Fungi
They appear like gifts, wrapped in ridges and whorls, colors ranging from red, to tan and brilliant green. Some poke up as speckled umbrellas, some blob low and fat and smooth like bread dough turned out in autumn leaves. They pop up on the bodies of dead trees, in the soft detritus of summer, beneath poplar trees or on the smooth white arc of an ailing birch. They are the midwives of life’s transitions, slowly converting what has gone before into a new form.
Fungus, like animals, use digestive enzymes to break down their food, rather than utilizing photosynthesis like a plant. Many have chitin in their cell walls, a trait they share with arthropods (spiders, insects and crustaceans). They bridge, in other words, the neat lines we make between plant and animal. In ancient times, scientists believe they had spores that could swim in the watery environments they existed in prior to their exodus to land. Modern day fungal reproduction is about as varied as it gets—some send up buds, essentially cloning themselves (there is a growth in the UP of Michigan that is believed to weigh in at 440 tons and is estimated to be about 2500 years old) while others create spore that will land in good conditions and begin to grow. Others create two stalks which grow together and essentially mate. Household molds and yeast (yes, what we make bread with) are other members of this broad and prolific family.
I spent much of the summer fascinated with the faces of the fungi world on our land, photographing them in their many forms. They draw me because of their delicacy amidst the rocks and heavy trees. Their outrageous colors, which can go through many versions as they age, ensures I seldom meet the same fungus twice in a week. The transitory, nestled so close with the moss-covered rocks and hundred-year old sugar maples, always invites a hunker, a time to consider the way life moves so freely from seed to tree to breaking down into earth and rising up as a new species.
The poet Rumi once wrote “I died as a mineral and rose a plant, I awoke as a plant and became an animal. I died as an animal and arose as Man. Why should I ever be afraid? When was I ever reborn less by dying?” While I don’t particularly hold there is a constant progression of life from simple to complex, I do feel, as I walk the autumn woods, visiting with mushrooms and evergreen moss, that the life which runs through me will continue to shift and change form. It’s nothing personal. It’s nothing about judgement or “going” anywhere. It’s a simple nod to Life, a deep yes, that this form and personality walking along on human legs for a time will dance through many changes as it continually expresses the Source of All.