Novaculata: Back to the Redwoods

In the old-growth interior of Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park, early morning light enters the forest in pieces — narrow, directional, blade-edged. The gaps in the canopy are precise; the light that comes through them is more precise still. Novaculata: the Latin word for razor-sharp, and the name this image carries, because the light behaves like a blade — cutting through the redwood columns, illuminating the forest floor in strips, leaving the spaces between in a shadow that makes the lit sections glow. This is a morning quality of light specific to old growth, where the canopy is dense and continuous enough to hold the light in slant until the sun rises high enough to scatter it.