By no means empty

A creative collaboration: Kissing the Earth

Flat-topped bog-moss (Sphagnum fallax)

Greetings from the moss. Writing has come to feel like an essential part of my creative process, something that as a visual artist I had not foreseen, but the two are proving to be good travelling companions. This week’s post is a creative collaboration and an encouragement to spend time in nature - wherever you are and however short the experience is, it has the potential to transform your day.

In Fringe Benefits I shared a link to

Satya Robyn

’s encouragement to write small, and polish. Since then we’ve each subscribed to the other’s publication, and so I was especially pleased to receive an invitation from Satya to contribute a guest post to her month-long project 'Kissing the Earth'. Each day during June, Satya will share a poem about nature, a short reflection and a post from another writer. As I like to create work for myself I thought that I would write a new one, especially as the title feels a good fit for my current exploration of the moss. This week you are invited to read it.

Invitation to Kiss the Earth

Last year’s flowers on ling (Calluna vulgaris)

Kissing the Earth

There are some places where the earth seems to have lips, and kisses - sucks - back. One of these is a close neighbour and while it isn’t somewhere you would be inclined to pucker up to, it is worth bringing your face down close to the ground. Throw in a macro lens and you become intimate with a largely unseen yet magical world: the camera is your rabbit-hole to Wonderland, your wardrobe to enter Narnia. Perhaps I should explain…

I live in a broad valley at the eastern edge of the Grampian Hills in Northeast Scotland. It is a landscape of deposition that became a small book of words laid down: A New Topography. The terrain is the result of fluvio-glacial deposits; to the eye the contours remain fluid, rolling around a lowland raised bog - the moss. The word mos(s) is old Scots language and can be part of a place name as well as referring to a marsh, bog, or tract of soft wet ground. Over time we have scored this moss with ditches, eaten into its edges for fuel, worked gravel and tipped waste, and still discharge filtered effluent into it. What did it ever do to us? Nothing, and perhaps that is the problem - we expect land to be productive, a resource, to submit to and serve us.

For two years I circled the moss before curiosity pulled me in and I began to follow the deer ever deeper. I’ve learned that during winter it comes into its own; there is a beauty to be found even in decay. My entrée: the sinuous old bleached leaves of asphodel that drape each tussock and dip evoking the water that underpins everything. The season of frost and ice brought colour forward: fountains of orange red bog cotton; atolls and islands of pink and red Sphagnum.

Acute-leaved bog-moss (Sphagnum capillifolium)

With rain, the accumulated organics are cut by the hooves of roe and red deer: more wounds. The moss responds, a first flush of spring green below the fringing trees which inspired The Greening. Expanding flows of Sphagnum fallax fill watery hollows. Lichens swell and shrivel, a barometer of precipitation; every surface is tagged with their signature. Up close fallen logs and old stumps resemble forests in miniature with a diversity to rival the richest biome.

Recent warm weather accelerated the flush but has begun to dry the moss, the ground alternately thirsty and crisp, wet and soft. This week has seen a sudden sharpness of green as the asphodel blade up, and the legacy of a wet winter is an abundance of white pom-poms - Hare’s tail cotton-grass.

Hare’s tail cotton-grass (Eriophorum vaginatum)

All of this and more lies largely overlooked. I’ve been bending down, paying attention, noticing, and while I have not been kissing the earth, it has entered into me. I’m looking forward to following the moss through the year and sharing what I find in word and image as I feel my way through and towards new forms of creative expression and output: deposits built up over time.

If I reflect on the tapestry at my feet it is a dense weave, a place as much of water as it is land. A landscape of complexity, of sedimentation, both dead and alive. What stories and past lives are buried here, suspended in liquid?  The old maps say little other than to record man’s measurements, lines and ways; the diversity denied, the ground annotated marsh or left blank. An empty place, not valued; there is a lesson here. It’s easy to think that we know this earth, but this is an illusion. The worlds of the moss are a reminder to be humble in our assumptions, to tread lightly. With progress we have grown distant from nature, neglect our duty to care for land and water and air and those we share it with - or even to just leave them be.

After reading, I hope you will be curious enough to look closely wherever you are and recognise that each place however unpreposessing has value. Hug a tree; dip your hand in the water. Sit quietly and listen to the symphony of sounds; breathe in the air; close your eyes, feel the warmth of the sun, the breeze on your skin. Be more than a visual being: be part of nature, put down roots and come to value your place.

A community for the curious

Thank you to all of you who visit the moss with me each week. If you’re new to FLOW - hello! - and curious to read ‘more moss’ I’ve grouped relevant posts here. As I finish this letter, the dry spell has ended and I can again hear the moss sighing.

Your reactions last week were truly moving; I deeply appreciate each comment.

One way to support my writing if you enjoy it is to forward this email to a friend - gift them a visual poem, a moment of calm.

Until next week,

Regulars will know that I like to include something right at the end, just to see who reads this far 😉

Fountains of common cotton-grass (Eriophorum angustifolium)

All words and images copyright © Michela Griffith except where otherwise noted