the moss palace
I built my palace about 20 years ago when we finally realized we probably couldn’t outlive our shack no matter how much remodeling and maintenance we were willing and able to do. It was sagging faster than me. And I’m sagging fast. So I got out my trusty 16 ounce finish hammer and my leather toolbelt, powered up my bent Milwaukee skillsaw and set up a 1940’s ½ horsepower Sears table saw and went to work.
Two years later I had us a nice little two story cabin, brand new, mostly cedar and finished with curly maple. We had a view of the Olympics and Saratoga Straits and Whidbey Island. You haven’t built your own home, you can’t imagine the pride you would feel that first night sleeping in it, knowing you built it all by scratch. The house that Jack built….
Course, after time, that new car smell goes away and after a decade or two, here we go again, trying to outlast and out repair the rot and rust, the whole entropic cycle of decay and depression and death. Plus, I still got the original shack on life support. And about 15 or 17 — I lost count — other buildings leaning and sagging and on living wills from the mailbox back to the trail to Tyee Store. So I don’t want the old ‘new’ house taking shortcuts on me. Which is why I went up on the roof 20 years later to see what kind of moss plantation I had thriving up there — and let me tell you, it was a mossologist’s paradise from gutter to peak. Reds and greens and exotic flowers — an entire alien ecosystem above our heads completely colonizing our roof.
Twenty years in moss life, I bet, is like 500 for a Doug fir. And, oh yeah, I had a forest of them too, but mostly just the dead bonsais, a valiant attempt at aerial reforestation of the South End, but even on our lush roof, not really an ideal growing climate in the summer droughts. Moss, like rust, never sleeps. It naps. But only til the next fog or sprinkle or mist or gullywasher. It is the Big Lebowski of the South End. It abides.
I puttered around up there reminiscing about the day I nearly collapsed the roof by horsing around, making the rafters sway wildly. But finally I climbed two stories down the ladder, left the gutters gorged with rich black compost and decided to simply co-exist. We’ll see who lasts longer, me or the house…. But I tell ya, I’m putting my money on the moss.
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