Until the Moss Spreads
The Blizzard Subsides
May 25, 2020. The state of emergency has been lifted for Tokyo and Kanagawa Prefecture. So what happens now? I’m happy, sure, but frankly, I don’t really feel like going out either. We’ll see how it goes.
The feeling of staying indoors reminds me of when I was living in Vermont, the U.S., in the winter when we’d have blizzards and deep freezes that would last for weeks. The village where I was living was in the northern part of the state, just a 45-minute drive from the border with Canada. More than half the year was winter, or at least it felt like that. Just this year they had snow on the ground in the middle of May! It can reach 20 below (Celsius) in January, and the lake freezes so thick you can drive a truck across it. If you step outside, your nose hairs and eyebrows freeze. It’s cold.
When you hear a blizzard is coming in, everyone takes a trip to the general store (there’s only one in town) and stocks up for a different kind of quarantine. All you can do is stay indoors and wait.
Unfortunately, the snowplows come in a day or two, but until they do, we all have an excuse to give up, stay home, sleep in. It’s the same kind of guiltless rest we’ve had during the quarantine…it’s just over a lot sooner.
Kamakura Stone & Moss
Quarantine’s given me an excuse to stay close to home and finally do some things around the house I’ve been putting off, and some things about me I’ve been ignoring, and it’s given me a chance to pay a little more attention to the shifting season outside. I’ve spent a lot more time than I usually do watching inchworms inch along, listening to birdsong, and stopping along my walks to check out particularly good patches of moss. I feel a little like a kid again.
It’s the moss that makes me take out my phone on my daily walk and snap pictures. Especially on the day after a rain, the green of the morning moss is especially beautiful.
According to Mr. Sumihiro Sonoda, who runs the moss-specialty shop “Kokemusubi” here in Kamakura, unlike other plants, moss doesn’t get its water via roots from the ground but instead absorbs water and nutrients through its entire surface. That’s what makes moss look so fluffy and happy after getting drenched in a shower. In the rainy season, Kamakura might be most famous for its hydrangeas, but this is also peak moss time. I like both, and with mountains surrounding its humid valleys, Kamakura is the perfect environment for these water-loving plants.
One of my favorite mosses is the moss that grows on Kamakura Stone. Kamakura Stone was used for the foundations and stairs of old temples in town, and the moss that loves the diagonal marks left in the stone face by the quarrying process has become part of the temple’s ambiance. You can see Kamakura Stone used to support the fence around the Former Residence of Marquis Kacho I talked about, too. While I love the moss that covers the ground like a beautiful green velvet carpet, the moss that grows in these scratches on the stone has a special place in my heart.
Moss and “Sabi”
Kamakura Stone is well known for being soft and resistant to fire. While this makes it easy to carve, it also erodes quickly. Its ability to absorb large amounts of water makes it particularly suitable for moss. While this might make it seem like not an ideal choice for construction, the worn-away stones add to the “sabi” — the patina that comes with age — of Kamakura’s many Zen temples. In Japan’s Heian Period (9th-13th Century A.D.) the nobility were obsessed with the beauty of cherry blossoms and foliage, but when the military classes took over in Kamakura, they gravitated toward Zen, and the tea ceremony, finding beauty not in gorgeous colors, but simplicity. It was here that the Japanese aesthetic of “wabi-sabi” was born. I think my love of moss comes from this appreciation of that slow beauty that comes with time.
There was a trail we only called the “Mossy Trail” behind the house where I lived in Vermont. I always felt a little like I was home in Japan when I walked there.
Kamakura Stone is no longer quarried in order to protect Kamakura’s natural beauty, but you can still find the old quarries here and there in the hills. I found one just a little way down the path from my usual walking route. That’s another thing I like about this town — history within walking distance from home. I’ve appreciated it even more during the quarantine.
Japan’s Moss
Moss even has a starring role in Japan’s national anthem — the anthem with the oldest lyrics in the world, and the only one mentioning moss, as it happens.
The famous translation of the song by Basil Hall Chamberlain reads:
Thousands of years of happy reign be thine;
Rule on, my lord, until what are pebbles now
By ages united to mighty rocks shall grow
Whose venerable sides the moss doth line.
There are lots of interpretations for what the line about moss means, but the most popular one is that it’s talking about a long time it takes for moss to spread until it covers all the ground.
I feel like I’ve been stuck at home for as long as it takes the moss to spread, so I suppose it’s time to get out a bit.
I hope you get a chance to visit here soon and see the stones and the moss.
Thanks for reading!
Love from Kamakura
Kamakura Mind Blog
photo credit: Alexander O. Smith
