While staying at a hotel in the Austrian mountains over the weekend, my partner and I walked around the local, frozen lake. On its southern tip, the lake morphed into a moor, and the trail looped around both.
The lake came with several nice viewing points, beach bars, and even a full-fledged swimming area nearby. None were in use, of course, but you could imagine it: In the summer, this place would be happening.
The moor, meanwhile, was, well, a moor. Encircled by reeds, with a sea of thwarted pine trees that looked more like bushes growing in its center, it looked chaotic and untended. Thankfully, several boards along the way informed me about what went on beneath the surface.
First, the flora of the moor was incredibly complex. The tree-bushes were a variant of mountain pines which couldn’t grow tall due to a lack of nitrogen in the swamp. In exchange, other, rare flowers blossomed—including sundew, a carnivorous plant which, smartly, got its nitrogen from eating bugs.
The most interesting tidbit, however, was that “a moor with 10 meters of depth can store 100 times as much carbon as the same area covered in forest.” Huh! Who would have thought? The forest’s unloved little brother packs an incredible punch when it comes to saving the environment!
People don’t travel in droves to see moors. They don’t glorify them in novels. If anything, moors in stories are where ghosts live. Where people get lost and long-lost murder victims reappear. In the real world, not many people care about moors at all. “A swamp? Why would I go and see that?” And yet…
Sometimes, the thing no one cares about is the thing that can get the job done better than any other. Chances are, it’s just as worth learning about as the cool sight everyone wants to visit or the gimmick everyone is desperate to use.
Without plankton, there can be no ocean. Don’t count out the forgotten ones.
