The Signature of All Things

by Elizabeth Gilbert

As she had suspected and hoped, it was blanketed in moss. Alma knelt in the tall grass and brought her face as near as she could to the stone. And there, rising no more than an inch above the surface of the boulder, she saw a great and tiny forest. Nothing moved within this mossy world. She peered at it so closely that she could smell it—dank and rich and old. Gently, Alma pressed her hand into this tight little timberland. It compacted itself under her palm and then sprang back to form without complaint. There was something stirring about its response to her.

Alma put the magnifying lens to her eye and looked again. Now the miniature forest below her gaze sprang into majestic detail. She felt her breath catch. This was a stupefying kingdom. This was the Amazon jungle as seen from the back of a harpy eagle. She rode her eye above the surprising landscape, following its paths in every direction. Here were rich, abundant valleys filled with tiny trees of braided mermaid hair and minuscule, tangled vines. Here were barely visible tributaries running through that jungle, and here was a miniature ocean in a depression in the center of the boulder, where all the water pooled.

Here, the moss grew in mountain ranges the length of Alma’s arms, in elegant, pine tree–shaped clusters of darker, more somber green. On another quadrant of the same boulder still, she found patches of infinitesimally small deserts, inhabited by some kind of sturdy, dry, flaking moss that had the appearance of cactus. Elsewhere, she found deep, diminutive fjords—so deep that, incredibly, even now in the month of June—the mosses within were still chilled by lingering traces of winter ice. But she also found warm estuaries, miniature cathedrals, and limestone caves the size of her thumb.

Alma’s world and the moss world had been knitted together this whole time, lying on top of each other, crawling over each other. But one of these worlds was loud and large and fast, where the other was quiet and tiny and slow—and only one of these worlds seemed immeasurable.

Recognizing all this, Alma’s existence at once felt bigger and much, much smaller—but a pleasant sort of smaller. The world had scaled itself down into endless inches of possibility. Her life could be lived in generous miniature. Best of all, Alma realized, she would never learn everything about mosses—for she could tell already that there was simply too much of the stuff in the world; they were everywhere, and they were profoundly varied. She would probably die of old age before she understood even half of what was occurring in this one single boulder field. Well, huzzah to that! It meant that Alma had work stretched ahead of her for the rest of her life. She need not be idle. She need not be unhappy. Perhaps she need not even be lonely. She had a task.

Mosses were typically defined by what they lacked, not by what they were, and, indeed, they lacked much. Mosses bore no fruit. Mosses had no roots. Mosses could grow no more than a few inches tall, for they contained no internal cellular skeleton with which to support themselves. 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.” In every way mosses could seem plain, dull, modest, even primitive. The simplest weed sprouting from the humblest city sidewalk appeared infinitely more sophisticated by comparison. But here is what few people understood, and what Alma came to learn: Moss is inconceivably strong. Moss eats stone; scarcely anything, in return, eats moss. Moss dines upon boulders, slowly but devastatingly, in a meal that lasts for centuries. Given enough time, a colony of moss can turn a cliff into gravel, and turn that gravel into topsoil. Under shelves of exposed limestone, moss colonies create dripping, living sponges that hold on tight and drink calciferous water straight from the stone. Over time, this mix of moss and mineral will itself turn into travertine marble. Within that hard, creamy-white ...

Abolitionists were often dragged through the streets and beaten—even in free northern cities! The North did not love slavery, but it did love peace and stability, and abolitionists disturbed that peace. The Colored Orphans’ Asylum, where Prudence volunteered her services as a teacher, had been several times already attacked by mobs. And what about the abolitionist Elijah Lovejoy—murdered in Illinois, and his abolitionist-friendly printing presses destroyed and thrown in the river?

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.”

The old cobbler had believed in something he called “the signature of all things”—namely, that God had hidden clues for humanity’s betterment inside the design of every flower, leaf, fruit, and tree on earth. All the natural world was a divine code, Boehme claimed, containing proof of our Creator’s love. This is why so many medicinal plants resembled the diseases they were meant to cure, or the organs they were able to treat. Basil, with its liver-shaped leaves, is the obvious ministration for ailments of the liver. The celandine herb, which produces a yellow sap, can be used to treat the yellow discoloration brought on by jaundice. Walnuts, shaped like brains, are helpful for headaches. Coltsfoot, which grows near cold streams, can cure the coughs and chills brought on by immersion in ice water. Polygonum, with its spattering of blood-red markings on the leaves, cures bleeding wounds of the flesh. And so on, ad infinitum. Beatrix Whittaker had always been scornful of this theory (“Most leaves are shaped like livers—are we meant to eat them all?”), and Alma had inherited her mother’s skepticism.

“And yet Boehme said that God had pressed Himself into the world, and had left marks there for us to discover.” The parallel was unmistakable, Alma thought, and she could not help but point it out. “Like a printmaker,” she said.

Recall that I am Henry Whittaker’s daughter. I was born into argument. Argument was my first nursemaid. Argument is my lifelong bedfellow. What’s more, I believe in argument and I even love it. Argument is our most steadfast pathway toward truth, for it is the only proven arbalest against superstitious thinking, or lackadaisical axioms.” “But if the end result is only to drown in words, and never to hear . . .” Ambrose trailed off. “To hear what?” “Each other, perhaps. Not each other’s words, but each other’s thoughts. Each other’s spirit. If you ask me what I believe, I shall tell you this: the whole sphere of air that surrounds us, Alma, is alive with invisible attractions—electric, magnetic, fiery and thoughtful. There is a universal sympathy all around us. There is a hidden means of knowing. I am certain of this, for I have witnessed it myself. When I swung myself into the fire as a young man, I saw that the storehouses of the human mind are rarely ever fully opened. When we open them, nothing remains unrevealed.

When we cease all argument and debate—both internal and external—our true questions can be heard and answered. That is the powerful mover. That is the book of nature, written neither in Greek nor in Latin. That is the gathering of magic, and it is a gathering that, I have always believed and wished, can be shared.”

Cast loose for the first time in her life into the realm of love, imbued with impossible energy, Alma barely recognized herself. Her capacities seemed limitless. She barely had need for sleep. She felt she could row a boat up a mountainside. She moved through the world as though in a corona of fire. She was zoetic. It was not merely Ambrose whom she regarded with such vivid purity and thrill—but everything and everybody. All was suddenly miraculous. She saw lines of convergence and grace everywhere she looked. Even the smallest matters became revelatory. She was doused by a sudden surfeit of the most astonishing self-confidence. Quite out of the blue, she found herself solving botanical problems that had vexed her for years. She wrote furiously paced letters to distinguished men of botany (men whose reputations had always cowed her), laying challenge to their conclusions as she had never before permitted herself to do.

She had never before possessed the courage for such remonstrance, but love had emboldened her, and her mind felt like an immaculate engine.

A week before the wedding, Alma woke in the night with an electrified start, abruptly realizing that there was a link between algae and mosses. She had been looking at mosses and algae for decades, but she had never before seen the truth of it: the two were cousins. She had no trace of a doubt about it. In essence, she apprehended, mosses did not merely resemble algae that had crawled up on dry land; mosses were algae that had crawled up on dry land. How mosses had made this elaborate transformation from aquatic to terrestrial, Alma did not know. But these two species shared an entwined history. They must do. The algae had decided something, long before Alma or anyone else was watching them, and in that point of decision, had moved up into the dry air and transformed. She did not know the mechanism behind this transformation, but she knew that it had occurred.

He called her “my other soul, my better soul.”

“You are a right little daughter of Neptune, Miss Whittaker,” and Alma felt she had never been so mightily praised.

Amazed by the constellations, Alma said to Captain Terrence one night, “Nihil astra praeter vidit et undas.” “What does that mean?” he asked. “It’s from the Odes of Horace,” she said. “It means there is nothing to be seen but stars and waves.”

One of the older sailors, who had lived in the South Seas many years, told Alma that when the Tahitians picked a star to follow for navigation, they called it their aveia—their god of guidance. But in general, he said, the more common Tahitian word for a star was fetia. Mars was the red star, for instance: the fetia ura. The morning star was the fetia ao: the star of light. The Tahitians were extraordinary navigators, the sailor told her with undisguised admiration. They could navigate on a starless, moonless night, he said, reckoning themselves merely by the feel of the ocean’s current. They knew sixteen different kinds of wind.

“It seems that people forget what they themselves created, doesn’t it? We know now that all the people of Polynesia carry taro root and coconut palm and breadfruit with them when they settle a new island, but they themselves will tell you that the gods planted these things here. Some of their stories are quite fabulous. They say that the breadfruit tree was crafted by the gods to resemble a human body, as a clue to humans, you see—to tell us that the tree is useful. They say that this is why the leaves of the breadfruit resemble hands—to show humans that they should reach toward this tree and find sustenance there. In fact, the Tahitians say that all the useful plants on this island resemble parts of the human body, as a message from the gods, you see.

“The signature of all things,” Alma murmured.

In Tahiti, the people believed that the world was divided into the pô and the ao, the darkness and the light. Their great lord Taroa, the creator, was born in the pô—born at night, born into darkness. The missionaries, once they learned of this mythology, explained to the Tahitians that Jesus Christ, too, had been born in the pô—born into the night, sprung from the darkness and suffering. This had captured the attention of the Tahitians. It was a dangerous and mighty destiny to be born at night. The pô was the world of the dead, the incomprehensible and the frightful. The pô was fetid and decayed and terrifying. Our Lord, taught the Englishmen, came to lead mankind out of the pô and into the light.

The Hiro contingent were like mosses, Alma realized; they might dry out and go limp in the heat, but they could be revived instantly by a good soaking.

An adage of Cicero’s came to her in its original, mighty Latin (the only language, she felt, that could stand up to the thundering groundswell of native eloquence she was right now witnessing): “Nemo umquam neque poeta neque orator fuit, qui quemquam meliorem quam se arbitraretur.” Never did there exist a poet or an orator who thought there was another better than himself.

fervid

It had been said a thousand times, by a thousand awestruck foreigners. So, yes, beauty was in no short supply here, and Alma had seen much of it—but Tomorrow Morning was the most beautiful of all. His skin was dark and burnished, his smile a slow moonrise. When he gazed upon anyone, it was an act of generosity, of luminescence. It was impossible not to stare at him. Notwithstanding his handsome countenance, his size alone commanded attention. He was truly prodigious in stature, an Achilles in the flesh.

The task of the rauti is to run alongside men as they charge into battle, and to keep up their courage by reminding them of who they are. The rauti sings out the bloodlines and the lineage of each man, reminding the warriors of the glory of their family history. He ensures that they do not forget the heroism of their forefathers. The rauti knows the lineage of every man on this island, all the way back to the gods, and he chants out their courage for them. One could say it is a kind of sermon, but a violent one.”

‘Give forth all your vigilance until their will is severed! Hang upon them like lightning! You are Arava, the son of Hoani, the grandson of Paruto, who was born of Pariti, who sprang from Tapunui, who claimed the head of the mighty Anapa, the father of eels—you are that man! Break over them like the sea!’”

Soon she could hear a dim rumbling in the distance. For a while, the noise was just a rumor, but then they came around a bend and she could see it—a waterfall about seventy feet tall, a ribbon of white foam that emptied noisily into a churning pool. The force of the falling water created gusts of wind, and the mist gave form to this wind, like ghosts made visible.

The cave was not merely mossy; it throbbed with moss. It was not merely green; it was frantically green. It was so bright in its verdure that the color nearly spoke, as though—smashing through the world of sight—it wanted to migrate into the world of sound. The moss was a thick, living pelt, transforming every rock surface into a mythical, sleeping beast. Improbably, the deepest corners of the cave glittered the brightest; they were absolutely studded, Alma realized with a gasp, with the jewellike filigree of Schistotega pennata. Goblin’s gold, dragon’s gold, elfin gold—Schistotega pennata was that rarest of cave mosses, that false gem that gleams like a cat’s eye from within the permanent twilight of geologic shade, that unearthly sparkling plant that needs but the briefest sliver of light each day to sparkle like glory forever, that brilliant trickster whose shining facets have fooled so many travelers over the centuries into believing that they have stumbled upon hidden treasure. But to Alma, this was treasure, more stunning than actual riches, for it bedecked the entire cave in the uncanny, glistering, emerald light that she had only ever before seen in miniature, in glimpses of moss seen through a microscope . . . yet now she was standing fully within it.

Here is the story that Alma wanted to tell: The natural world was a place of punishing brutality, where species large and small competed against each other in order to survive. In this struggle for existence, the strong endured; the weak were eliminated. This in itself was not an original idea. Scientists had been using the phrase “the struggle for existence” for many decades already. Thomas Malthus used it to describe the forces that shaped population explosions and collapses across history. Owen and Lyell used it as well, in their work on extinction and geology. The struggle for existence was, if anything, an obvious point. But Alma’s story had a twist. Alma hypothesized, and had come to believe, that the struggle for existence—when played out over vast periods of time—did not merely define life on earth; it had created life on earth. It had certainly created the staggering variety of life on earth. Struggle was the mechanism.

Struggle explained everything.

Alma now believed that creation was continuous everywhere, at all levels of life—even at the microscopic level, even at the human level.

Under the wrong circumstances, anything was capable of extinction. But under the right circumstances, anything was capable of transmutation. Extinction and transmutation had been occurring since the dawn of life, were still occurring now, and would continue to occur until the end of time—and if that did not constitute “continuous creation,” then Alma did not know what did.

What’s more, Alma thought, the struggle for existence also defined the inner life of a human being.

She did not need a library; she was a library.

That the distribution of land and water across the face of the earth has not always been where it is now. That, based upon the fossil record, mosses appear to have endured all geological epochs since the dawn of life. That mosses appear to have endured these diverse geological epochs through a process of adaptive change. That mosses can change their fate either by altering their location (i.e., moving to a more favorable climate), or by altering their internal structure (i.e., transmutation). That the transmutation of mosses has expressed itself over time in a nearly infinite appropriation and discarding of traits, leading to such adaptations as: increased resistance to drying, a decreased reliance upon direct sunlight, and the ability to revive after years of drought. That the rate of change within moss colonies, and the extent of that change, is so dramatic as to suggest perpetual change. That competition and the struggle for existence is the mechanism behind this state of perpetual change. That moss was almost certainly a different entity (most likely algae) before it was moss. That moss—as the world continues to transform—may itself eventually become a different entity. That whatever is true for mosses must be true for all living things. Alma’s theory felt audacious and dangerous, even to herself. She knew she was in treacherous territory—not only from a religious perspective (though this did not much concern her), but also from a scientific perspective. As she marched...

Regarding your question on the origins of human compassion and self-sacrifice? I believe that evolution explains nearly everything about us, and I certainly believe that it explains absolutely everything about the rest of the natural world. But I do not believe that evolution alone can account for our unique human consciousness. There is no evolutionary need, you see, for us to have such acute sensitivities of intellect and emotion. There is no practical need for the minds that we have. We don’t need a mind that can play chess, Miss Whittaker. We don’t need a mind that can invent religions or argue over our origins. We don’t need a mind that causes us to weep at the opera. We don’t need opera, for that matter—nor science, nor art. We don’t need ethics, morality, dignity, or sacrifice. We don’t need affection or love—certainly not to the degree that we feel it. If anything, our sensibilities can be a liability, for they can cause us to suffer distress. So I do not believe that the process of natural selection gave us these minds—even though I do believe that it did give us these bodies, and most of our abilities. Do you know why I think we have these extraordinary minds?”

“We have them because there is a supreme intelligence in the universe, which wishes for communion with us. This supreme intelligence longs to be known. It calls out to us. It draws us close to its mystery, and it grants us these remarkable minds, in order that we try to reach for it. It wants us to find it. It wants union with us, more than anything.”

do truly believe I am fortunate. I am fortunate because I have been able to spend my life in study of the world. As such, I have never felt insignificant. This life is a mystery, yes, and it is often a trial, but if one can find some facts within it, one should always do so—for knowledge is the most precious of all commodities.” When he still did not reply, Alma went on: “You see, I have never felt the need to invent a world beyond this world, for this world has always seemed large and beautiful enough for me. I have wondered why it is not large and beautiful enough for others—why they must dream up new and marvelous spheres, or long to live elsewhere, beyond this dominion . . . but that is not my business. We are all different, I suppose. All I ever wanted was to know this world.

Retta Snow used to say: “Thank heavens we have an earth, or where would we sit?”

Rest assured, dear friend, that many noteworthy and great sciences and arts have been discovered through the understanding and subtlety of women, both in cognitive speculation, demonstrated in writing, and in the arts, manifested in manual works of labor. I will give you plenty of examples. Christine de Pizan, The Book of the City of Ladies 1405