Don’t You Dare Touch My Moss!

This morning, I am looking out on the foggy Portland morning. The slender leaves of the bamboo are obscured so that the plants’ elegance is in a cloud of light green. The dark green of the rhododendron, a bit peaked. The perennials in the pollinator garden bedding down for the winter.

But can we talk about moss? Like lots of other folks, I get moss taken from my roof and the driveway where it makes walking treacherous. But trees with it hanging from their branches, the bright green of it beneath the dark red Japanese maple… moss rules the early winter here. The lovely gentleman who washed off our driveway gave me an estimate for washing off the courtyard out front, as well.

Quel horreur!

Our patio/courtyard is a little half-circle set into a perennial garden. The roses, peonies, lavender, ornamental grasses, and lilac make me so happy. And in the middle of it all is a pink dogwood whose leaves turned bright red this fall. Its limbs, of course are covered with moss. The mortar between the flagstones looks like a watershed map — bright-green rivers against the land-gray. It’s beautiful, and the moss will stay all through the wet winter, and only sort of return when it gets hot and dry. (But then, my spouse will water it when the flowers get thirsty.)

So no power washing the courtyard, please.

Friends from Arizona came this weekend, and they were amazed to see the kinds of moss everywhere. The ones with their big, flower-shaped bracts. The ones that are an astroturf green but SO much softer. The ones that look like lichen’s cousins. So many. Bumpier ones. Smoother ones. Soft, springy ones and ones that get into cracks too small for any leaf to unfurl.

They call Seattle the Emerald City after their wintry greenery and tremendous moss. And I wouldn’t change our designation as Rose City for anything (I mean, tumbling roses along the freeway all summer long?!), but I do marvel at the green of winter here.

The Moral of the Story?

So what do I want to say about moss? What is the metaphor or the meaning-making here? What is the moral of the story?

I’m not sure. I mean, there are things to say about where and how we grow. How our differences on the surface can mask the communication that is possible among us, even when it’s really hard. About the amazing, life-giving power of water and the beauty of the rain. About the lushness of a landscape that feeds my soul.

And maybe that’s it.

Maybe it’s about different landscapes for different hearts. The winter dark is darker here then where I grew up–day and night the lights of the sky are often obscured. The landscape more mountainous. The summer drier. The fall not quite as brilliant, though brighter than my other PNW forest friends.

But this place, this zone between the miles and miles of California poppies and the rainforest conifers of the Olympic peninsula… over time it has put its broad roots into me. I, devoted child of the ridges and valleys of central Pennsylvania, find myself somehow at home for the second time. West of the Cascades and east of the sea. Home.

What is home for you? Where is home for you? Who is home for you?

PS — Please, if you haven’t yet, check out the Going into the Dark event for December 14th. It’s going to be a beautiful day together.