This month’s VisualVerse.org stimulus reminded me of nothing so much as the times I have spent with pondlife under a dissecting microscope. And then I remembered what we call the Enchanted Loch, beyond from the viewing bench at the top of the temperate rainforest next door, down the path’s right fork, through a couple of pastures, across a bridge over a rushing stream until there it is, nestled within a sequestered glade.

I conflated these thoughts into a kind of dreamy poetic wish, for my submission, titled appropriately enough, The Enchanted Loch. I’ve got the dissecting scope sitting beside my desk now, and I must get things going again, so that I can show the grands some of the delights of the real hidden world.

It will be great fun to try to catch some more videos of these microscopic creatures, these denizens of the Kingdom of the Protists, but more fun than the video will be the adventure of catching a few of their antics live, on screen. This effort is kind of a joy displaced, a project that involves joy in the contemplation, in the planning, in the setting up, in the actual transient events, and I hope, in the sharing of the wonder of what’s revealed through the lens.

What the image above cannot show is the shimmery effect of the cilia waving at the bottom of the creature. That shimmer, perhaps, is what entices, what may draw the viewer deeper into the science of protists, and their unique ecosystem.

Now that all but one of the boxes in my study are cleared away, I can begin play in earnest!