Primitive plants, massive rock

 I’ve read that perhaps 8 percent of the world is covered by lichens. That figure has got to be low in the Georgia Piedmont. Lichens and mosses are everywhere.

At Panola Mountain, a 5-acre outcrop that I thought was naked granite a couple of months ago was covered. The hard edges were soft and, in some places, fuzzy.

It was an observational error. I’d confused one part of the outcrop for another. But it made me realize that I know nothing about the advance and retreat of primitive plants in this harsh environment. How long it would take for lichens and mosses to cover five acres of a rock face? A couple of months? A thousand years?

People who see the monadnocks once usually describe them as otherworldly. Visiting them regularly meddles with my sense of time.