A Naif in the Forest by Darrell Berger

Wing Tips to Hiking Boots: Musings of a New, Full-Time Poconos Resident

During this very wet summer there was more moss than ever in our back yard and the surrounding forest, especially the kind that looks like a tiny pine forest. I think this is one of a number of mosses that are called pincushion moss.

I first saw them as a little boy in the swampy forests near Lake Erie. It was like the moss was a pine forest and I was a giant or in an airplane or something. Only an anthill could give me that same feeling of “I am so great and you are so small.” What size deer and bears would live in that tiny moss forest?

It was not until I was 18, in my first airplane flying between Cleveland and New York, that I saw pine forests that looked like pincushion moss. I was right. Pincushion moss really looks like a tiny pine forest. A pine forest, from the window of a plane, really looks like moss.

Pincushion moss is the home of countless invertebrates, the equivalent, I suppose, of tiny deer, bear or even people. Occasionally one might find an Eastern Red-backed Salamander hiding in a patch of this moss. To those invertebrates, a salamander wandering through moss might seem like Godzilla terrorizing Tokyo.

There is a concept in medieval philosophy, “As above; so below.” It means that the largest and the smallest creatures, plants and natural formations conform to a greater pattern of unity. The forest and the moss, the mountain and the anthill, conform to one another, require each other.

Where do I fit in? Looking at the moss, I feel very large. Looking at the pine forest from an airplane, I feel very small. It seems like I am in the middle of everything, the focus of everything. Yet, as I grow older, it seems that “I” am not really there at all. All that is, is the moss and the pines, and the consciousness that answers to my name.