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10.18.05

LOOKOUT, West Virginia (AP) — Deep in the forest, miles (kilometers) from anything resembling a town, even logging roads and rutted four-wheeler paths dissolve. That’s when J.P. Anderson gears down his battered Suzuki Samurai, crashing up the side of a mountain with bone-rattling force.
“Hang on,’’ he says, scanning the trees for gaps and snapping the smaller ones in his way. Eventually, the engine goes silent and the vehicle comes to rest against a trunk 6 inches (15 centimeters) thick.
Anderson hops out and hikes downhill. Then he spots it: a long-fallen, rotting tree covered in a blanket of brilliant green moss some 2 inches (5 centimeters) thick and several feet (a couple of meters) long.
Quickly and gently, he rips up a long section of the living carpet and stuffs it into one of eight woven-plastic sacks he’ll fill in an hour.
“They told me money don’t grow on trees. They was lying to me,’’ he says, grinning through his black beard. “I know better now. It grows on rocks, too.’’
Moss is the all-purpose sponge of the forest, storing water, releasing nutrients and housing tiny critters. But across Appalachia and in the Pacific Northwest, it’s more than that. It’s a way to make ends meet when jobs are few.
Picking is hard work on a hot day. Sweaty. Dirty. And it pays only about $5 (euro4) a sack. But for 33-year-old Anderson, who lives simply as a single father to twin boys, the solitude and independence beat the construction jobs that often pay the bills.
“I don’t like dealing with people, actually. I don’t deal well with being told what to do,’’ he says, hefting another 20-pound (9-kilogram) to 30-pound (13.5-kilogram) sack over his shoulder. “I guess it’s a superiority complex.’’
What Anderson picks could end up in a floral arrangement or a craft project, maybe even on a movie set. Along the way, it will support more than a dozen jobs, from people who sort it, dry it and package it to those who ship and sell it.
But biologists, businessmen and pickers themselves say the good stuff is getting harder to find _ and the money harder to make.
Moss is not commercially grown, so buyers depend on the wilderness. Some state and national forests, though, have already banned harvesting, worried about what they are losing when moss leaves the ecosystem.
A less ethical picker will strip the logs bare, but Anderson and father James, who have witnessed the devastation of strip mining and clear-cut logging, always leave clumps behind to help the spore-driven plant regenerate. To thrive, it needs moisture, cool temperatures and shade.
“You never pick it all,’’ James says. “Not if you want it to grow back again.’’
How long that takes is a question that has some scientists and U.S. Forest Service officials wrestling with the regulation of this secretive industry, where there are plenty of opinions but few facts.
North Carolina’s Pisgah and Nantahala national forests expect to ban moss collection Jan. 1 after studies there indicated a growback cycle “on the order of 15 to 20 years,’’ says botanical specialist Gary Kauffman of the Forest Service.
That’s twice as long as some veteran pickers and moss buyers think it takes.
Though Kauffman agrees the science is still lacking, Pisgah and Nantahala will likely err on the side of caution. That means the forests will be off-limits to the 100-200 pickers a year who typically get permits.
Not are all pickers alike. Some are chronically unemployed, living on society’s fringe. Some are recreational, filling sacks while hunting or hiking. Some teenagers do it at county fair time, for pocket money.
Few pickers are eager to talk about their work. Sometimes that’s because it involves trespassing and illegal picking, but mainly it’s to protect their sites from competitors.
On a busy day, his 15 workers process 300 or 400 sacks, picking out sticks, rejecting pieces that are too small or won’t hold together, then hanging it to dry.
“As you can see, you get really dirty,’’ says Carolyn Clark, who at 67 has worked here nearly half her life and has seen others quit after two days. “But you know you worked if you get dirty.’’
“And,’’ says co-worker Candy Holcomb, “you don’t have to pay for tanning.’’
“It not only helps me,’’ Clark says, “it helps all the people around here.’’