Word: lichen
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Neither man knows how long ago the tree was carved - though they speculate that a Chumash family that lived on a nearby hillside until they all died in the 1918 flu epidemic may have tended to the arborglyph as the bark and lichen grew back - but they're just relieved that Saint Onge was able to find it at all. "The upkeep of the motif itself has gone by the wayside and it's not long for the world," says Saint Onge, explaining that carpenter ants are attacking the limbs, "so I think it was a good thing that...
...concrete flooring through much of the underground complex. As many as 1,700 visitors traipsed through Lascaux every day. But by the late 1950s, the presence of so many warm-blooded, carbon-dioxide-exhaling bodies had altered the cave's climate to the point that calcite deposits and lichen were threatening the paintings. By 1963, the threat of permanent damage was so acute that Andre Malraux, France's first and most famous Minister of Culture, ordered the cave closed...
...should have been midwinter in the far north, Nunavut's capital city, Iqaluit, was a balmy 5*noneC and rainy. When the temperature dropped, a layer of ice froze over the tundra. Now there's fear that the caribou, which normally dig through snow--not hard ice--to get lichen in winter, will be underfed. So the Inuit can expect a significant change in their diet...
...inconsequential things: the furious way his pet duck pecks at a frozen log "as if she were Teletyping a wire service story on it" or the "sudden howl of light" when he opens his refrigerator in the middle of the night. He thinks about "the lovely turquoise exudate, electrical lichen," that forms around the poles of his car batteries. As you may have noticed, Emmett's life is profoundly unextraordinary. He thinks about that...
...second day's walk was the most beautiful. Soon after leaving camp, the vegetation changed: The tall forest trees gave way to stunted shrubs covered with lichens and moss. Old Man's Beard, as the most common lichen is known, waved in the breeze and as we picked our way along a ridge with mist gathering on either side below us. It felt as if we had walked onto a Lord of the Rings set. Around lunchtime the rain set in and the last few hours of walking were uncomfortable and cold. You don't need technical equipment for Kilimanjaro...