A pioneer sets off into the unknown, discovering places and blazing trails that others will follow. Mosses, lichens and plants such as green alder do the same. They are pioneer plants, the first to colonize areas where life seems impossible, because there is no water and the soil is unstable or too dry to supply any nutrients. However, they need so little to survive that they can make their home in the most inhospitable earth and they transform it, making it possible for other plants to live there too.
The climate on the north face of the mountain is cooler and more humid, and nature unveils new forms there: sums of angles, sharp-edged debris, slopes shrouded in tangles of leaves and branches. You are in the alder grove...