A New Decade, tiny mushrooms, time and knowledge.

Thank you, family and friends, near and far, for ringing in my 40s with me over the past weekend. It feels different than I thought it would. I don't feel old. I just feel here. I enjoy each new day more than the last, just as I did in my teens, twenties, thirties. So why would I not want to get older? (We have no choice anyway!)

As days continue, I hope to appreciate small things; accept all outcomes; validate all those with whom I interact; be confident in myself; continue to strengthen my partnership with Catey; and I look forward to more shared experiences with family, hers and mine. 

Here's a picture of a tiny mushroom from my last roll of film. (See the tiny one? Look up and left, into the shadows, and find an even tinier one). These guys showed up on the pear tree in our backyard after the first rains. We hope this doesn't mean bad things for the tree...but it may. But it means good things for the mushroom (which, by the way, I am unable to identify). Because the mushroom is a fruiting body, it is merely a small expression of the entire living organism. It's like an acorn on an invisible tree of mycelia, in a way. The mycelia are alive throughout the tree.

Tiny mushroom on pear, December 2014.

Life comes in so many forms, and we, as humans, have the ability, more than any other form, to appreciate and understand so many of the others. It takes a lifetime to even begin to learn about all the stuff out there, and we spend so much time focused on the Human World. It wasn't so long ago that humans were much closer connected to nature. I think it's important to maintain that connection, at the very least to respect that it's complicated out there. And, know or like it or not, we need lots of things to work out there for our own survival to continue.

With the heavy rain we had in the Bay Area last month, mushrooms have been appearing. I grabbed All that the Rain Promises, and More off my shelf and have been using it to identify a few mushrooms out there, just for fun. My new coworkers at San Francisco Recreation and Parks have taken on the challenge collectively, on our lunch breaks. We've made a few spore prints in our break room.  

This is a hilarious book: the photographs would be enough, but the narrative adds to it. And, if you read closely enough, you'll find some philosophy in this book. I read one of the passages about collecting boletes, or Porcini, mushrooms. There is an essay about Italian-American mushroom hunters. They are old, know the land, and are very slow and methodical at their craft. They are secretive about their locations. The essay calls attention to a way of life that is quite un-American. The definition of success, in the eyes of the Old World mushroom collector, is, by the end of your life, to have lots of time, and lots of knowledge. 

It was a fitting idea to ponder on my 40th.

Many tiny mushrooms on pear, December 2014.

Many tiny mushrooms on pear, December 2014.