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2023-2024 Common Read - Braiding Sweetgrass: Witness to the Rain

"Paying attention acknowledges that we have something to learn from intelligences other than our own. Listening, standing witness, creates an openness to the world in which the boundaries between us can dissolve in a raindrop." p. 300

Lookout Creek old-growth forest

Photographed by: Tom Iraci/USFS Date: 7/1/2005 Photo number: ACM_006 https://andrewsforest.oregonstate.edu/gallery/andrews-forest-old-growth-stands

Broom Moss

Image courtesy of Encyclopedia Britannica

Rain drops on moss

Souryadeep Mukherjee, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

Isothecium Moss on trees

Image courtesy of Wikimedia

Hylocomium splendens

Image courtesy of the British Bryological Society

Plagiomnium insigne in Washington Park, Anacortes, WA USA

Image courtesy of Wikimedia

Keywords

Apex: the narrowed or pointed end (MW)

Diminutive: indicating small size (MW)

Hydrologist (Hydrology): a science dealing with the properties, distribution, and circulation of water on and below the earth's surface and in the atmosphere (MW)

Pellucid: reflecting light evenly from all surfaces (MW)

Repose:  a state of resting after exertion or strain (MW)

Salal: a small evergreen shrub (MW)

Swale: a low-lying or depressed and often wet stretch of land (MW)

Tannin: any of various soluble astringent complex phenolic substances of plant origin used especially in tanning leather and dyeing textiles, manufacturing ink, clarifying wine and beer, and in medicine (MW)

Unimpeded: not slowed, blocked, or interfered with (MW)

Additional Resources

You Aren’t Paying Enough Attention to Moss, PBS Terra

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