"Gathering Moss" - a gift of many meanings for moss enthusiasts

The book, Gathering Moss, by Dr. Robin Kimmerer, is one of the most engaging, enchanting and educational books a moss lover or moss novice can read.  This is a book I did not want to end.  It made me feel I was learning some of the most technical details about mosses while being taken on journeys through enchanted woods, into sphagnum bogs, up to abandoned mining sites, down rivers, and into vasts forests.

Dr. Kimmerer received the John Burroughs Medal Award for this book, which was her first.  In it, she incorporates her experience as a plant ecologist and her understanding of traditional knowledge about nature.  She weaves botanical terms, lessons and delicate technical drawings of mosses into stories about her life, studies, work and passions.  She describes how mosses grow, reproduce and go dormant, all with a simple elegance that only mosses possess and in a writer's voice that is gentle and enthusiastic.

After reading the book I believed mosses could somehow save the world.  I doubt most readers will end the book with this belief, but they will end feeling enlightened and enriched...and ready to head to the woods.

Gathering Moss is an enthusiast favorite.  So is Dr. Kimmerer.