When I first started searching for tardigrades, I followed the same path as everyone else. Every guide points you toward moss, so moss is where I began. I collected it carefully, soaked it, swirled it, squished it…and then peered into the Petri dish with excitement. Hours passed by at the microscope as I would scan water drop after water drop, searching for that distinctive shuffle. After so many attempts, my grand reward was a single tardigrade. One.

For a long time, I thought maybe I was just unlucky, or maybe tardigrades really were as elusive as their reputation suggests. Moss cushions looked like the obvious place to search, all soft, moist, and spongy. But despite their promise, my moss was always strangely empty.

Then came rock tripe. I found myself crouched near a boulder at a local state park examining a patch of rock tripe clinging to its surface. It was tough and leathery, weathered by wind and sun, and I thought: let’s see what’s living there. I ripped off a small sample, soaked it, and added a few drops to my slide. To my surprise, there they were! Tardigrades! After so many dry hunts in moss, finally, a habitat that delivered. If tardigrades could be in rock tripe, maybe I needed to think differently about where I searched.

One day, with that thought in mind, I walked through Salem Cemetery in Winston-Salem. It’s one of those old cemeteries where history seeps from every corner. The headstones are weathered, their inscriptions softened by time. Towering trees cast long shadows, and lichens spread like quiet constellations across the stone.

That day I had a few 50 ml collection tubes with me, and I decided to collect some lichen. Discreetly, gently, I scraped bright yellow lichen from the stones. I was careful to never take too much, and only from places it wouldn’t be noticed. It felt like collecting pieces of time, each flake of lichen the product of decades of growth. The tube filled slowly, speckled with pale greens, grays, and oranges. I left hopeful.

Back in my little living room workspace, I made the mistake of pouring half the tube into a Petri dish and adding water. What followed was overwhelming. The dish bloomed with movement, so dense I could barely keep track. My microscope field filled with tardigrades, rotifers, and nematodes. It was an entire city of microorganisms, suddenly visible. I had to stop, back up, and take a breath. Since then, I have learned a little about moderation. Now, I use only about half a teaspoon of lichen in a dish with about 10 ml of pond water. From that, I’ll do my exploring.

The results are astonishing every time. Cemetery lichen doesn’t just yield tardigrades, it yields diversity. Three or four, and sometimes five species in a single sample isn’t unusual.

Each drop of water becomes its own expedition, its own discovery. Some tardigrades I recognize right away, their little bodies familiar. Others are less common and they keep me coming back. The armored tardigrades I find are especially thrilling, their little protective plates shining under the light. Every search becomes a treasure hunt.

There’s something profoundly moving about finding tardigrades on old headstones. These creatures are the definition of endurance. They can withstand drought, radiation, even the vacuum of space. They persist against odds, thriving in the most improbable places. And there they are, on the surface of headstones.

A few photos of the journey and what is a Tardigrade

A tardigrade (also called a “water bear” or “moss piglet”) is a tiny, water-dwelling, eight-legged micro-animal in the phylum Tardigrada.

• Size: They are microscopic, usually between 0.1 and 1.5 millimeters long.

• Structure: They have a segmented body with eight legs, each ending in little claws.

• Habitat: Found in many environments—moss, lichens, soil, leaf litter, and even extreme places like deep oceans and high mountains.

• Resilience: Famous for their ability to survive extreme conditions. Tardigrades can endure extreme heat, cold, radiation, dehydration, and even the vacuum of space by entering a dormant state called cryptobiosis.

• Feeding: Most feed on plant cells, algae, and small microorganisms, though some are carnivorous.

— Desirée Moffitt