Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural History of Mosses

by Robin Wall Kimmerer

I think the task given to me is to carry out the message that mosses have their own names. Their way of being in the world cannot be told by data alone. They remind me to remember that there are mysteries for which a measuring tape has no meaning, questions and answers that have no place in the truth about rocks and mosses.

With a degree of humility rare in our species, we acknowledge there is much that we can’t see, and so contrive remarkable ways to observe the world. Infrared satellite imagery, optical telescopes, and the Hubbell space telescope bring vastness within our visual sphere. Electron microscopes let us wander the remote universe of our own cells. But at the middle scale, that of the unaided eye, our senses seem to be strangely dulled. With sophisticated technology, we strive to see what is beyond us, but are often blind to the myriad sparkling facets that lie so close at hand. We think we’re seeing when we’ve only scratched the surface. Our acuity at this middle scale seems diminished, not by any failing of the eyes, but by the willingness of the mind.

Often, when I encounter a new moss species and have yet to associate it with its official name, I give it a name which makes sense to me: green velvet, curly top, or red stem. The word is immaterial. What seems to me to be important is recognizing them, acknowledging their individuality. In indigenous ways of knowing, all beings are recognized as non-human persons, and all have their own names. It is a sign of respect to call a being by its name, and a sign of disrespect to ignore it. Words and names are the ways we humans build relationship, not only with each other, but also with plants.

All three—mosses, waterbears, and rotifers—figured prominently in a nineteenth-century debate about revivification and the very nature of life. The behavior of these three blurs the distinction at the edge between life and death. All signs of life are extinguished when they are dry: no movement, no gas exchange, no metabolism. All enter a state known as anabiosis, or lack of life. And yet, as soon as water is returned, life suddenly is renewed. Their apparent death, followed by resuscitation, suggested that life might be stopped and then re-started. Waterbears were the subject of intense experimentation to test the limits of their endurance. In the dry state, they were subject to conditions that would kill any known organism: boiling, being held in a vacuum only 0.008 degrees above absolute zero. But, without fail, they tolerated these abuses and were revivified with a drop of water. The addition of water unlocks the chemistry of life by a mechanism that is still largely unknown, but utilized by mosses and waterbears everyday.

The apparent destruction of a disturbance is in fact an act of renewal, provided the balance is right.

In traditional indigenous communities, learning takes a form very different from that in the American public education system. Children learn by watching, by listening, and by experience. They are expected to learn from all members of the community, human and non. To ask a direct question is often considered rude. Knowledge cannot be taken; it must instead be given. Knowledge is bestowed by a teacher only when the student is ready to receive it. Much learning takes place by patient observation, discerning pattern and its meaning by experience. It is understood that there are many versions of truth, and that each reality may be true for each teller. It’s important to understand the perspective of each source of knowledge. The scientific method I was taught in school is like asking a direct question, disrespectfully demanding knowledge rather than waiting for it to be revealed. From Tetraphis, I began to understand how to learn differently, to let the mosses tell their story, rather than wring it from them.

It’s a gamble that any spore will land on a suitable log and be able to start a new colony. But it’s a sure thing that without disturbance the colony will become extinct if it stays in one place.

Are the same dynamics of gap creation and colonization also played out at a micro-scale? Do the rules for assembling the jigsaw puzzle of a landscape also apply to mosses? Part of the fascination of working with mosses is the chance to see if and when the ecological rules of the large transcend the boundaries of scale and still illuminate the behavior of the smallest beings. It is a search for order, a desire for a glimpse of the threads that hold the world together.

The urban epidemic of asthma is symptomatic of a wider air-quality problem. The health of mosses in a neighborhood also reflects the level of air quality. Mosses and lichens are both very sensitive to air pollution. Street trees which once were greened over by moss are now bare. Check out the trees in your neighborhood. Their presence or absence has meaning. They are the canaries in the mine.

The plant’s purpose can be read through its place. I remember this when I’m tromping through the woods and mistakenly grab a vine of poison ivy to haul myself up a steep bank. I look immediately for its companion. Remarkable in its fidelity, jewelweed is growing in the same moist soil as the poison ivy. I crush the succulent stem between my palms with a satisfying crunch and a rush of juice, and wipe the antidote all over my hands. It detoxifies the poison ivy and prevents the rash from ever developing.

Perhaps the limited information on mosses in nineteenth-century anthropology is rooted in the fact that most of the observers of indigenous communities were upper-crust gentlemen. They focussed their studies on what they could see. And what they could see was conditioned by the world they came from. Their notebooks bulged with records of the pursuits of men; hunting, fishing, and making tools. When moss once appeared in a weapon, as wadding behind a harpoon tip, it was described in considerable detail. Then, just at the point when I’m ready to give up the search, I find it. A single entry. You can almost see the blush in the brevity of the statement: “Moss was in widespread use for diapers and sanitary napkins.” Imagine the complex relationships that lie behind that one entry, reduced to a single sentence. The most important uses of mosses, roles that reflect their best gifts, were everyday tools in the hands of women. Somehow I’m not surprised that the gentlemen ethnographers did not delve into the details of baby care, particularly the unglamorous but inescapable issue of diapers. And yet what could be more fundamental to the survival of a family than the well-being of babies? In this time of disposable diapers and antiseptic baby wipes, it’s hard to envision infant care without this technology. If I try to imagine carrying an infant on my back all day without benefit of diapers, I don’t like the image that comes to mind.

The conventional wisdom of anthropologists is that menstruating women were isolated from daily life because they were unclean. But this interpretation grew from the cultural assumptions of the anthropologists and not from indigenous women themselves, who tell a different story. Yurok women describe a time of meditation and speak of special mountain pools where only moontime women were permitted to bathe. Iroquois women tell that any prohibitions on women’s activities in their moontime arose because women were at the height of their spiritual powers at this time, and the powerful flow of energy could disrupt the balance of energy around them. In some tribal people, menstrual seclusion was a time of spiritual purification and training, akin to the sweat-lodge training of men. Tucked among the objects in their huts must have been baskets of mosses, selected with great care for their purpose. It seems an inescapable conclusion that women were skilled observers of different moss species, knowing their texture and creating an intimate taxonomy long before Linnaeus. The good missionary ladies must have grimaced in horror at this practice, but I think something was lost in the transition to boiled white rags.

I think it’s also important that we honor the different paths that lead to knowledge, the teachers in the oral tradition, the teachers in the written tradition, and the teachers among the plants. It’s the time we should also turn our thoughts to our own responsibilities. In the web of reciprocity, what is our special gift, our responsibility that we offer to the plants in return? Our ancient teachers tell us that the role of human beings is respect and stewardship. Our responsibility is to care for the plants and all the land in a way that honors life. We are taught that using a plant shows respect for its nature, and we use it in a way that allows it to continue bringing its gifts.

I think you cannot own a thing and love it at the same time. Owning diminishes the innate sovereignty of a thing, enriching the possessor and reducing the possessed. If he truly loved mosses more than control, he would have left them alone and walked each day to see them. Barbara Kingsolver writes, “It’s going to take the most selfless kind of love to do right by what we cherish and give it the protection to flourish outside our possessive embrace”.