in Thoreau’s Journal:

I love in this weather to look abroad & let my eye fall on some sandy hill clothed with pitch pines on its sides, & covered on its top with the whitish cladonia lichen—usually so dry—but now saturated with water—  It reminds me of northern Regions….

They are agreeable colors to my eye—the green pine & on the summit the patches of whitish moss like mildew seen through the mist & rain.— for I think perhaps how much moisture that soil can bear, how grateful it is to it.