The Mossy Forest sits at 2,032 metres on Gunung Brinchang, in the Cameron Highlands of Malaysia, and nothing in it ever dries. Cloud settles on these ranges from about 1,200 metres, and the moss-buried forest begins around 1,500. Up here it arrives almost daily rather than with a season, so the ridge spends most of its life inside it. Moss buries everything. Trunks, branches and rocks all wear the same deep coat; the trees under it are stunted and gnarled, and the mat holds so much water that what drips off it keeps running through dry spells. You reach the edge of all this on the highest paved road in Peninsular Malaysia, a single lane in places, where cars take turns going up and down.
The trail starts by hauling you up a steep pitch where roots and packed earth make a natural staircase. Every handhold is slick with moss and cold to touch, and you go up it with your hands as much as your feet. Beyond it the path drops between moss-cushioned slopes, cloud drifting through the trees and the air cooling with every step. A boardwalk carries the rest, and a single step off the planks crushes growth that took years; the moss is fragile enough that nobody walks here unaccompanied any more. Kneeling at the rail where it piles deepest, the layers come apart: moss cushions, fern crosiers still unrolling, and seedlings rooting straight into the living mat instead of soil. Soil is almost beside the point up here. Higher again, a steel lookout tower rises above the stunted trees at the summit, and just after dawn, before cloud swallows the ridge, the Titiwangsa ranges stand in layers with the tea valleys far below. The plants have their own answer to poor ground. Nepenthes hang in the branches, lidded traps that fill with rainwater and drown the insects the plant lives on, because there is nothing in the earth here to feed it.