Annihilation (Southern Reach, #1)

by Jeff VanderMeer

If you looked out through these areas, toward the ocean, all you saw was the black water, the gray of the cypress trunks, and the constant, motionless rain of moss flowing down.

Rachel Carson’s writings have been a huge influence on me for a long time, and her first book remains one of my favorites. Under the Sea-Wind, with its detailed accounts of coastal ecosystems, is, among many things, a description of places that no longer exist or exist in altered form now. You cannot have too much Spanish moss around here. Or, rather, you can’t escape the moss. But, after a while, you tend to forget it’s all around you because…it’s always around you. Then you come across a scene like this one while out in the wilderness…and you remember again.