Really.
Really.
These are effects created by winter heating, freezing and melting. In other words, the nutrients released by lichens in late winter are created by stones heating in the winter cold, just as much as by the manure pellets left by deer grazing mid-winter bunchgrass. The same effects have splintered the stone below, created the scree it sits on, and spread the lichens covering the eroded soil it is growing on.
Winter is life, not a pause in it.
Okanagan Okanogan 