepping into Paint Rock’s forests lets me see something photo-worthy every day. Everything looks so calm and photogenic; meanwhile there’s a war of aggression being waged at every level in the forest. Life or death struggles among innumerable insects at any given moment with vines strangling the life out of trees overhead. The slow, timelapse warfare of plants with their armor of bark, allelochemicals like gas in the trenches, secondary metabolites as shields and weapons, dealing out death by shading out competition. It’s all very metal. And then I see a fat bumblebee or a little salamander waddle on by and I forget all that completely. The forest is an unseen world of opposing forces, and it’s hard not to be fascinated by the intricate web of interactions amongst its denizens. But the amazing people I get to work at in Paint Rock surpass it all. I’m lucky to work here.
