Shroom Smitten

I was chasing Alex through the woods when we stumbled upon the mushroom. We’d never seen anything like it. Standing three inches high, it poked through a half-charred mass of old twigs and new moss. The head was formed like a brown brain.

“Touch it and you’ll turn into an alligator,” said Alex.

“It might poison the cat or something,” I suggested.

We decided to build a wall around the “brain-plant” to save the cat.

With the barricade of burnt bark and soil completed, we ran to tell Alex’s mother about our find.

“You’re filthy. What have you been doing?” she asked, standing inside the kitchen door.

“We found a brain plant. You’ve got to see it.”

With a sigh, she removed her apron and smoothed her skirt. “Where is it?”

“This way. Hurry!”

We dashed off with Alex’s mom trudging after us. I looked over my shoulder to make sure his mom was out of hearing distance. “This’ll warp her mind.”

“When all the grown ups are brainless, we’ll rule the world,” Alex announced. “I’ll be president.”

“Where is it?” his mother asked, catching up to us.

We pointed. She stood there staring so long we were positive her mind was conquered.

“That’s what you brought me here for?” she laughed. “It’s a morel.”

From then on, mycology governed our lives. For hours, we would scour the woods looking first for morels, then any other mushroom. We invented stories. Some mushrooms made people happy, some made people tall, and some were the evil spies of wizards.

In high school, Alex prompted me to take biology. The more I learned about the science of mushrooms, the less appealing they became. I learned that fires helped mushrooms grow, that the mushroom above ground is the fruit of a larger organism underground, and countless other tidbits, none of which thrilled me. Alex, however, could hardly contain his excitement. Filled with new knowledge, he insisted that I accompany him on innumerable treks, but my interest was flagging.

How could I tell my best friend that his idea of a good time held as much interest to me as staring at the cracks of the biology room ceiling? Actually, I would have preferred staring at the ceiling to trudging through the woods with gnats buzzing in my ears. So when he informed me that we were going on yet another foray, I casually suggested we go to a soccer game instead, but he started preaching about the immorality of deserting one’s best friend.

On Friday afternoon we got into Alex’s blue Toyota and headed for a place called Cliff’s Spring. It would be a four-hour drive with Mr. Mushroom.

“What do you think about fire cycles relating to bolite populations?” asked Alex.

I didn’t respond.

“How can it account for varied numbers of fruiting bodies when disease and fertilization are factored out?”

I wondered how I could tell Alex that our passions had diverged.

When we finally got there, I saw that Cliff’s Spring originated between two clefts of rock covered with chips of mica that sparkled like jewels in the sun. From there, the water traveled toward the cliff, then plunged 90 meters straight down. A third of the way, it turned into a fine mist that sprinkled the lush undergrowth below.

“Look at that waterfall,” I breathed.

“Yes,” replied Alex. “No chance of finding any shrooms there. Mushrooms need rain, not river water. Too many minerals in that stream.” He walked off muttering about nutrients.

How could anyone steal the wonder out of the waterfall like that? Shaking my head, I tramped after him, paying more attention to pine trees and woodpeckers than to any fungus sticking up through the needle-laden ground. I was studying a wild iris when I spotted the cream-colored mushrooms.

“Alex, look at this!”

I scrutinized the find closely. Less than an inch high with circular tops, the mushrooms had formed a ring 5 feet in diameter.

Alex stared blankly. “What are we looking at?”

“The ring in front of you.”

“Those?” Alex was obviously disappointed. “Those are maranius. They are edible, but tasteless. Common. Some folklore states that fairies made the rings to dance in. The real reason they grow in a ring is that their spores radiate in a circle. When the center mushroom dies, all that’s left are the mushrooms that grew in a circle around the parent. The process continues until a large ring like this forms. Let’s go.”

I didn’t answer. My head was filled with magic nights and moonlight shining on a ring of fairies dancing to music of the stars.

“Hey, wait up,” I called, and dashed after Alex.

Half an hour later, I spotted another group of mushrooms.

Alex knelt down, carefully dug under the stalk of one and pulled it out. He sniffed it and studied the shape of the bulb.

“These are amita muscaria. They’re hallucinogenic and mildly poisonous. Some Native American tribes use them to commune with the gods.”

“Commune with the gods?”

“Yup, Let’s take some back. We can decipher the poison’s molecular code.”

“Did it work? I mean, did they commune?”

“Who knows?”

This time, when Alex started off again, I was by his side, avidly looking for mushrooms. I felt the rush of the time when we found our first morel.

That evening, Alex sat next to the campfire with a cup of coffee. Across from the fire, I held a coral mushroom. It might have been the firelight, or the heady aroma of the mushroom, but suddenly I felt there was something out there - watching us, surrounding us. I thought about fairy rings, magic and the gods.