0003 Moss

A charred piece of wood, cracked and decomposing, sat for months in a slowly rusting fire pit on a concrete slab in a small back yard. It sat there through summer heat and rainstorms. It sat there through the cooler fall days and into this winter.

This small, square fire pit collected the water from those summer storms. It collected leaves, dropped from an oak tree in a neighbor’s yard, branches outstretched over a wooden fence. The leaves dried and broke.

It collected the season’s first snow on an overcast day in December. That snow melted in the low, warm sun a few days later. Its water dripped though the metal mesh, blending with ease into the cold pool below.

That water, the leaves, and the charred piece of wood remained, undisturbed, until a sunny day just before the new year. And when the heavy, screen lid was removed from that small fire pit, it revealed a soft, damp, thick carpet of unexpectedly bright green moss.

The piece of wood and the moss now sit, without complaint, in a window box hanging off of a small shed in that small yard. The only of bit green in an already long, grey winter.