I live in Washington state near the Canadian border, which means near the 49th parallel, which means as far north as northern Maine, which means only eight hours of daylight in the darkest depths of winter.
Which brings us to January. Washingtonians survive seasonal depression by escaping south, by enjoying the Seahawks in the years they make the playoffs (Cornerback Richard Sherman may briefly be the most notorious local since the Barefoot Bandit, Amanda Knox, and the Green River Killer) or by getting into moss.
It’s always green on the west side of the Evergreen State, but it’s weirdly, wonderfully, electric green in midwinter. Neon green. Leprechaun green. That’s when the leaves are down, moss and ferns are fat and happy with copious rainfall, and the smallest rivulets run full. Moss bloats. Explodes. Colonizes. Smothers. Moss is wonderfully intricate and varied, when you bend down to appreciate it. Feather moss looks like tiny feathers.
I realize that as an author, moss love does not make me as intriguing a literary celebrity as Hemingway’s alcohol, Mailer’s boxing, or Kesey’s acid trips. I don’t pick moss, and I don’t study it. I just like it, so long as it’s not on my roof. I’m not boring enough to watch paint dry, but I am amused watching moss grow.
You can imagine what a party guy I am.
One of the best places to enjoy moss (besides everywhere, hereabouts) is Rockport State Park, a bit more than an hour east of my home, and right on the North Cascades Highway. The park is a rare surviving remnant of low elevation, uncut, old growth forest. It apparently escaped the saw because the millions of other trees in the Skagit Valley were deemed more valuable. If this was the worst of the valley bottom, one is staggered to contemplate by what was logged and carried off.
Too late now.
The Rockport trees are not particularly ancient, the biggest ranging about 250 to 350 years old. Douglas fir can reach, at an extreme, a thousand years. But two or three centuries is enough for a gloriously vertical emerald Oz of trees more than two hundred feet high, the first branches of the conifers often eighty to a hundred feet off the ground. Maple soars almost as high in competitive frenzy, and dead snags are home to birds, insects, and flying squirrels.
Rockport was named for rocks at a nearby canoe and steamboat “port” on the banks of the Skagit River. The river hamlet gets about 76 inches of precipitation a year, double the west-side average and three to four times what is received at my house, which is on the edge of the rain shadow cast by the Olympic Mountains. The State Park entrance up the hill is about 350 feet in elevation.
Circumstances have taken me up to the park a couple times in the past month, and I’m returning Saturday, Jan. 25, at the invitation of park rangers. Because of my natural history books like “The Final Forest” and “Natural Grace,” I’ll hang out for guided walks in conjunction with the annual Bald Eagle Festival. Skagit County gets a lot of winter eagles eating salmon, and they provide another excuse to get outside in January.
Salmon. Moss. Rain. Eagles. Hypothermia. It doesn’t get better than that.
Rockport’s campground was closed after a 2007 windstorm felled hundreds of its trees, raising safety issues. Park budgets grew tight. As a result, the park is lightly visited.
But its trails are easy and enchanting, one loop is wheelchair accessible, and its vegetation is Seahawk-athletic in its vigor. There’s so much greenery in summer that it covers itself up (kind of a Zen thing) so it’s winter when you can truly gauge the forest, get a sense of its complexity, and peek at the snow of Sauk beyond.
I’m excited by the success of the Seahawks. But I’m also excited by the nobility of moss. It’s quiet – way quieter than Congress or Century Link Field. It has an ancient lineage, predating the dinosaurs and still doing well, thank you very much. It doesn’t require much beyond the tiny dust motes that nutrient raindrops form around, feeding itself mostly from the sky. It doesn’t have to be mowed, isn’t eaten, and makes room for pretty much anything that wants to grow faster. Amiable. Steady. Nurturing. Soft. Kind of like a pet without fleas.
Drop by to battle January depression. Or wander out your own back door; chances are you’ll find some. Winter is when moss says hello.
