Gathering Moss

The story of mosses. Inspired by Robin Wall Kimmerer.

How many of nature’s secrets have we forgotten?

Generations removed from a time when we had an intimate connection with nature, how could we ever know such as the story of moss?

Some scour through notes of a time long before our own. But our written records do not go back far enough. The “history” we have, compiled by rich white men on what they observed to be important, is insufficient. Notes from anthropologists as far back as the 1800’s hardly mention mosses, aside from some notes on fire pits, weapons, construction insulation for little cracks between the logs. Further research, and it was found inside gloves and boots for warmth, even layered within a sleeping pad for added comfort. Okay, maybe that is something, but could that be it? Other, much older, languages have all kinds of words for these green backdrops. They have specific words for tree mosses, berry mosses, rock, water, and very specific mosses. In the English dictionary, we only have 1, reducing 22,000 species to a single type. What are we missing?

Mosses usually cover things, they stand strong in moist, wet banks, creating a soft layer under our feet. We find them near the spray of waterfalls, where salmon jump the river. They reveal their gifts every time it rains. Just watch as the moss swell after a thunderstorm, some absorbing up to 40x its weight in extra water.

They don’t taste good, more like bitter teddy bear stuffing. (but really, bears use it before hibernation as basically… a butt plug. They would eat a bunch then fall into their long slumber through winter).

What the upper-crust gentlemen failed to notice was the unique gift that moss provided that no other pine or grass could rival.

Then she found it, a single entry; you can almost see the blush in the brevity of the statement.

Mosses had a widespread use for diapers and sanitary napkins.

Imagine the complex relationships that lie behind that one entry. The most important uses of mosses, roles were everyday tools in the hands of women.

We are missing out on so much detail of the unglamorous but inescapable issue of diapers, and of that time every woman has every single month. And yet, what could be more fundamental to a family and well being of babies and their moms?In this time of disposable diapers and antiseptic baby wipes, it can be hard to imagine how to live without them. If I had tried to imagine carrying a baby on my back all day without benefit of diapers, I don’t like the image that comes to mind. It makes sense that our grandmothers’ grandmothers would have found an ingenious solution.

Babies were packed in cradled nests of comfy dried moss. We know certain kinds of moss can absorb way more than any diaper can. The air spaces inside the moss whisk moisture away just as it would in a forest. The acid astringency and mild antiseptic prevented diaper rash, almost a lotion onto the babies skin. All for free, easily available along the rivers as the children run in and out of the water. Nature’s pantry where you need it most.

And even more than for babies, women could have used mosses for their periods. Once a month, right on queue, that time came around. In the small communities, women celebrated their moon time, saving special baths in teh mputians to soak while their powers were at their strongest. They did not see the blood as shameful, they saw it as powerful. It was not unclean, it was a sign of the amazing things our body can do when it is time. And even when you think about how our bodies can sync up, in close proximity that women start to have their periods at same time (another way biology shows how interconnected our bodies are energetically), shows the amazing invisible energies that surround us. These women had to have had something to keep them dry. While the men would not have delved deeper into this, modern women could learn a thing or two about how to use a more natural substance, (especially inside their body) than fragrant added, chemical laden, glyphosate-soaked processed tampons and pads.

Conventional wisdom from anthropologists writes that women “on their moon” were isolated from daily life because they were unclean, but this interpretation is one of cultural assumptions of the anthropologist, and not from the indigenous women themselves.

It would be easy to imagine baskets of mosses in these tents, selected with great care by these women as skilled observers of different moss species, texture, creating an intimate connection with nature as opposed to the European boiled white rags of “civilized” missionary women.

Mosses were also used by women for food prep, when the men would bring in their fresh salmon, the mosses were a perfect fit.

So many household uses, blending in with the daily life in the hands of mostly women. No wonder we have no information to pass on, its been ignored since the moment we started being afraid of a woman’s power. Since back before the witch trials, men started to worry about a woman’s ability to make people feel better with herbs, and scared that if they can change our bodies different than God intended, that they would also be able to use powers for evil, or for poison. And from there, we emerge to a society that still holds onto these assumptions, engrained into our language, favoring the masculine energies that were able to write things down. But all is not forgotten. And we can stop from making the same mistakes by learning where our rhetoric came from, and feeling powerful in our bodies again. We can learn from nature herself, paying attention to her subtleties, and feeling connected again to the world.

The first step in regaining our connection, starts with rekindling a very beneficial relationship with the world the plants still may remember, even when we forget. They leave us the little clues to pay attention. Plants do so much for us, and our responsibility to the them is to share the gifts we learn.