….The green mosses, being so many, are as good as brawny. 

How important it is to walk along, not in haste but slowly, 
looking at everything and calling out 
Yes! No!

….Imagination is better
than a sharp instrument. To pay attention, this is our endless 
and proper work.

~Mary Oliver

I am a peatland ecologist: I love mosses, soggy soils, shrikes, lichen, cranberries – words like ombrotrophic, Bryophyta, capitulum, Sphagnum, serotinous, hummock, hollow, Picea, Pleurozium, and permafrost ring in my head. Field work is restorative and logistics difficult. Our group looks to these deceptively complex systems to tell us about how the abiotic and biotic interact and change as climate, fire regimes, and elemental inputs vary.