The Allure of Fungi by Alison Pouliot

Author:Alison Pouliot
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781486308590
Publisher: CSIRO Publishing

The days grew shorter as the Australian autumn drew to a close. It was time to switch hemispheres and go north where fungi would be emerging through the warming earth. I reckoned I could squeeze in a final hour in the bush before submitting to 20 more cramped in an airborne titanium capsule. Veering off the highway, I slid down a familiar bush track. A swarm of black clouds loomed ominously in the rearview mirror. I parked, pulled on my coat and headed up the hill, cutting into the wind. A gnarly old rhubarb bolete (Boletellus obscurecoccineus), like the ruddy nose of a seasoned drinker, just managed to stand upright on its wilting stipe. Dozens of flattened caps of Laccaria lay like scattered copper coins among a tangle of rusting barbed wire. I wondered how I could contemplate leaving while there were still so many fungi to meet. However, the temperature was dropping daily and soon they would turn inward for the winter. A sharp crack of splitting wood caused me to look up and I spotted a lone figure ahead, dragging branches into a wheelbarrow. I recognised the strong but stooped and gumbooted profile instantly. My eyes smarted in the wind and I called out, but my voice was whipped away and Dorothy didn’t hear me. I headed towards her, resisting a closer look at a bedraggled Amanita, its frilled petticoat of an annulus in tatters. ‘Alison!’ Dorothy cried with outstretched arms as she saw me approaching. In her wheelbarrow lay a pile of branches scalloped with the blue and grey striped arcs of the rainbow fungus (Trametes versicolor). ‘You’re not campin’ out here I hope, Alison? There’s gonna be a big blow tonight. I’m just gettin’ a bit of kindlin’ in before it hits. I can’t bear to see all this good wood lyin’ around goin’ to rot out here in the forest.’ I longingly admired the fungal ecosystem in her wheelbarrow. I wished I could surreptitiously toss some of this fungus food back into the forest and wheel the rest into my next workshop, but Dorothy needed to keep warm. Dorothy updated me on recent happenings at the farm as we watched a raven ride a gust over the ridge. As the first raindrops fell we pushed her wonky wheelbarrow back to her old truck and hurled the wood in the back. I hugged Dorothy goodbye then gunned it down the highway to the airport, imagining the crackle of rainbow fungi in her fire and the sizzle of ‘back paddock mushies’ in her pan.

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