Mushroom Season

Closing loops, cycling nutrients

This month marks the second anniversary of The Dendroica Project, and it feels to me that this series is reaching a conclusion of sorts. I have started the process of assembling the essays and poems into a book, in which this October musing will be the last chapter. I am not sure what will happen in this space next, but for the moment at least I intend to keep sharing something monthly.

I also want to acknowledge the great and unnecessary human suffering that is underway in this moment, and to add my voice to those demanding an end to the cycles of violence and retribution.

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Little mounds in the garden

In the forest

But nary a mole to be found

Cracking open

Something breaks free

Rising into the sunlight

Expanding into ephemeral form

Puffballs, agarics, amanitas

Chanterelles, candy caps, oysters

Boletes, lion’s manes, trumpets

Mushrooms!

October is their time.

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The Potawatomi and Anishinaabe have a word

Puhpowee

For the mysterious force that causes mushrooms

(And some other things)

To rise and swell suddenly

Emerging into full form

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Perhaps when we set out to wander

In hopes of filled baskets

We should also wonder

How it is exactly

That an organism built entirely of filaments

Produces such marvels

How do they decide where, when?

How do they send signals

Along the mycelial network

Directing nutrient and energy flows

To the sites of puhpowee?

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Some are mycorrhizal

Tied in to the roots of the great trees

Searching far and wide for minerals

Which they exchange for sunlight-sugar

The Wood Wide Web.

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Some are decomposers

Growing their networks through fallen logs

And leaves and needles and droppings

Digesting the resistant biomolecules

Cellulose and lignin

Building and enriching soil.

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Some are parasitic

Testing the mettle of living trees

Creating cavities for owls

Opening spaces for new growth.

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Nearly all are awakened in October

The forest rehydrated after summer drought

Tree roots freshly stocked with sunlight-sugar

Soil still warm enough for new networks to grow

So they choose this time to burst forth

To reveal their invisible, perpetual existence

Powered by puhpowee

An astounding array of diversity

In all colors and shapes and sizes

Some delicious and some deadly

All with one primary purpose

To release millions of microscopic spores

Which float through the fall-fragrant air

To land and germinate into new networks

Perpetuating their own cycles.

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Without these fungi our forests could not thrive

Carbon would accumulate

Nutrients would run short

Trees would suffer

The complex web of life would simplify.

---

Take away these processes

And rainforest soils lose fertility

In just a few years

Nitrogen and phosphorus and potassium

Leached away by rainfall, carried away by streams.

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We humans

In our perceived and self-perpetuated separation

Are not so good at closing loops.

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We mine minerals to fertilize our fields

While the nutrients in our crops

Enter dead-end waste streams

In septic tanks and biosolids

Mixed in with toxic chemicals and heavy metals

Destined for landfills and rivers and oceans

Feeding vast acres of algae

But seldom returned to the fields to nurture new growth.

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We log forests

But do not return anything

To the thin volcanic soils

To nurture the next generations of trees.

---

We encapsulate our own bodies in caskets and vaults

Six feet under

Where they cannot re-enter nature’s cycles

For hundreds or thousands of years.

---

We combine our complex wastes

And ship them to landfills

Great growing mountains of trash

From which nothing will ever be recovered

At least on human timescales.

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We are not the first of Earth’s creatures

To fail to close our loops

The cyanobacteria were the first perhaps

Oxygenating the atmosphere

Changing the biosphere forever.

---

Then came the great coal forests

Depositing layer upon layer

In tropical swamps

Lignin

Polymer of of the Paleozoic

Perhaps the fungi of that time were not yet so adept

Or perhaps the ground was too saturated

But whatever the reason

Great lignaceous landfills

Across the globe

Accumulated carbon

To be covered and compressed and cooked into coal

An unsustainable process

That changed the climate

And that was not sustained.

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And that is now being reversed

By our own mining and burning

Which will, of course, not be sustained

Because coal is finite

As are all mines

For phosphorus

And potassium

And iron

And copper

And lithium

And everything that powers

Our unsustainable civilization.

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Too much of our discourse about waste

About recycling

Is about guilt

How bad we are to throw things out

How good it feels to recycle.

---

I don’t think that is useful

Or necessary

Our Earth will survive

Fungi are already learning to digest our plastics

Our landfills will be buried and compressed and cooked

To become the richest ore deposits

Of some distant tomorrow.

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Could we instead act out of love

Or wisdom

Choosing to close our loops

So that our children may thrive

Rather than face scarcity?

Might we begin to choose

To pee on our plants

To compost our wastes and our bodies

To embrace humanure and hugelkultur

To ensure that the products of our industry

Are reusable, recyclable, degradable

Rather than disposable

Not because waste is bad

But because we care about community

Longevity

Abundance

Living in harmony

Rather than separation

And short-term profit.

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Just as we do not really understand the upswing

The process of creation and growth

Choosing instead to perceive

A moment of birth

For products and people alike

So too do we ignore the downswing

The decomposition

The invisible mycelial networks

Beyond their brief puhpowee moment.

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To us there is a moment

When products become trash

When the toilet flushes

When bodies die

And out they go

Away

Buried

In a state of immaterial nonexistence

Of irrational irrelevance to our thoughts and lives.

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Part of embracing an ecological spirituality

Is to choose to participate in the processes

Of our ever-renewing biosphere.

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May the season of mushrooms and falling leaves remind us

To embrace the downswing

To close our loops

To step away from separation

To relax our perceived dominion

And begin to live as if we belong.