Moss in Winter

by Neil Moylan, Diamond Approach student in the Emerald Mountain group

Moss is more widespread than we know. It thrives in undisturbed places, the margins of our life.

It is viewed by botanists as an ancient, primitive, enduring form of life—the first plant out of the sea. It may be unwelcome where single-minded homeowners expect grass. For hikers it may be a familiar friend or a way to sidestep mud. For gardeners, a touch of the Orient or a soil amendment. Even our language has given us “mossy” to denote moribund, archaic, passé. And so it goes.  

No wonder then that few human beings pause in contemplation of the being of moss. So moss remains to be seen, holding out in a sense for a certain kind of attention. And if at last we do attend, it may astonish—as sometimes happens when we discover what is overlooked.

Some of those discoveries arise through serendipity, or finding without seeking. An off-season urge, perhaps an inner guidance, brings you to a woodland stream where moss takes many forms. It is pervasive here for love of the dampness. And now, in early winter, there is something that will not be denied. The air cools. Greenness vanishes from the trees, migrating earthward to live distilled among the mosses.

An hour spent here, if only for the mix of moss and sun on the bark of an old tree, might atone for years of anxious pilgrimage. We arrive it seems with a primal ache, and the nature of moss is to slow us down as it enlivens us. Linger awhile and there unfolds such a spirit of place as would bring up tears of gratitude for the gift of sight. Here is the very rebirth of seeing: bright silvery greens, ambivalent blue greens, a deep song-of-the-earth green that in your innocence you might fall into and be.

An anxious world has little time for this. But here in what is deemed the margin of life, even in December, a still small voice whispers, “You might be anywhere, but this is where you are. You’ve come for this, and now come closer.”

Yield to the scale of its presence and this minute realm stretches far and away. Small is as large as large is small, but only by your leave. Within a mere stone’s throw you may find broad fields, deep valleys, dizzying chasms, eerie grottoes. Wherever you go, wherever you are, there is a light that plays. This light is presence and in it neither surface nor depth pertains, neither center nor periphery. Indeed, every point is the point of it all and the heart’s truth is just this. There are steep mossy banks of the most tender aspect, all newly dusted with frost. There are arrays of lichen which, in league with the mosses, form a living adornment for rocks and sleeping trees. There are mosses that stand perhaps an inch or two, lovely in their smallness, but hinting of forest primeval. And all this lives . . .

And all this lives in abiding stillness from which is heard, now and again, the laughter of water.

What is here is infinitely freer and easier than fine words could say. Any effort of mind to own this place would trade the very essence for a sleep-walk. So go easy, tread lightly. To be true to this is to be curious and playful and vulnerable. Even then, so much is seen as from the corner of the eye. Blink and it’s gone. Ever inviting the eye, the mind and the heart is measureless mystery, the stillness that abides. It is not moss. It is at once something and nothing, without labels or limits of any sort. It is not moss, but it is.

Whatever comes to rest on it seems to be resting on the highest of high altars. A leaf, a twig, a wing, an acorn—all trivia to one’s workaday mind. Yet in this place they are each a seal of the most precious. They are radiant proofs of an artistry that no ingenuity of thought could conceive. This art is itself the artist. And oh, how moss holds it out to you, calls you so lovingly to see . . .