Mushroom Tips

I always want to keep them. I've devoted a lot of time trying. I'll be strolling through the forest and I'll suddenly zero in, focus up and I'll notice I'm surrounded. Have I been surrounded this whole time, or have I entered the perfect zone? Should I go back and check? No, let's get closer to this one, surely the most perfect I've ever seen.

Mushrooms, man. Little mysteries living in the details of the world, look broadly and you'll see nothing, look closely and they're everywhere (on the East Coast at least). Even when you know what kind grows where for what reason, there's still a veil of mystery, how did this little spore land here, how long ago did it rain, who's been nibbling away your flesh?

I love their little soft bodies pressing their way out through the matter they've rooted in. Pressing outward in their own style, some tilting some curving, some round and thick, some pale and thin. I've tried tying them in scarves to take them home, I've tried drying them, casting them in plaster, sketching them I'm notebooks, but I've found the best way to keep them is through photo. If you hold the camera just right, they'll pose for you and their brief lives are captured forever. 

In the summer when it rains, on days I wish to be outdoors, I think how a few warm days later, a new batch of fungi will litter the forest floor; quick-growing gemstones in every shade imaginable. Earthly treasures indeed.

Oh mushroom how I long to know you and keep you perfect forever. An "over bloomed" elder mushroom though, does capture my heart as well. You are the physical remembrance: youth is short and life can be brief. Be who you are in your way for as long as you can, some day you'll return to the earth, dormant until another rain.