Flat and Spongy

Kouchibouguac National Park, NB, Canada

Peat bogs... spongy, multistory holders of water and carbon.. built by mosses to attune their living...

So, how does this work?... I looked into Stephan Harding's "Animate Earth" and learned...

Mosses like wet and damp, and they need rain... buckets of rain...
... hence their ability to seed clouds and trigger rainfall by releasing sulphur gases up into the air.
    And in the process, they drown large trees. Peat bogs and forests are not agreeable.

Peat forms out of dead mosses which release humic and fulvic acids to prevent their breakdown.
   So they stay and build upon each other to reach multi-meter heights of carbon storage.
      And on the surface, there is a rich life of mosses and small plants... colorful and lively...

Since we live in the climate conscious time, I have to stress the peat bogs' role in cooling our Planet:
   - Peat layers are carbon storages.
   - Seeded clouds keep the Earth in shade.
   - Their flats retain the snow which reflects sun rays from the Earth.
   - By releasing rich-nutrient water into the ocean,
     they help feed starved marine algae thus keeping them around to use this extra CO2.

I have never seen peat bogs... but have wished to see them... just travel north... north enough...

After Rain

Fresh Pond, Cambridge, Massachusetts

It rained last night... the football field is sprinkled with mushrooms...
   ... I enjoy these hats poking through grasses...  flowers of the fungal underworld...
   ... or, as Stephan Harding calls IT,  the forgotten kingdom...

Fungi are all around us, they are everywhere. In some habitats, says Harding, such as forest soils, fungal biomass often reaches 90% of the combined biomass of microorganisms such as bacteria and other small animals. They are responsible for recycling, they deliver food to the weak, and maintain health of the forest.

Fungi have been HERE much longer than plants and animals. And, in partnership with bacteria, they have created conditions for this lavish and ornate world we call nature... thus,

... we must pay them due honour, for without their secret labours there would be no forests, no grasslands, no heathlands, no savannahs, nor any of the great animals that roam in those wild realms. Without fungi, the earth's land surfaces would be nothing more than exposed rocks...

STEPHAN HARDING, Animate Earth

... as I stand amongst them, I wonder if they can sense my footsteps... and my thoughts...