Are you a ‘moss girl’? The art of the slow surrender to nature

It started on social media (where else?) but there is something to this practice of ‘girl mossing’ that’s worth taking a look at. 

First of all, what is ‘girl mossing’? It’s a practice variously described as ‘limiting screen time, staying off social media and going outside to touch some grass; slowing down and restoring by immersing yourself in nature; snuggling into soft green moss; a philosophy of embracing rest and rejuvenation.’ 

In other words, spending time immersed in nature in a really physical way: lying on the ground, absorbing the light filtering through trees, checking out of the hectic pace of ‘normal’ life to embrace—periodically and also therapeutically—a more contemplative way of being.  

And the idea of moss—slow-growing, tenacious, ancient—is particularly appropriate to the notion of digging in and making time. Potawatomi botanist and author Robin Wall Kimmerer writes: 

Mosses, I think, are like time made visible. They create a kind of botanical forgetting. Shoot by tiny shoot, the past is obscured in green … 450 million years ago [the mosses] began a great experiment in evolution, the challenge of living on the land, an experiment of which we are all a part, a story whose ending is unwritten.  

What a beautiful thought. Everyone, could be like moss: start practising the art of a slow surrender to nature.