Isn’t it infuriating how quickly the media pivoted from a short-lived and cursory acknowledgement of Earth Day to obsessing about Elon Musk?

In an article entitled “Ancient Green: Moss, Climate and Deep Time”, one of my favorite environmental writers, Robin Wall Kimmerer, has found a way to bridge the disconnect.

Writing for Earth Day in the online magazine Emergence, Wall Kimmerer, an enrolled member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, brings her signature combination of detailed natural history, indigenous spirituality, and incandescent prose to a tribute to the tiny, humble and persistent green flora that first appeared on solid ground 450 million years ago.

Mosses, she says, have seen it all.  They have been active participants in the cycles of planetary transformation, witnesses to climate change, extinction and regeneration.

“Since…the first moss set leaf on rock, everything on Earth has changed…And yet, the mosses are still here, their contemporary form indistinguishable from their fossil ancestors.”

The details of this history are fascinating– and way too complex to summarize here.  Better to check out the full article for an immersive visit to the primeval green world that Wall Kimmerer knows intimately through decades of botanical research and communion.  Then go for a walk and notice the velvety green beneath your feet. Whether poking up through sidewalk fissures or carpeting the forest floor, the moss you see will never look the same.

So what does all this have to do with our current plague of selfish multi-billionaires?

Well, according to Wall Kimmerer, moss has them beat.  Mosses, she says, are the planet’s most successful and accomplished creatures.  They’ve scaled their enterprise to each of the earth’s continents and every type of natural habitat. They’ve diversified prolifically, begetting more than eleven thousand separate species.  Their beauty is astounding to those who take the time and patience to look. They have true grit, persisting through “ice ages, eons of warmings, dryings, shifting of continents, uplift of mountain ranges, the rise and fall of countless other beings.”

And they’ve done it all as champions of sustainability and interdependence, content to subsist on small amounts of light, water and minerals gleaned from sun, rainfall and decomposing rock.  With these sparse elements mosses have thrived brilliantly, adapting to the planet’s changing rhythms and conditions, evolving systems for retaining and sharing precious moisture, and providing critical nourishment and support for other living creatures and the land itself.

Of course, Wall Kimmerer is well aware that not everyone would agree with her assessment of moss as a paragon of achievement.

I can imagine Elon Musk scoffing at the thought of mosses being considered the most successful beings on Earth. After all, they are not the largest nor the most numerous. They have not accumulated great hoards of wealth, consumed the most stuff, attracted the gaze of billions, nor invented a way to leave the Earth. Quite the opposite: they decided long ago to stay.

I can almost hear the billionaires sneering in response to these lessons of moss. “Don’t tell me to live like a moss. I have become a giant among men.” We’d do well to remember that the dinosaurs were big too. Living small is not a sign of weakness or complacency. Rather, it is the surpassing strength of self-restraint, to live simply so that others might simply live.”

Let the mosses teach us.  Not a bad lesson for Earth Day 2022 and beyond.