Too Few Ferns

There are too few ferns in my life.  Ferns are savage.  Ferns are survivors.  Ferns were here first; they'll outlast the human race and perhaps anything we do to the planet.  They'd overtake meadows and fields and whole cities if we let them.  Without human intervention, much of North America would revert to ferns and vines--those damnable vines, the unholy trinity of poison ivy, Virginia creeper, and wild grapevine, which is by far the worst of the three.  But ferns are noble.  They're primordial.  Like great white sharks, they've evolved very little over the eons...maybe because they started out so close to perfect.  With their delicate, lacy leaves and their rich, earthy scent, ferns deserve to dominate the world.  Today in the patchy woods west of the city, where the forest canopy is sparse and the trees all look haggard, I noted with sadness that this is no kind of wilderness to nourish the spirit.  The Pittsburgh region sits in a basin where the Midwestern plains end and the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains begin.  For that reason, air pollution gets pushed up against the highlands and stuck here--both homegrown smog as well as clouds of particulates that are blown in from the Midwest.  In the US, only Los Angeles has worse air quality.  The air pollution weakens the trees and makes them more susceptible to common diseases.  Ragged trees depress me.  A hike among forlorn trees is more upsetting than restorative, and so it makes hiking sometimes seem counterproductive unless I can get away to a more northerly part of the state, where the trees are tall and strong.  And yet, just as my short hike was beginning to wear away at my soul, I came across these ferns, and all was well.