Running for Mushrooms
Running for Mushrooms, an essay
November 2020, printed by Boston Mycological Club Magazine, print, by Natalie Bowers
I slip my black, dusted sneakers on, open the door to feel the chilled morning air and step outside. From my house, there’s two miles of road until Bradley Palmer State Park. I approach the road slowly and as my muscles warm to the rhythm of my movement, I feel hopeful, excited. There are mere minutes before I enter the sanctuary of nature and shed this external, defensive shell that has started to, again, feel heavy and false. My feet bring me towards the place where I connect my entire being with the forest, and like the trees, join other life forms wiser than us.
My only regret is that my feet are not calloused enough to go barefoot. Because if I could place my naked foot on the ground, I might intuit the traces of the mycorrhizal network and be led straight to the ethereal fruiting bodies that most never discover. For now, my eyes, ears and olfactory senses will have to do and I have only to be forever grateful that I was one of the lucky ones who have been called to this geomancing tribe.
In this connected state, the mushrooms present like mystics. Largely shrouded from plain view yet visible enough to be detected, they play an important and essential part in the scene. They have a gravitas that pulls me towards them as I pass. But I didn’t always notice them. My ‘Mushroom Vision’ has been honed through years of listening to the forest, hundreds of miles connecting with nature, and possibly one pivotal life moment that finally placed fungi in the foreground for me.
Two weeks after we moved to the North Shore in May 2017, my mother fell ill with small cell lung cancer. It is quite possible that all mother-daughter relationships are complex, as this was the case for me. When she fell ill and then was placed on hospice later in the year, my runs became elongated moments of expressed grief and fear of impending loss. The forests heard and consoled my cries, and sometimes screams. I ran to forget and I ran to endure the utter devastation that was darkening my life. I was about to lose my matriarchal creator, I knew it and I was powerless. During this time, my need for the forest was more profound. On my usual trail runs, I would stop to let grief overtake and there beside me would be a lone Lepiota or a small group of Chlorophyllum sp. sticking out of decomposing leaves showing me its delicate and gilled underside. In these moments, the presence of these mushrooms made me feel as if I were not alone. They assuaged my fears and helped me to cope with my reality by presenting a gentle stillness.
After I resigned myself to the sadness of my mother’s absence, the trail running kept bringing me to the mushrooms. The intersection of this faster paced movement compared to the slower process of foraging is an experiential crossroads as rich as the forest itself. The running provides the forager with more area covered and an opportunity to scout on a macro scale. General characteristics of the land can be assessed, triaged and catalogued for future, more specific hunting. Oftentimes, I will run five miles or so into the heart of the land, spot a promising place that might be diverse lowland or highland forest, note a vague scent of mushrooms in the air, then return for further inspection with nets, baskets and knife the next day.
I bring my phone to take photographs of unfamiliar species because it’s not practical to carry the entire mushroom kit on a long run. What little space I can afford for carrying things is already reserved for energy gels and water, and besides that, the poor mushrooms wouldn’t survive the journey; trust me, I’ve tried. Sometimes, if I see a particularly seductive display, I’ll stop running for a little while to hang out with them and take in their features. I’ll spend the next mile or so savouring my time with them and reviewing the moment in my mind, committing the details of the experience to memory for further research.
Trail running is different than road running. Asphalt is more predictable and the body can turn on a physical auto-pilot that is not possible on trails. The average number of footsteps per mile on asphalt is about a third of the number of footsteps required to navigate a non linear trail. You burn more calories because more muscle groups are being fired up as different grades and elevations are navigated. The difference in physique between trail runners and road runners is visible; road runners are thinner while trail runners have more muscle mass. With trail running you must remain hyper-present to protect from rockheads or protruding roots that can easily catch your feet. This is an ultimate connection to the environment. The level of information that the body has to respond to feels like a holy state of existence. For me, I feel alone and detached on the road, but connected on the trails somehow to something bigger, perhaps connected to everything.
Trail running in itself is exciting and a little feral, but when you marry it with mushroom hunting, the hybrid activity is supremely stimulating. You have to keep your senses alive and open to possibilities, and you have to be prepared to go ‘off track’ and explore what are lesser travelled, disquieting options. In this unknown territory, you have to stay alert and try to recall the paths you’ve taken otherwise get lost for three hours.
However, getting lost in the woods has its own unique magic, and I speak with much experience in this arena. Some of my most magnificent encounters with nature have been while lost with no knowledge of how to get back to the point of origin. It has been during these times that I became most acquainted with the trails, sometimes forced out of desperation to learn new pathways back to the parking lot or loop extensions and short cuts. It is also when the forest seems to find me and speaks openly, presenting the most rewarding fungal sightings.
As it is with hiking, the deeper the trails take me away from civilization, the louder the cacophony of forest sounds become. I can hear the wind blowing through the canopy, the harmonious chirpings and twitterings of birds. I can also hear the sound of crickets and smaller winged creatures crossing my path. I hear the creaks of the trees and the trickle of flowing water nearby. The sounds of my feet and breath fall to the background while this wondrous symphony fills my ears. As my ears adjust, my eyes again become new and I see the forest differently as it passes all around me. Now, the colors of every leaf and bark become poems, and my focus is led to the ground. The abundant life of decay is thickly spread with a glorious texture that my eyes devour, and soon, the mushrooms become visible.
The first couple of times I remember having no problem just running past them, but as my sightings increased, so did the strength of my desire to stop. What were these fantastic dirt docents trying to say to me? I began noticing what I now know to be buxom Russulas and Boletes, and then thinking about them later in the day, searching the internet for information on each unfamiliar species. When the internet failed to provide enough detail, that is when I purchased books. Then came the microscope and the membership to our esteemed Club.
My favorite mushroom/running season is the Fall. During this time, there are such an abundance of species that it is almost hard to keep up. While in the forest, I savor my gaze upon them and employ all of my senses in the process, like one might consume art.
My first Fall season yielded some magnificent finds. There was the beauteous discovery of my first polypore, the Bondarzewia Berkeleyi. As I turned a bend and my eyes followed a strong beam of sunlight coming down from an opening in the canopy and falling on a patch between a pine tree and an old oak tree, there was the grand floret. It was such a superb display that the vision alone forced my body to immediately stop, gasp a “whoah!” and behold the sight of its body. This same season, I discovered an amazing display of bright orange fruiting by Laetiporus sulphureus, so fresh and warm orange; although the sun was not directly on it, it felt to me as if the body was producing its own sunlight and emitting it! I was also introduced, again and again, to the Calvatea Gigantea species of puffballs and its cute little cousin the Scleroderma citrinum (pigskin poison puffball). The delight in beholding the comedic, almost ridiculous presentation of humongous white balls popping out of so many meadows among green lush grass makes me smile just thinking about it. Then came the abundance of yellow Amanita muscarias underneath coniferous trees. They seemed to be everywhere I looked. Their yellow-orange caps and large size are striking, the stuff of fairytales.
In a short period of time, my happenstance mushroom spotting transformed into an active searching for them. I started to design my runs based on my initial assessment of where I thought the mushrooms would be; my runs morphed into a means to an end, and that end was finding mushrooms.
Over these last three years, my ‘Mushroom Vision’ has improved a little bit each year. Last year, I started to study tree identification so that on sight, I might identify the type of trees which would lead to possible mushroom sightings. Evidence of my advancement in learning has gradually resulted in recognizing species of fungus that I had either not noticed before or just did not come across. The more camouflaged species, like Craterellus fallax, have begun to introduce themselves to me. With every new species I discover, my interest and passion for mushrooms grows.
I am left with a notion that, when it comes to mushrooms, in order to hear something, one has to first listen. Whether you are running, walking or riding, if you are not listening to the forest, these seemingly silent sirens may just go undetected. Why should they care if you see them or not? I also think that, despite my years of running, I had not been able to see the mushrooms because I was not listening.
I continue to construct my runs to include the lesser travelled trails and up steep slopes and down rocky faces, my inner ear always on alert. However, I somehow know that no matter how hard I seek, I am not in total control of the journey. They lead, you follow.
**Natalie Bowers, a resident of the North Shore, MA, is currently training for her first 50k trail race, the Stonecat, at Willowdale State Park, November 2nd.