What a strange tangle ...



I found this odd growth pattern on a hike up Davis Gulch. This is just one shrub about 12 feet high. It's growing like some fantastical Watts Towers sculpture. Some of the branches seem to twist and twine around 306 degrees until they grow back into themselves. At first I thought it was a "fort" made by kids, a hide-away place on the hill, but when I came close to it and examined it, I realized it has nothing to do with human machinations ... this was formed by nature, somehow. I'd love to know how this happened, why the shrub grew this way.

It reminds me of Mary Robinson's print, "Tangled Branches" -- she is on the faculty of the College of Art at the University of South Carolina, and teaches printmaking.