Things Ain’t Always What They Seem

Two things about me.

I walk somewhere every day and I almost always carry my camera.

Oh, and I love mushrooms.

So, one day this early fall I was walking in my Eastside neighborhood on the south side of 4th Ave SE. I always take a different route so there is always something new to see. On this day I was about two blocks south of Ralph’s when I saw a unique mushroom peeking out from under a broken piece of sidewalk on somebody’s lawn.

I have literally hundreds of pictures of mushrooms, a lot from around here, and I had never seen one like this. It was bright yellow. I couldn’t believe it. I was sure I had discovered a rare, not known to any other, species.

But as luck would have it, the battery in my camera had been very low, so the camera had stayed home while its energy source rejuvenated in the charger. As a consequence, I adopted a position that I had heard myself say to a few others over time:

”Just take the picture with your eyes and store it in the album it your brain.”

“Right,” I heard myself say. I noted the location.

I thought about that mushroom for hours, even dreamed about it. Next day, I went back, armed with my Canon. It was still there and I shot it. When I looked at it close up through the lens, I noticed a regular pattern of striations on the hood.

I thought, “Wow, this is really different.” I decided that, if I left the mushroom on its own, one of several fates awaited it.

One, it would be stepped on and smooshed by an inattentive passerby or their dog. 

Maybe it would be plucked and carried away by somebody who was intrigued as I was ... they would become internationally recognized as the discoverer of a plant that contained a wondrous cure-all for…cancer...heart disease…toothaches…hair loss…indigestion;

Or, I could take it home, eat it and suffer an awful death.

Or, it would in its own way, like all things do someday, whither and shrivel and die. Lost forever to mankind. I decided to pick it and take it to a mycology guy I know. I knew he would be really excited to see this strange new specimen.

I touched it. I was spongy like a mushroom. “Yes!” I did and then… I picked it.

But I did not discover a plant rich with miracle cure capabilities. It was a yellow, one-third the actual size, rubber golf ball. 

I'll keep looking for the panacea mushroom.