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(Photo by Barb Vonnegut)

chapter 18

Mushrooms

Since I always do what I always do, I must be doing it again.

I started hunting wild mushrooms when I was allowed to get up and move around after an operation to save my left eye, a consequence of the twenty-seven-inning August softball madness. My retina detached in protest of my being dehydrated and fifty-two and running around crashing into people. That was the year after I shattered two bones in my hand. It was like I couldn’t take a hint. A week after the operation I was allowed up and could walk around but was supposed to only look down. So I became a hunter of wild mushrooms.

When they were drawing up the medicines to keep me quiet for the operation, and I’d been twelve years without a drink or a drug, I knew the little syringe was fentanyl, a very pure, highly addictive narcotic.

“How much do you weigh?”

“Three hundred twenty-seven pounds.”

“You carry it well.”

I was surprised that I didn’t enjoy it more. It was sort of bright and giggly, but I felt like I was being made to stay inside and watch cartoons on a sunny day when I wanted to go out and play. It didn’t help being in a hospital and knowing they were poking and cutting my eye, and that I had just signed a piece of paper that said I knew I might go blind.

When I needed operations on my knees the orthopedist offered me the option of doing it under local anesthesia.

“You’re kidding, right?”

I was looking forward to being unconscious.

There’s a moment right after you swallow the first bite of a new mushroom that you are 99+ percent sure is okay when the less-than-1 percent chance that it’s not looms large. There’s a halo of attention around eating a new mushroom that can last for days.

On a spring walk with my dog, Ella, I noticed a dozen or so black morel mushrooms under a tree in the yard of a house about a mile from ours. There was a car in the driveway and a light on. Before I knew what I was doing, I was gathering up the mushrooms and stuffing them into my pockets and the dog-poop bag I usually bring along. My dog was whining and looking around nervously. Like she doesn’t cause me plenty of embarrassment pooping wherever she likes, chasing after other dogs.

I could have come back at night. What if the people at home looked out and maybe even recognized me? Maybe I was even their pediatrician? Whether you know the people or not, knocking on their door to ask if you can take mushrooms they probably didn’t know were there seems too strange. I grabbed the mushrooms and took off quickly but not so quickly as to attract attention. I found several more morels on my way home. They were delicious.

Once you’ve risked death or social embarrassment by eating something and it tastes good, it strongly rewards all the steps that went before so that time, place, shape, color, and weather all acquire richness and meaning.

It is much more important to not eat a poisonous mushroom than it is to eat an edible one.

—David Arora, Mushrooms Demystified

I read the sentence over and over. I can’t figure out exactly where the error lies.

“I think I’m getting the hang of it,” said my wife, picking up another mushroom. This was prior to the unfortunate incident. I was gratified that she was taking an interest in my hobby. You can spend a lifetime not seeing mushrooms, but once you see them, you will always see them. It’s not something you can just stop. Seeing mushrooms takes place somewhere between the brain stem and the cortex. My head will snap around sometimes when I’m driving, and I’ll realize that I must have seen something that looked like a mushroom and I wonder which one.

Once you notice mushrooms, it’s hard to not want to do something about them, even if it’s only to know what their name is. But eventually knowing about them leads to eating them. I was surprised to read descriptions of the smell, texture, and taste of some of the most thoroughly unappealing, unappetizing, and even deadly poisonous mushrooms. There are some very dedicated people, a good deal crazier than me, walking around