lichen facts:

Sundry highland visitors—from through-hiking Cub Scouts to day-tripping Oktoberfest a cappella choirs—have referred to lichen as alpine coral reefs, as tide pools, high and dry. Sing it!

Lichen are mildly psychoactive. You have always been welcome to lick them. But you would have to scrape up and smoke or eat 3.5 hectares for a noticeable effect. Much better to stare directly into them, read them gently like braille, or to lie down on a rock covered with a thin pad of lichen and try this by osmosis.

Lichen are extremophiles, ones that probably colonized our rocky shores by way of meteors from other star systems.

Oh, but why does it have to be like that. Do they always have to be aliens? Who are we to burden these gentle creatures with our postchristian, postsecular cosmic loneliness and existential, spiritual bankruptcy?

How can you behold a lichen and not believe in God?

How can you behold a lichen and still need your belief in God?

How can you behold a lichen and not see a god? A face of God? Imagine why God would create anything but lichens in her own image?

You are correct; the above are not facts. Here’s a fact: Lichens don’t give a shit about you.

Oh, don’t worry, it’s not that, not about you, indifference. They just don’t excrete waste, about anything or anyone. But, yeah, especially not about you.

Lichens will not give your ass sex appeal.

Wait, I was thinking of Lycra. My mistake. Actually, lichens just may. If you decide to try this out, I hope you’ll let me know how it goes. I’d say your odds are good, though.

Lichens’ freckles and cones, once understood to be—and, in antiquity, worshipped as—male and female genitalia (respectively), are actually eyes and ears (respectively).

It was not Sun Tzu nor dogs pissing on stone walls from whom we originally learned the craft of claiming others’ territories, but from the lichens.

Before Altamira, Chauvet, or Lascaux. Before tattoos, Banksy, banks, your mom, your great grandmother, acne, Jackson Pollock, or Accutane. There were lichens. P.S.—After them too, there are lichens, will be lichens.

Lichens are invertebrates. Have no bones. Bite rocks. Grip mountains and crush them to dust. To dirt. You’re welcome. And that’s a rock fact.