This is an excerpt of an interview Orion Magazine does with Dave Pritchett, the author of Mossback: Ecology, Emancipation, and Foraging for Hope in Painful Places. Here, Pritchett responds to a question about the meaning of his title and his key inspirations to reclaim the word.

Well I love the word. I first heard the term used, I think, in high school when I lived in Arkansas by fishers to describe big old fish or turtles that had algae growing on their backs. In research for the book, I came across the term describing Confederates who evaded the draft by hiding out. The word was really evocative and multilayered, and when I dug further into its use and etymology, I found that it seemed to be a derogatory term sort of like the more modern “redneck,” and there is some suggestion that it came from the Carolina swamps and used in that same disparaging way to describe poor folks who were so slow moving that they had moss growing on their backs. I was really taken when I found a report during the Reconstruction period after the Civil War recounting a gun fight between the Ku Klux Klan and a group called the “Mossy-backs.” So for me, the word conjures a complex meaning with allusions of ecological connection, but also perhaps an unwillingness to fight wealthy people’s wars or to tolerate explicitly white supremacist institutions. That’s the sort of backwardness I can get behind. I found “mossback,” with its multivalent meaning really helpful, since I’ve been looking for metaphors that contribute to the somewhat odd admixture of ecological well being with racial and economic analysis that the word connotes. Of course, I’m doing some fanciful reading, as it’s highly unlikely that the Mossy-backs had a robust racial analysis, or that Confederate deserters were thinking much beyond themselves and their families. But I want to reclaim the word and use it insofar as it moves us toward the kind of environmental and racial solidarity that I believe our times require. 

Read the entire interview here. It’s really really good.

David Pritchett is author of Mossback: Ecology, Emancipation, and Foraging for Hope in Painful Places. He works in emergency medicine, and he holds a diploma in mountain medicine and is certified in track and sign.