The Romance of Lichen on Boulders in Relationship to History

When Dave the Cat took me for a walk this morning, he sat on a large boulder in a field by our drive. This boulder is gigantic, worn by the weather of millions of years, full of cracks where plants have taken root. There is even a juniper starting to grow from one of these cracks and there is, here and there, the dried up spongy green moss, brown now, at least until we get a rain when it will spring to life again. There is also a small crust of orange lichen. I was reading a while back, this particular lichen is very slow growing - takes about one hundred years just to grow a square inch. By my rough visual reckoning, I date this to about 1660. This lichen was starting to grow when Charles 11 was restored to the throne, during the plague in London and the Great Fire. The old London Bridge still existed with the tarred heads of traitors and highwaymen stuck on posts above the gate at Southwark. This is the time and place of my novel. The real Jonet Howat was presumbably freed from the tollbooth cell in 1663. Two years earlier, her mother, also accused of witchcraft in Forfar, Scotland was executed. All this happened when 3000 miles across the sea in a largely undiscovered wilderness the lichen on a boulder in my field was starting to grow. It doesn't mean anything. In the mornings, I think too much and dwell on things like the romance of lichen on boulders in relationship to history. Just sayin'.