Chapter 3: Metaphor
A spore is the beginning of a love story.
When a mushroom drops its spores, a new universe is birthed.
A billion microscopic hopes and dreams descend from its gills, sweeping across the land in search of moisture and solitude. Like a seed, a mushroom spore first craves darkness. A place to disappear and wait. A place to establish territory. A place to call its own.
When the conditions are just right, the spore sends out thin filament-like structures called hyphae into the soil to seek nutrients and water. The hyphae spread, branching in different directions, and soon form a mass called mycelium.
Mycelium can be thought of as roots. She is still young, this little bundle of mycelium. But she’s a curious one.
With spindly fingers she moves deeper and deeper into the earth, breaking down organic matter, seeking, spreading, and grounding the thickening mass that will soon bloom into beautiful full grown mushrooms.
But not yet.
She must keep feeding, growing stronger, broader, deeper. She follows the nutrients. She follows the moisture. If she is lucky, she has found herself coming-of-age beneath the shadow of a tree—or better yet, a canopy of trees—for this young soon-to-be mushroom will always prefer the mystery of shadow.
And so will her mate.
A day will soon come when her mycelium fingertips brush against those of another. A stranger. Yet somehow, there is familiarity. Their mycelium webs enter one another’s space. They tangle. Merge. They become a singular unit, mightier than they could ever have been alone. They are indistinguishable now, these two love birds, as they fuse, sharing nutrients and water in the darkness.
But one cannot live in darkness forever. Our little spore has grown up. She’s met someone. They’ve blended their lives, their bodies, their masses. And the brilliant light of the sun is hard to resist when you’re ready to discover the wonders of the world.
And watch your children grow.
Her mycelium body begins to tighten and compress within the soil, and she sends one little “pin” into the world. This is the moment she’s been waiting for. At this very moment, she and her partner are no longer a mycelium mass. They are a fruiting body, ripe and mature. This pin looks like a dot at first, indistinguishable from the earth around it. But the pin will grow, followed by another. More and more will soon emerge. These fledging mushrooms do not seek the sun, as would a plant; they are inspired by it.
As the mushrooms develop, their stems lengthen and thicken. Their caps, once gangly pins, are now fleshy and bulbous. Curvaceous and meaty. And there’s one more thing. Born weeks ago from a mere spore, these mushrooms are now dense with spores of their very own, packed neatly within the protective flesh of their caps.
And beneath that, holding all the spores inside, a veil. A mushroom’s veil is nothing more than a curtain of tender skin that stretches from the stem to the edges of the cap. If a mushroom were a human female, the veil would be her belly. As the mushroom’s cap burgeons into the dappled light beneath the shade of a tree, growing larger by the minute, the veil is drawn even tighter. If she were a human female, she may be moaning now. Grimacing into that dappled light, the sun no longer a comfort. Her flesh contracting, pulsing, laboring. She may be breathing in through her nose and out through her mouth. She may be crawling on her hands and knees begging for it to be over.
And it will be.
Soon.
A mushroom’s offspring may have been conceived through underground mycelium connections, forged from shared nutrients in the darkness, but they will be born into the light.
When she can hold back no more, when her veil is stretched so tight that it is nearly transparent, our mushroom is ready to give birth. Unlike a human female (thank god), her taut stomach begins to tear away as the veil pulls from the cap to lay limp against the stem, worn and depleted. It’s job is now done.
The job of our mushroom is nearly done as well.
The other mushrooms growing from her mycelium mass are undergoing their own labors and births beside her. All around her. And like them, she will keep her spores safe beneath her cap for as long as they need her protection.
But spores are curious creatures, and before long, they will spill from her cap. A new universe. A billion microscopic hopes and dreams descending from her gills, sweeping across the land in search of moisture and solitude. These spores, like their mother and father before them, crave darkness. A place to disappear and wait. A place to establish territory. A place to call their own.
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