Michelle So writes a bi-weekly column on campus nature and its absurdities.
I saw a tan clump of mushroom caps sprouting from a clean-shaven ash by Prospect Street, up by the gardens. The clouds parted at a quarter past ten and the sun gave the rain-cleansed air a marine shimmer. It had been ages since I had last seen mushrooms in such numbers. Barely a week old, I would presume. They were frayed and shredded at the edges; there was no reason for them to be in this state. The fairies came by and threw a bash, and in their rush to leave, left scrapes in the edges.
I had soup as a child, soured by tomatoes and spiced with powder packets. I was delighted when my child-sized ladle returned with sauce-plumped shiitake, and balked when it returned with stringy enoki. My teeth gaps find their measly stalks magnetic, and I would much rather savor my dish than fish for stray fibers.
Fungi, though, are fascinating. I thought of the snow caps of the native agaric types. The syrup-soaked “coral” types of healing soups. I thought of the little bulbs that popped when lightly tapped. These in front of me with their shag-bowls were like wigs for fairies. The child would make a hat of the upturned daisy, filled with drafts of pollen dust and hanging bangs. It’s the eleventh hour of the year, and it is the season of bald caps. Inverted bowls are a recurring pattern. Acorn caps, mushroom caps, hollowed wood galls. A small being with a polished spherical head surely ran through these woods and turned these woods into her wig store. What else would nature fit into her half-formed thimbles than the scalps of her balding babes?
