“When the rain departs, the mosses’ sponginess retains water, then slowly releases it. Forests therefore nurture life downstream from themselves, shielding rivers from sudden muddy surges and sustaining flows during dry spells. Evaporation from the wet forest creates clouds of humidity and, if the forest is large enough, generates its own rain. We usually take these gifts without consciousness of our dependence, but economic necessity sometimes jolts us out of our deep sleep.  New York City decided to protect the Catskill Mountains rather than pay a man-made water purification plant. The millions of mossy mandalas in the Catskills were cheaper than a technological ‘solution’.”

David George Haskell, from The Forest Unseen: A Year’s Watch in Nature, Penguin Press, 2012, pp. 39-40.

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