Mossback manifesto

What is a "mossback"? Today, the word is often used to mean people attached to extremely old-fashioned or retro ideas: mossback conservatives on the far political right, for example. An archaic meaning of "mossy" meant dull or stupid. In the Oxford English Dictionary, one can follow an interesting trail. In the beginning, the term mossback was applied to fish, called mossybunkers or mossy backs, specimens so old that seaweed adhered to them ("moss," into at least the late 19th century, was a poetic name for seaweed). An old bass covered with "moss" was the symbol of antiquity. He was a place-bound creature of great stubbornness and possessing wily survival skills. In the Northwest, some large old clams are referred to as mossbacks.

During the Civil War, the term took on a more negative connotation: a mossback was a Confederate draft-dodger, a fellow who skedaddled to the swamps to escape conscription. It was a term of derision and carried the implication of cowardice — or running away from responsibility. In the late 19th century, it was also applied to farmers, homesteaders, and "mossy backed" hermits, particularly those who settled and occupied the West. Herman Melville referred in Moby Dick to a "moss-bearded Daniel Boone." Moss was a consequence of long living in the wilds and forests; it was a sign that the place was growing on you — literally. The OED cites the medieval romance "Robert of Cicyle," which refers to a forest exile: "Fyftene yere he levyd there, wyth rotys, and grasse, and evylle fare, and alle of moss hys clothyng was." Sounds like anyone who has spent a summer camping on the Olympic Peninsula.

The early Northwest pioneers came here and took pride in their suffering. They could have gone to California with its sunshine and gold. Instead, they chose a harsher clime and a more rugged path and they mythologized it. Paul Bunyan, immortalized by Northwest writer James Stevens, hardly leaps from the page as a blossom-sniffing tree-hugger. He's a manly reshaper of the land. Northwest author Stewart Holbrook, in his 1953 book Far Corner, quotes one prideful old settler giving a speech to the Oregon Pioneer Association: "I say to you that there was no honor in coming to a country already opened up."

Holbrook was writing about life in the region in the early part of the 20th century when some of the original settlers were still alive. He describes what he calls the "cult of the pioneer." In these twilight decades, they were honored, lauded, and memorialized incessantly. Their feats along the Oregon Trail were re-enacted — as when Washington state pioneer Ezra Meeker, looking like aged Father Time, retraced his path with oxen and a Conestoga wagon for the newsreels. The pioneers' taming of the wilderness was acknowledged at a thousand luncheons and on a thousand plaques. They represented a rapidly dying culture of people who had lived the frontier experience the rest of us would only read about. They had taken a wilderness and rapidly transformed it into a modern place much like everyplace else — the aged Meeker came out on the Oregon Trail and lived long enough to fly over Puget Sound in an airplane.

But if the old pioneers were honored at the end of their lives, they were not so well liked in the late-19th century when hordes of newcomers arrived. They were often ridiculed by the immigrants who displaced them. The pioneers had bonded through their shared privations on the trails and homesteads, but a new generation was moving in. They poured in via rail and steamship, and most of them couldn't have cared less about the past or the bearded old geezers who were standing in the way of real progress. That displacement resulted in the birth of the Northwest mossback.

In 1892, the Tacoma Ledger held an "Old Settler" contest. It invited readers with first-hand stories of the Northwest's pioneer days to submit them. The entries would be published, and the winning entrant would get two round-trip tickets to see the 1893 Chicago Columbian Exposition, a world's fair celebrating the 400th anniversary of the discovery that started it all. "They came with ox teams but they shall return in palace cars" promised the newspaper. This was a chance for the "pioneer cult" to have its say, and while contributors spun amazing — and mostly true — yarns, a few could not help but sound off about their new, outcast status.

One was Hugh Crockett, who came out by wagon train in 1851:

The pioneers of this grand state often have their feelings brought to arms by the sneering remark of new comers, who term us 'mossbacks.' They tell us how things should be done, and how they are done 'back east.' Sometimes I feel like telling them to go 'back east' and be blessed. The pioneers that laid the foundation for the greatest state in the Union may not just suit the fancy of a 'down-easter,' but beneath the perhaps rough, uncouth clothing, there beats as true, kind, and loyal a heart as has ever been imported on a palace car.

Another was Martha Ellis, a veteran of the Oregon Trail in 1852 and early resident of Puget Sound country: "Gradually the settlers recovered from the effects of the [1855 Indian] war and have done their best to help the development of their chosen state. Yet the new comers call them 'moss-backs.' I wonder how much more they could have done, with the same hardships to contend with, as the old pioneer."

The pioneers believed they had earned their right to be here; it was that hard work and sacrifice that gave them the privilege to enjoy the Northwest's bounty. But they could not turn back the tide of change and new generations.

Their feeling of being put upon and displaced by newcomers is still alive today. Growth has made native and longtime Northwesterners feel uneasy. The late Seattle Times and Seattle Post-Intelligencer columnist Emmett Watson touted the virtues of "Lesser Seattle," an imaginary group with the sole purpose of "keeping the bastards out." In 1960s Oregon, Oregonian writer and author Holbrook was chief spokesperson for the James G. Blaine Society, a group that existed mostly as bumper stickers and buttons but was dedicated to fending off prospective newcomers. Though semi-tongue-in-cheek, such groups and their virtual followers embody attitudes that drive the local business lobby crazy. The growth-is-good crowd is quick to blame local not-in-my-backyard types when anything gets off-track.

Republican legislators in Washington howled when Boeing announced that it was moving the corporate headquarters, saying selfish NIMBYs (read mossbacks) were responsible for ruining the local business climate. The fact that Boeing's decisions were being driven by, say, globalization had nothing to do with it, of course. Today, some developers have gotten a little savvier. They claim, for example, that building skyscrapers and condo towers is in fact good for the environment. They find that a green-washed message goes down a little easier. Never, of course, do they question growth itself. It is an inevitable tsunami, they say.

Today's mossbacks take things in stride. While they are no longer pioneers or necessarily even sons and daughters of pioneers, they are people who believe that what makes this region exceptional is not the boom-time-hype of snake-oil salesfolk who tout growth as a good in itself, but rather people who put their faith in a more humble and unaffected quality of life. They respect the land and think newcomer pretensions are better left where they came from. They would also say that we now have traditions and habits of life and settlement that ought to be respected rather than run over.

Modern mossbacks — still sneered at by many newcomers and outsiders — are not people who have settled the country but people who have been settled by it. We've been here long enough to put down roots and become part of the modern landscape. Mossback is an epithet to embrace with pride.

The mossback spirit is captured in a song that first appeared in the Olympia Standard in 1877. The quirky Seattle restaurateur/folksinger Ivar Haglund learned it from his pals Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie; he played it on his radio show back in the 1940s and on TV commercials in the 1960s; he even named his flagship restaurant after it, "Acres of Clams," which is the alternate title of the song. The original title is "The Old Settler," and it records a pioneer's decision to give up the thankless hard work of the mines to eventually find true happiness on Puget Sound. The last verses capture attitudes that can still be recognized "natives" to this day.

I took up a claim in the forest

And sat myself down to hard toil;

For two years I chopped and I struggled;

But I never got down to the soil.

I tried to get out of the country,

But poverty forced me to stay;

Until I became an old settler,

Then nothing could drive me away.

No longer a slave to ambition,

I laugh at the world and its shams,

As I think of my present condition

Surrounded by acres of clams.

And now that I'm used to the climate,

I think that if ever man found

A spot to live easy and happy,

That Eden is on Puget Sound.

In just these four verses you have the classic mossback experience. A newcomer gets a foothold here, doing whatever it takes to stay. But by hanging on when the going gets tough, he finds that the magic and beauty of the place are irresistible. Now he can abandon traditional material values — gaining his freedom from the chains of ambition. He has discovered that the everyday world is a sham. The secret of happiness lies in letting go, getting mellow, and enjoying nature's bounty. Fulfillment is found through simplicity in this rain-nourished land. Or as Seattle historian Murray Morgan once put it, we see this as "a place to live rather than a place to make income from." Puget Sound is a slacker utopia attainable only by hard-work and sacrifice. If you want something else, there's always California or New York.

The "Old Settler" also captures the conflict between old-timer and newcomer by raising the issue we still live with: Most of us came here as a result of unprecedented growth. That growth — including immigration — continues unabated. It threatens our quality of life and our mossback status. In a land of newcomers, the old-timers eventually are overwhelmed and marginalized. The song also hints at a kind of insecurity that comes from leaving the status quo behind. We desire the respect, even the adoration of an outside world that we've rejected. Yet by seeking validation, we jeopardize what we love by attracting new waves of immigrants and seekers, some of whom are openly exploitive. If people believe in our land's virtues, too many will come and Eden will be overrun; if they come and find us wanting, we are angered by their arrogant outsider ways. We'd rather be worshipped from a safe distance.

I think this insecurity stems in part from what we're doing to the land. We carry a collective guilt about the way we've chosen to live in the Northwest, from nearly eradicating the native peoples to poisoning Puget Sound. Even the original settlers arrived with a mixed sense of awe and mission. The settler's job, as John Quincy Adams once said, was "to make the wilderness blossom as the rose." But in retrospect, we wonder: Did we make the land blossom, or did we spoil the garden? As we have seen the forests vanish and salmon stocks dwindle, we feel anger at what is happening, and a helplessness to prevent it. For any mossback, even one who has been here only a decade or so, it's easy to see the degradation of the environment and quality of life. We brood on the fact that our mode of living — our technology, our economy, our greed — have trapped us in a cycle that seems destined to destroy what we love because we love it.

That is the mossback dilemma. But there is a way to respond. One is to take pride in place. Another is to recognize a sense of stewardship for land, nature, community, and history. Yet another is to try to cut through the hype that sells us stuff we don't need in the currency of our own insecurity.

• Knute Berger is Mossback, Crosscut's chief Northwest native. He also writes the monthly Gray Matters column for Seattle magazine and is a weekly guest on Weekday on KUOW-FM (94.9). You can e-mail him at mossback@crosscut.com.