Confessions of a Moss Widow
Last night’s session with Johnny Turner was a joy, filled with his love of mosses, of mossy words, and his time spent out of doors communing with these tiny plants. Someone asked if all bryologists do happy dances when they make a special find in the field, and Johnny confirmed that yes, most of them do. The thought of these men and women across the country, perhaps the world, privately happy-dancing with tiny green plants is so lovely. There were smiles and hearts galore from the group. Johnny talked about his own personal form of neurodiversity that takes the form of listing, collecting, and the earworms of moss names which stick in his head – and he read out his wonderful poem, ‘Mossing on the Moors with Undiagnosed Tourettes’ from The Book of Bogs. If you weren’t able to make it and would like to catch up, please get in touch. If you are a paying subscriber you should have received the recording for free. If you aren’t, you can buy it for £5 – just get in touch.
Those present might have thought I was fairly quiet in the session. Clare took the lead and asked most of the questions, chatting with Johnny about mosses and their friendship. Well I have a confession to make. Johnny and I have been married for thirty-six years. When you know someone so well, and have lived with their moss obsession for most of those years, it’s hard to know where to start.
Do I start with the fact that Johnny’s obsession is not only an outside thing, but also fills our house? When he collects moss samples he puts them into little homemade paper envelopes, and they get everywhere. There are shoeboxes full of them, but they escape the boxes and can be found anywhere. Sometimes when he hasn’t got paper with him, he makes packets from receipts or other scrap paper. It’s never OK to throw things like this away – always check to see if there is a bit of moss folded inside. The moss doesn’t stay in the packets either. Strands can be found in shoes, in cupboards, in the washing up – and always check pockets before clothes go in the wash.
That’s the moss itself, but the names too are part of our family life. He spoke last night about the way the words repeat over and over inside his head, but they don’t stay in his head. They become a part of daily conversation and can be used as greetings, as exclamations and even as songs - lullabies to sing small children to sleep - or maybe something to say when the right words aren’t easily found. Our children all knew the names of mosses as soon as they could speak. If you asked them now, as adults, they’d be able to reel off a string of them. They might even be able to identify a couple.
Then there’s the worry. When Johnny is on a moss hunt he’s very focussed. He follows a trail from one plant to the next without any real thought about where he might end up or what is around him other than plants. He’s come home with stories of finding himself half way up a cliff face with no idea how he got there, or how to get back down, or in the middle of a schwingmoor, a floating peat raft where the moss grows over deep water, or being chased across mountains by an angry bull. These places often have no signal, and even if they had I’ve lost count of the number of phones that Johnny has lost in the bog - they will be interesting finds for future archaeologists. Time moves differently when he’s on the trail of moss as well, he thinks he’s been two hours when he’s been six. So it’s a case of waiting. Will he come home? Is he safe? Is he alive? Luckily the answer has always been yes.
When our third child was due Johnny was in the Brecon Beacons conducting a bryological survey. At various point during the day, he broke off from his work and climbed the mountain until he got a signal and could phone me. Was everything OK? Had I gone into labour yet? Could he send me a photo to check the colour of a stem? Our son considerately waited until Johnny was home again before making an appearance.
When planning family holidays the proximity of bogs or other mossy sites is always a consideration. Sometimes he goes off mossing for a day on his own. Sometimes I go too and take a book so I can sit and read while he mosses. It’s a very slow process though, and you can get hypothermia waiting. Usually it’s best if he mosses on his own, and these days often I’ll go off for a long walk while he spends the whole time in one small area of bog or woodland. Even when a place has no obvious moss interest Johnny will find some though, and he has led moss walks in town centres and other unlikely places. He has stories of outings with other bryologists where they’ve never got out of the carpark.
This is all to say that moss is part of my life, because it’s part of who Johnny is. Sometimes literally, when pieces of moss get caught in his hair and his clothes. (Luckily it’s never grown on him – though he did know someone who had moss growing in his ears!) Bogs have always been part of my life because they are his natural habitat. When we first met I knew more about plants than he did, and I guess his developing relationship with them are part of what has made us who we are. Who knows where we’d have been without moss, but it wouldn’t be here.
In thirty six years there have obviously been some arguments and fallings out. This is a poem that I wrote early on in Johnny’s moss life, the day after we’d had a big row. It probably still says something about the places where we connect and the parts of each other we don’t understand and need to look at through the right lens.
You times twenty
After the night
of tears and thunder
we went into the woods
and sunlight came in
between the leaves
and broke the shadows
into small pieces.
Soaked-in rain
rose up from the ground
in warm mist,
and the sun touched us
damply, unsure
you gave me your hand lens
by a mossy tree
and I looked up close
my eyelashes crushed by its metal rim
my nose touching tree bark
smelling its tiny life
made large.
On bark cliff faces,
dripping dark where the sun can’t enter,
unfathomable life hides
itself from view,
unsuspected
all the times I’d walked by
in bluebells and birdsong.