My Little Fern & John Muir on Ferns

This was "Verdie" a few weeks ago. Yes, that's Toby and I back more than 20 years ago shortly after our engagement in 1996. ❤️💍

I have a little fern now. I bought it after Frank died as part of a mini-makeover I did of our downstairs in the immediate aftermath of that tragic event. I found it helpful in dealing with that particular grief. I decided to experiment with keeping it in the house and see how it would do. So far, so good.

I've returned to reading my John Muir books. I'm still working through his Nature Writings, which I described a bit here. I'm in My First Summer in the Sierra, and in Chapter 2, came across the most wonderful passage about ferns. In his June 13 entry (a date meaningful to us as that is the Feast of St. Anthony of Padua, a great Catholic patron saint of ours who I still ask for help), Muir says:

A good many herbaceous plants come thus far up the mountain from the plains, and are now in flower, two months later than their lowland relatives. Saw a few columbines today. Most of the ferns are in their prime, - rock ferns on the sunny hillsides, cheilanthes, pellaea, gymnogramme; woodwardia, aspidium, woodsia along the stream banks, and the common Pteris aquilina on the sandy flats. This last, however common, is here making shows of strong, exuberant, abounding beauty to set the botanist wild with admiration. I measured some scarce full grown that are more than seven feet high. Though the commonest and most widely distributed of all the ferns, I might almost say that I never saw it before. The broad-shouldered fronds held high on smooth stout stalks growing close together,overweening and overlapping, make a complete ceiling, beneath which one may walk erect over several acres without being seen, as if beneath a roof. And how soft and lovely the light streaming through this living ceiling, revealing the arching branching ribs and veins of the fronds as the framework of countless panes of pale green and yellow plant-grass nicely fitted together - a fairyland created out of the commonest fern-stuff.  

The smaller animals wander about as if in a tropical forest. I saw the entire flock of sheep vanish at one side of a patch and reappear a hundred yards farther on at the other, their progress betrayed only by the jerking and trembling of the fronds; and strange to say very few of the stout woody stalks were broken. I sat a long time beneath the tallest fronds, and never enjoyed anything in the way of a bower of wild leaves more strangely impressive. Only spread a fern frond over a man's head and worldly cares are cast out, and freedom and beauty and peace come in. The waving of a pine tree on the top of a mountain, - a magic wand in Nature's hand, - every devout mountaineer knows its power; but the marvelous beauty value of what the Scotch call a breckan in a still dell, what poet has sung this? It would seem impossible that any one, however incrusted with care, could escape the Godful influence of these sacred fern forests. Yet this very day I saw a shepherd pass through one of the finest of them without betraying more feeling than his sheep. "What do you think of these grand ferns?" I asked. "Oh, they're only d----d big brakes," he replied.

How beautiful is that? How true! Some can appreciate the simple things; some just see them as nuisances.

I bought another fern or two and planted them with a tropical plant in our master bathroom. It is not, however doing as well. But I am quite determined to keep this one going and see what I can do to revive the other. Verdie is near me at my desk so I can look and smile at her throughout the day.


Thanks for reading!