Consider the Lichen...

"Consider the lichen. Lichens are just about the hardiest visible organisms of Earth, but among the least ambitious. They will grow happily enough in a sunny churchyard, but they particularly thrive in environments where no other organism would go? on blowy mountaintops and arctic wastes, wherever there is little but rock and rain and cold, and almost no competition. In areas of Antarctica where virtually nothing else will grow, you can find vast expanses of lichen? four hundred types of them? adhering devotedly to every wind-whipped rock." - Bill Bryson

I found this wonderful step covered in different shades of lichen on the way home from work today. Life at one of simplest yet most hardiest.