Biodegradable I


Carla Beaudet


didn’t know the woman, although we lived next door to her parents for 11 years, and they are kind-hearted folks. Good


neighbors. Not people who should have to attend the funeral of their beautiful and bright 34-year-old daughter, a registered nurse, dead from an overdose of who knows what. It is May 5th, 2021. Was she just overwhelmed by the worst year ever to be a health care worker? Is there any way this could have been accidental? More questions than answers, and I know nothing. Morning fog is just starting to lift. I will attend the graveside


mushrooms!”


service this afternoon, but it has been raining for two days straight, oak leaves are the size of a squirrel’s ear, apple trees are in bloom, and may apples are just starting to flatten. Previous visits to apple trees this spring have left me empty- handed, but now I hear the mushrooms calling, and I must go. Te first spot I check always breaks my heart a little, how idyllic it must have been, babbling brook and all, before mounds of rock and asphalt were carelessly disposed of along its bank, pushed right up to and encroaching on several venerable old apple trees. I use pruning shears to tend the trees a little, cutting away multiflora rose, Japanese barberry, and Tartarian honeysuckle, that threaten to overtake them. It’s self-serving, too, of course; I need to keep the ground under these trees accessible, and a path between them open. But today, I’m the victim of my own efforts; the path I cleared last week has been visited already this morning. I know how this is going to play out, and I go anyway. Tere’s the trail with the dew knocked off the grass. Tere’s the footprint in the mud, and there’s most of the stem of the morel. Bastard didn’t even take the whole thing. Te only consolation is that there is no evidence at this tree, nor at the handful of other old apple trees along this bend in the creek, of any other mushrooms or x-mushrooms. So the early bird just got the one. Hah. Te trees at the next spot were probably planted by the same


get to step foot in their favorite mushroom patch. I’m luckier than most, I suppose, and probably shouldn’t be imagining that perfect world, as awesome as it may be. Te truth is, not once have I seen anyone else in my beloved mushroom patch in the woods behind my house. Never during the past 30 years have I encountered footprints that weren’t my own. I’m lucky, and undeniably so, to live in a rural region near a huge, unpopulated lake that blocks easy access to the hillsides where I alone wander in my study of fungi and the natural world. Do I ever worry of losing it all someday? I do. And I know


exactly when that day will arrive: It will be April 8, 2024. To be precise, on April 8, 2024 at exactly 12:59 p.m., everybody in the world will be staring at the view from my favorite, personal mushroom patch. Let me back up and explain everything. On April 8, 2024 at


exactly 12:59 p.m. a total solar eclipse will be passing directly over my mushroom patch, just as a total solar eclipse passed directly over that same spot on August 21, 2017 at exactly 1:21 p.m. If you know anything about the rarity of total solar eclipses visiting your spot on Earth, you realize having one pass Continues on 28.


people who built the overgrown and collapsing farmhouse that overlooks them. One has a trunk over 2 feet in diameter, and is entirely hollowed out, with gaps that make me think of it as “the Japanese lantern tree.” And yet, it lives. Te field hasn’t been mowed in a few years and the multiflora rose are taking over. Out come the pruning shears, and I make my way from one tree to another, cutting a circle to the dripline at each one. And then, there it is. Before I even take out my knife, I kneel, and plant a kiss on it’s pitted little head. One morel is SO much better than none, and I no longer resent the person who “stole” “my” first mushroom. A faint beeping sound issues from my backpack; it is time to get washed and change my clothes for the funeral. On the way back, I pass through a stand of planted white


pine, scarcely bothering to scan the ground. I have never found a pine morel; I read about the “burn morels” in places like Colorado and California. Western places. I have begun to doubt we even have pine morels in the East. And as I contemplate this, here is a toppled pine, its roots in


the air. It’s been dead a while; woodpeckers made their homes in it while it was still standing, but it toppled more recently.


Continue on page 29. Fall 2021 FUNGI Volume 14:4 25


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