“Our skin mediates the most important transactions of our lives. Skin is key to our biology, our sensory experiences, our information gathering, and our relationships with others. Although the many roles it plays are rarely appreciated, it is one of the most remarkable and highly versatile parts of the human body.

Simply put, skin is the flexible, continuous covering of the body that safeguards our internal organs from the external environment. It protects us from attack by physical, chemical, and microbial agents and shields us from most of the harmful rays of the sun, while it works hard to regulate our body temperature. Far from being an impervious barrier, however, the skin is a selectively permeable sheath. It is constantly at work as a watchful sentinel, letting some things in and others out.”

Source Jablonski, Nina G. 2006/2013. Skin – A Natural History. USA: University of California Press.

The Earth is a living creature, and as any living organism, it is constantly changing. Time scale of the Earth, however, differs so much from ours that we tend to forget this. The surface of the Earth is constantly in mutation, and it occasionally creates such beautiful patterns that one is tempted to caress it. ––AZ