More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
If Alma had been a Roman Catholic, she might have crossed herself in gratitude to God at this discovery—for the encounter did have the weightless, wonderful sensation of religious conversion.
Mosses could not transport water within their bodies. Mosses did not even engage in sex. (Or at least they did not engage in sex in any obvious manner, unlike lilies or apple blossoms—or any other flower, in fact—with their overt displays of male and female organs.) Mosses kept their propagation a mystery to the naked human eye. For that reason, they were also known by the evocative name Cryptogamae—“hidden marriage.”
Moss eats stone; scarcely anything, in return, eats moss. Moss dines upon boulders, slowly but devastatingly, in a meal that lasts for centuries.
calciferous
Geological Time moved at a pace that felt nearly eternal, nearly divine.
But somewhere between Geological Time and Human Time, Alma posited, there was something else—Moss Time. By comparison to Geological Time, Moss Time was blindingly fast, for mosses could make progress in a thousand years that a stone could not dream of accomplishing in a million. But relative to Human Time, Moss Time was achingly slow.
If she was fortunate, she thought, she might be permitted another twenty or thirty years in which to live and to study
If the mosses had known how soon Alma Whittaker would be gone, she often thought, they might pity her.
The population of the United States had doubled since the Whittakers had arrived in 1792, and its flag now boasted thirty stars. Trains running in every direction spit hot ash and cinders. Ministers and moralists feared that the vibrations and jostling of such fast travel would throw weak-minded women into sexual frenzies.
capricious
Alma’s old friend George Hawkes, for instance, had not found happiness in his marriage to Retta Snow. Nor was Retta in the least bit happy. Knowing this did not bring Alma any consolation or joy.
he had always been a good friend to her, but never had a man chosen a wife more poorly.
Alma would search for some topic of conversation that would suit all three of them, but no such topic existed. No such topic had ever existed. She could speak with Retta about nonsense, or she could speak with George about botany, but she could never puzzle out a way to speak to them both.
“The ladies in the buttery at White Acre used to do it, too. They showed me how to do things to men, and taught me how much money to take for my services. I bought myself gloves and ribbons with the money. I once even bought a ribbon for you!”
“But did you never, Alma? Did you never wish to commit compromising acts? Did you never feel a wicked hunger, inside the body?” Retta clutched her arm and gazed up at her friend quite piteously, searching Alma’s face. Then she slumped again, resigned. “No, of course you didn’t. For you are good. You and Prudence are both good. Whereas I am the very devil himself.”
wags
sanctimoniously)
abhorrent,
What was one to make of the tremendous fossil bones of the lizardlike creatures that Richard Owen had recently named “dinosaurs”?
Nature does not make leaps. But Alma thought that nature did make leaps. Perhaps only tiny leaps—skips, hops, and lurches—but leaps nonetheless. Nature certainly made alterations. One could see it in the breeding of dogs and sheep, and one could see it in the shifting arrangements of power and dominion between various moss colonies on these common limestone boulders at White Acre’s forest edge.
seditious
albumen
Even the smallest sketches were masterpieces. Reflexively, she glanced up at the ceiling to make sure it was sound, that nothing would leak on this work and destroy it.
How does one address true genius?
Dear Mr. Pike, I fear you have done me a great harm. You have ruined me forever, for admiring anybody else’s botanical artwork.
We have greenhouses stocked with an abundance of orchids—some of which are nearly as beautiful in reality as yours are in depiction. I daresay you may enjoy them. Perhaps you might even wish to draw them. (Any of our flowers would consider it an honor to have their portraits painted by you!)
valise,
When he reached the northwest corner, he took off his hat, scratched his head, paused for a moment, and then burst into laughter. Alma could not hear his laughter, but she could distinctly see it.
It’s the golden ratio! We have double squares here, containing recurring nets of squares—and with the pathways bisecting the entire construction, we make several three-four-five triangles, as well. It’s so pleasing! I find it extraordinary that somebody would take the trouble to do this, and on such a magnificent scale. The boxwoods are perfect, too. They seem to serve as equation marks to all the conjugates. She must have been a delight, your mother.”
“I befriended a quiet view of the road.”
Now Alma was laughing, too. The reserve that normally exists between two strangers was thoroughly absent.
she had never intended to show him the moss beds at all—for nobody else had ever shown an interest in them
“That doesn’t frighten me,” he said. “I’ve always found fascination in subjects that other people find dull.”
“Tell me, though, Miss Whittaker, what is it that you admire in mosses?” “Their dignity,” Alma replied without hesitation. “Also, their silence and intelligence.
I am teasing you. I have never defended the intelligence of an orchid, and I never shall. I do love them, but I confess that they do not seem particularly bright—not by your standards of description. But I am much enjoying listening to somebody defend the intelligence of moss! It feels as though you are writing a character reference in their defense.”
he put his face so close to the moss colonies that it appeared as though his beard was growing out of the stones.
There is only so long that a person can keep her enthusiasms locked away within her heart before she longs to share it with a fellow soul, and Alma had many decades of thoughts much overdue for sharing.
Very soon Mr. Pike had thrown himself on the ground so that he could peer under the lip of a larger boulder and examine the moss beds that were hidden in those secret shelves. His long legs flopped out from beneath the rock as he enthused. Alma thought she had never been so pleased in her life.
As she would come to know Ambrose Pike better over time, she would learn that he was a great one for throwing himself down wherever and whenever he wanted to rest. He would even collapse happily on a carpet in a formal drawing room if the mood struck—particularly if he was enjoying his thoughts and the conversation. The world was his divan.
Why must I pick at their secrets, and beg them for answers about the nature of life itself? I am fortunate enough to come from a family of means, as you can see, so there is no necessity for me to work at all in my life. Why am I not happy, then, to idle about, letting my mind grow as loosely as this grass?” “Because you are interested in creation,” Ambrose Pike replied simply, “and all its wonderful arrangements.”
“There are mornings when you can sit under a single cherry tree in this meadow, and you will hear every bird in the orchestra, performing for your benefit.”
“Why did you finally come home, then?” “Loneliness.” He had the most extraordinary frankness. Alma marveled at it. She could never imagine admitting such a weakness as loneliness.
As my mother has expressed it, all I’ve ever wanted to do is sit in a corner and draw pictures of plants.” “Thank goodness for that!” Alma said.
She felt so pleased and relaxed. How agreeable was this Mr. Pike! She wondered how long he would stay at White Acre. Perhaps she could convince him to remain for the entirety of the summer.
“You fell asleep,” she said. “No,” he corrected her. “Sleep overtook me.”
“You must be weary, Mr. Pike.” “I have been weary for years.” He sat up, yawned, and set his hat back on his head. “What a generous person you are, though, to have allotted me this rest. I thank you.”
Alma was touched by George’s sincerity. She knew what her friend could not say to the artist—that this past year had been one of acute suffering within the Hawkes household, and that Ambrose Pike’s orchids had freed George, fleetingly, from the snares of darkness.
“Well, that is an absurd employment.” “I disagree, Mr. Whittaker,” the artist said, unperturbed. “But only because I would not call it an employment at all.”
“Currently, he resides across the divide of death. But prior to that, he was a minister in Framingham, Massachusetts.”
“He doesn’t really have people shot,” Alma reassured Mr. Pike, under her breath. “I had figured that,” her guest whispered back, “or else I would be dead already.”
