lichen in the desert

Last Saturday, we went on this random hike in the high desert outside Mendoza. A small group of students from the school jumped on the bus in the morning headed to Petrerillos, a little town about an hour into the mountains from Mendoza. We didn’t exactly find a hiking path and ended up spending most of our hiking time eating lunch on this massive rock.

The land is red red red here. My shows are still tinted red from wandering around this desert. For miles and miles, all we could see were mountain peaks, many covered in snow.

At one point, I found a rock that had some lichen growing on it. Years and years ago, C. taught me about the miracle that lichen is. She taught me to be careful not to disturb it since it takes years to grow. In the rainforest of my home in Alaska, lichen covers the land like carpet, so I grew careless with the miracle. Wandering around this desert of Argentina, I was reminded of it’s miraculousness. There, in the middle of dry scrub and dry rivers, lichen struggled to make its home on the sides of rocks.

Sometimes I am amazed by how life on earth can scrape out an existence.