Walking down from Great Dun Fell towards Knock a few days ago, the old quarry out of Knock Pike caught the light and I took a (crappy mobile phone) photo.
Zoom in on the top edge of the quarry and there’s a thin band, perhaps less than 50 cm deep, of rich dark soil on top of the lifeless rock.
While there’s the occasional nematode and bacteria going further down, the soil layer that sustains most of the plant life we see and depend on is an improbably thin layer making up some 0.000008% of the planet’s radius.
Looking at is as we walked past, I had a sudden visceral sense of just how fragile the balance is that enables life on this planet.
Post edited at 22:12