It can be hard to summon the appropriate motivation to cut firewood in early July. In light of this, I keep a newspaper article taped to the refrigerator that highlights the billion-dollar quarterly profits some oil companies are reaping; the fact that the Northeastern states burn about 5.5 billion gallons of fuel oil a year; that at $4.50 a gallon this sucks close to $20 billion out of our economy and sends it to Saudi Arabia, Nigeria, Venezuela...

We've become accustomed to constant improvements in the high-tech world. Computing power doubles every 18 month, new software upgrades become available by the week, and no sooner have you learned version 1.0 of something than version 2.0 is released. It's enough to make a sane person want to take a long walk amidst the peace and quiet of the natural world...

Yes, we know it's a woman. The plant. What's the plant she's holding?

Every other week we run a photo of something unusual found in the woods. Guess what it is and you'll be eligible to win a copy of The Outside Story, a paperback collection of our Outside Story newspaper columns. A prize winner will be drawn at random from all the correct entries. The correct answer, and the winner's name, will appear in next week's column. 

Our friend Elinor Osborn took this surreal picture. What is it? 

A noiseless patient spider,

I mark'd where on a little promontory it stood isolated,

Mark'd how to explore the vacant vast surrounding,

It launch'd forth filament, filament, filament out of itself,

Ever unreeling them, ever tirelessly speeding them.

And you O my soul where you stand,

Surrounded, detached, in measureless oceans of space,

Ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing, seeking the spheres   to connect them,

Till the bridge you will need be form'd, till the ductile anchor

  hold,

Till the gossamer thread you fling catch somewhere, O my

  soul.

-Walt Whitman from Leaves of Grass

Thanks, Elinor, for sharing this picture. Check out more of Elinor's beautiful photography here.

 Visit our What In The Woods Is That? contest archive.