It's the other me. The one you haven't met. You will find me on a good day laying on the forest floor with the worms and leached, waiting for the last light to signal the end. No photograph can record the blackness that follows.
Actually Tom,
Allow me to correct you!
There's no blackness! That would be an absence of light, and although dim and scarce, there's always enough for wide open eyes, patiently gathering and mapping what's there for the taking! There are almost without exception worthy elements that counterbalance that which lacks!
You draw attention to a most critical and threatened habitat, the one on the Forrest and woodland floor. It's key to the life cycle of everything. Those leaves falling in the dark morose space provide a safe and nutritious ecosystem for microbes and fungi that breakdown the leaves and a nutritious feast for insects the staple diet of frogs and other amphibians and a good meal for snakes and hence for raptors and owls. The leaves bring needed nitrogen and phosphorous back into the soil to allow new trees to grow, after the next fire.
Besides, this is also where Maid Marion walks in the evenings and where Friar Tuck will find you and share some of the king's venison and some warm beer!
In the early morning, thin wispy clouds of moist air rise, curl around the flowers and grasses, coalesce and condense to a fine lingering mist, sheltering elves and fairies on toadstools and mushrooms, freshly sprouted overnight.
........and you just thought of the dim light. No my friend, there's much, much more to be enjoyed in the Forrest we are fated to lie down in.
Asher