Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural History of Mosses
Written by Robin Wall Kimmerer
Narrated by Robin Wall Kimmerer
4.5/5
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About this audiobook
Robin Wall Kimmerer's book is not an identification guide, nor is it a scientific treatise. Rather, it is a series of linked personal essays that will lead general readers and scientists alike to an understanding of how mosses live and how their lives are intertwined with the lives of countless other beings, from salmon and hummingbirds to redwoods and rednecks. Kimmerer clearly and artfully explains the biology of mosses, while at the same time reflecting on what these fascinating organisms have to teach us.
Drawing on her diverse experiences as a scientist, mother, teacher, and writer of Native American heritage, Kimmerer explains the stories of mosses in scientific terms as well as in the framework of indigenous ways of knowing. In her book, the natural history and cultural relationships of mosses become a powerful metaphor for ways of living in the world.
Robin Wall Kimmerer
Robin Wall Kimmerer is a mother, scientist, decorated professor, and enrolled member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation. Her first book, Gathering Moss, was awarded the John Burroughs Medal for outstanding nature writing. Her writings have appeared in Orion, Whole Terrain, and numerous scientific journals. She lives in Syracuse, New York, where she is a SUNY Distinguished Teaching Professor of Environmental Biology and the founder and director of the Center for Native Peoples and the Environment.
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Reviews for Gathering Moss
347 ratings33 reviews
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Gorgeously written and beautifully read! One of my all time favorite books!
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A beautiful book. A bit technical in places, which is the whole point, but this slowed me down. On the whole changed my thinking.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5O carte minunată, o călătorie în lumea mușchilor, a pădurii, a stâncilor. Nu doar știință, ci și o meditație asupra locului pe care orice ființă îl ocupă în rețeaua vieții.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5A fascinating narrative of a type of plant often overlooked. I learned to look at mosses with a new appreciation. Written in a manner that engages the reader in a scientific exploration.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Amazing, her voice is so calming. Her writing is poetic, but her soothing voice could say most anything and it wouldn’t matter. Love her books
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Beautiful delineation of the relationship between moss and culture, both human and non human
- Rating: 1 out of 5 stars1/5I was so excited to read this book but I just couldn’t get through it. The whispery, overly slow and deeply dramatic narration made me anxious. I was able to speed it up but that didn’t fix the too fluttery hard to hear narration. I simply couldn’t get past it.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Not my usual read bit definitely enjoyed the teachings provided. How to respect our Mother Earth.
I cried at the insensitivity of the wealthy landowner who had no concept of how to respect Mother Earth in trying to recreate it.
Definitely made me take a look at how I treat the land around me - Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5A sweet little book to listen to casually. Really made me appreciate mosses more, as well as the work of biologists!
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Love our work thank you for this beautiful fresh perspective
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5This is a must-read for anyone who loves this planet.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Robin Wall Kimmerer's writing is truly beautiful - lyrical, poetic, deeply feeling, yet brilliantly clear. This book (and her other book, Braiding Sweetgrass) would have been a joy even if I didn't already have an interest in their subjects. The fact that I learned a ton about the nature and workings of mosses, something I could previously only appreciate aesthetically, is a bonus.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5What a joy to once again discover the words and voice of Robin Wall Kimmerer after my first encounter with her Braiding Sweet Grass. Her gentle and poetic, yet insistent, unfurling of the significance and beauty of mosses is breathtaking.Her enchanting stories of how the lives of each of these unique, diminutive characters are interwoven with those of other mosses, trees, tiny animals, and humans, especially her own, made me acutely aware of our responsibility to notice, cherish, and learn from the natural world that provides us with life itself.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5kimmerer is always a delight. this book left me crouching in the grass to look at moss and paying just a bit closer attention to the whole world around me, just as braiding sweetgrass did. i highly recommend this book!!
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5Not for me.
It seems others like this book but I could only listen for a few hours.
I was hoping to learn a lot about mosses and certainly the author does share some details but I felt like she was trying to write moving stories and for goodness sake, I think she mentions everyone in her family.
She also narrated the audio version and her style is way too “story time at the library” for me. - Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5I’ve always loved moss though I had no idea of the intricate ways it weaves itself into the world. Mesmerizing, informative and inspiring, this tribute to the fuzziness of the forest includes gentle reminders towards consideration of our relationship with the Earth and its generously abundant splendour. I imagine nearly anyone could enjoy this delightful read.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Perhaps even more moving than Braiding Sweetgrass. Kimmerer is also the most skilled and soothing narrator of any audiobook I've listened to.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5An incredible book for anyone who loves nature. I can't walk through a forest without noticing all the moss in all it's beauty now :D The part with the rich mystery employer broke my heart though
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5A total delight, wonderful storytelling, listening to this book (narrated by Kimmerer) made me feel like I was somehow completely immersed in moss.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5why not in Spanish too? o para cuando? realmente me encantaria disfrutarlo en mi idioma nativo y en papel
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Exquisite, informative, and beautifully written. She answers how mosses are part of the world and how we can be witness to theirs in many anecdotal tales from her life.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5She loves the natural world and it shows! What a joy to listen as she spins the tales of the places she visits and the mosses she loves. I'm so pleased that it was narrated by the author. Her voice, as soft as some of her subjects, exudes the love and awe she feels.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Every bit as good as everyone says. Weaves the Western scientific knowledge of mosses with the Indigenous ways of knowing into a rich tapestry. A lovely balance of new facts to digest and an enjoyable narrative to frame them for easy consumption. I enjoyed following along on the field experiments and the trial-and-error approaches to learning more about these species. Some moments were funny (Splachnum, the moss found only in bogs, on white-tailed deer droppings, which have lain on the peat for four weeks, in July), some were infuriating (the Owner!), and others transcendant.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I've always been fascinated with micro-environments, perhaps as far back as when Brainiac shrank the city of Kandor on Krypton and Superman put it in a bottle. I see a lot of Moss when I hike, but I only know a few basic things about it. This book is a fine simple introduction to bryology. The author is a bryologist, a Native American and a great writer. The chapters discuss some aspect of moss ecology, physiology or reproduction and tie this to a story about the author's family, neighbors or tribe. A thread of respect for the environment runs through it all. The book won the John Burroughs Medal for Natural History Writing and I recommend it to any natural historian.
(Of some interest, I noted in my review of "The Life of a Leaf" that the author stated that the velocity of a viscous fluid is 0 at the luminal surface and that's why you can't just rinse off dirty dishes; Dr. Kimmerer essentially discusses the same thing in chapter 3 about the "boundary layer" - the place where mosses live.) - Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5She gets it
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5An absolutely delightful meditation on mosses and how to know them.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5I received this for Christmas and immediately dove into reading it. It's one of those books I like to savor -- As a collection of essays, I would read an essay or two at a time, then set it aside for a bit. It's really beautiful nature writing that made me long to summer at biological research stations -- but I'm sure that also has something to do with being stuck mostly inside for a year.A deft weaving of the biological, personal, and cultural. Also, I will never look at mosses the same.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5A little gem about moss. Yes. Moss. If you enjoy the occasional encounter with a scientific piece, which reads like poetry, you will love this book. I listened to the audio edition, and the reader was marvelous. I love thinking of moss on a rock as the jointvrepresentation of past and present coexisting.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5A moss carpet is a microcosm of a rain forest. Its study requires an in-depth seeing. The First Peoples Americas saw.In indigenous ways of knowing, we say that a thing cannot be understood until it is known by all four aspects of our being: mind, body, emotion, and spirit. The scientific way of knowing relies only on empirical information from the world, gathered by body and interpreted by mind.... These essays intentionally give voice to both ways of knowing, letting matter and spirit walk companionably side by side. And sometimes even dance. p vii.""A Cheyenne elder of my acquaintance once told me that the best way to find something is not to go looking for it...watch out of the corner of your eye, open to possibility, and what you seek will be revealed. p.9Read of the Water Drum of the Anishinabe people and see its counterpart in nature as a Sphagnum bog. p 111
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5I loved this book. Rachel Wall Kimmerer’s Gathering Moss is the best sort of nature writing, reminiscent of Rachel Carson’s Under the Sea-Wind in its lyricism, style and scientific precision. Different, however, not only in its subject matter and its site specificity (her inch by inch investigation of moss habitat niches) but also in that the author writes herself into the narrative. I’d even say that she engages in reverse anthropomorphism at times, so that aspects of the biology and behavior of mosses become metaphors for human behavior and culture. Only very occasionally, however, does Kimmerer overwrite the human story to the point that it detracts from that of the mosses she studies so carefully and which she knows so well. These are very minor criticisms. The author’s situating of mosses at the conjuncture of biology and culture is illuminating and I found her book a real joy to read. I learned something fascinating about mosses (the study of which is called bryology) on almost every page; for example, one gram of moss would harbor 150,000 protozoa, 132,000 tardigrades, 3,000 springtails, 800 rotifers, 500 nematodes, 400 mites, and 200 fly larvae; and there is more living carbon in sphagnum moss than in any other single genus on the planet. In the course of reading the book, I was introduced to an evocative new vocabulary: julaceous, turbulent zone, poikilohydric, Berlese funnel, rotifer or “wheel animacule,” sessile, reproductive effort, microburst, gap dynamics, aerial plankton, esker, “stemflow” and “throughfall.” I also found a scientist’s description of her work methods especially interesting; how she decides upon, sets up and carries through on a study of a particular moss specie’s biology or behavior, how she proceeds through a combination of educated hypothesizing, close observation, hunches and serendipity.
Here in Northern California, despite a very wet spring, we are entering the dry season, so the local mosses have already become quite desiccated; but a close examination of heretofore unnoticed moss lining the cracks in my patio reveals a thicket of delicate brownish- pink sporophytes waving above the crinkly mat of dried moss. Robin Wall Kimmerer has shown me how to pay attention to every inhabited surface in my surroundings.