a love letter to moss

Dear Olympic Peninsula moss,

You are tiny forests of your own, grasped tightly to larger forests of alder, spruce, and cedar trunks. I stop to admire your arboreal planets:

tiny fernlike leaves, surely fractals

branching, branching, branching into ever smaller perfect replicas

living snowflakes of the brightest spring green hue imaginable

(I remember reading that green is the color most easily seen by the human eye)

pushing out of dense, solid, fluffy undergrowth and adorning all surfaces

rock, pebble, boulder, bench, branch, trunk, earth, grass, prairie, forest, lawn

Here beside a tiny creek that flows into the rushing Bogachiel River and on into the Pacific Ocean, you are more sparse than deep in the spruce forests below.  Why?  Perhaps because there is less shade where these tall, skinny alders, as of yet unleaved in the early Spring, expose you to the open sky.  Because you do not transport water up a root and stem like most plants, instead absorbing moisture and nutrients from the atmosphere through your leaflets, you are prone to drying out and must be protected from the sun.  Just down the path, though, you blanket ancient trees, both fallen and standing tall, alive and towering hundreds of feet in the air. 

I am drawn, perhaps in some primal way, to the magnificence of your tiny, delicate perfection as you carpet your world in soft, verdant splendor.

Love,

Me