Mushrooms and More

      After the autumn rains along the mountainous coasts of California and the Pacific Northwest, billions of mushrooms emerge from the lush earth.  They burst through the wet soil and populate the forest floor, they grow out of tree trunks and branches and fallen logs.  Colonies of toadstools are home to smurf families and hukka-smoking caterpillars.  Radiant fire-bellied newts lumber across their endemic world of dripping moss and dead leaves, and they will pee on your hand if you pick them up.  If you tromp and crawl long enough through the saturated vegetation, mushrooms will begin to pop out of your ears and nostrils, the fibrous mycelium will grow out of your skin pores just as it (probably) grows on other strange planets in some far-off corner of our galaxy where creatures of indescribable, only speculative and imaginative, nature and physical characteristics roam ancient space forests and float through watery seas.  As you lay down and die in the forest – your body finally doing something useful as it decomposes into the hungry earth – you may refuse to accept the fact that you should have done more with your life and that the world will not adjust its operations to make accommodations to postpone your death.  Yet, the Earth will keep on spinning without you, ya filthy animal.

Awesome presentation by Paul Stamets: