Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural History of Mosses

Exquisite. Sublime. My initial reaction (“Moss? A book about moss?”) was mercifully brief: I sensed that this was a work of love – so I dove into it that same day, and indeed it is. A work of love and beauty and grace. Kimmerer lovingly and knowledgeably writes not just about mosses but about so much in life that's in plain sight yet we never see. She writes of balances, ecosystems, interweavings; and, necessarily, of destruction we're not even aware of. Her language is delicate yet captivating. This is a rare jewel of a book.

‘My first conscious memory of “science” (or was it religion?) comes from my kindergarten class....We all ran to press our noses to the frosty windows when the first intoxicating flakes of snow began to fall. Miss Hopkins was too wise a teacher to try and hold back the excitement of five-year-olds on the occasion of the first snow, and out we went. In boots and mittens, we gathered around her in the soft swirl of white. From the deep pocket of her coat she took a magnifying glass. I'll never forget my first look at snowflakes through that lens...Magnified tenfold, the complexity and detail of a single snowflake took me completely by surprise....For the first time, but not the last, I had the sense that there was more to the world than met the eye.”

And so begins this poetical meditation on moss, a memoir of a sort, the story of one woman, a person with a strong Native American background, and her venture into the world of moss.

I never expected to like this book. I certainly did not expect to fall in love with moss.

In the beginning I found myself a bit bogged down by details of specific varieties of moss and it got a little tough to chew through. But Kimmerer has a knack for letting those sections go on just long enough to challenge, without letting them become overwhelming and dense like an academic text. The anecdotes and stories interspersed with her knowledge and love of these little oft-ignored plants creates an enthralling picture of the interconnectedness of life on earth, and the beauty we often take for granted in little details.