Out for coffee
Back around 10
This isthe note I find on Richard’s front door when I arrive around 9 a.m. I look to the bag in my hand, then examine the woods around me.
Richard’s new house is at the redefined edge of the woods, the old house and previously standing woods knocked down by a tornado over the summer.
In a roundabout way, that tornado is the whole reason I’m here. It’s a perfect storm. Tornadoes and lightning create ideal conditions for new mushroom growth. When Richard called me saying he’d discovered a potential new strain of mycelium, I canceled my fall semester plans to come back to Foxboro and study it.
Not like teaching at the university is making me millions anyway. It makes me about $1,000 per three credit hour class, plus gives me fifty hours a week of work and office hours where kids cosplaying as adults cry about their A minuses. Luckily, I’m still living off the trust left in my parents’ wake when I was a baby, though that won’t last forever.
If Richard and I find something significant, I could apply for grant funding to study it.
Richard offered to feed and house me the whole time I’m here, and I don’t need much else. He said to consider it the Dr. Hines Fund.
So, here I am, Dr. Johnson studying under Dr. Hines, two mycologists in the field.
If I’ve got my old friend Richard, the woods, and time, I’ve got what I need.
I return to my car, the rust bucket’s door creaking like any time you open it might be the last time, and toss my bag inside. I grab my favorite foraging basket from the backseat, throw on a baseball cap to protect my hair from ticks, and head into the woods.
Some of my favorite commonplace mushrooms show their sunny faces just a few steps into the forest.Trametes versicolor, turkey tail, this variety with a hint of blue in its colorful bands.Armillaria mellea, the honey mushroom, are in a long path of clusters above the creek bed. I remember that same trail of honey mushrooms from when I was a kid, spending every hour I could spare tromping these woods.
But halfway up an oak tree, I spot one of my favorites that is harder to find:Piptoporous betulinus, a birch polypore. They have a variety of medicinal uses—including as a bandage—and I haven’t found a good specimen in a while. The tree’s going to be hard to get up, but I’ve got my thick overalls on today. They probably won’t rip if I climb it bear-style, shimmying up the tree. I put my knife where it’s easy to reach on my outer hip.
But first, I need to get some b-roll.
Yes, I gave in to the internet’s whims, and now I’m a bit of a mushroom influencer of sorts. I resisted for a long time, but for a while, I dated what you’d call a “mushroom celebrity.” He doesn’t have a PhD like me, but he’s spent enough timeat conferences, studying, and bushwhacking that he knows his stuff. We met in undergrad, where we were both botany majors. I thought he was cute, but kind of a pain in the ass. When our paths crossed again at a conference a few years out of school, we hit it off. And before we fell apart, I became moderately famous on his channel.
When we broke up, I made my own social media accounts. I now have the same number of followers as he does, thank you very much.
Another point in the “I don’t need a man” bucket.
I position my phone on the ground, facing the tree in question, and hitch my boot to a knot on the bottom of it. Then I start my ascent.
Pole dancing classes during undergrad were worth their weight in gold. I can climb the skinniest little trees with no issue. This oak’s a little more challenging. It’s fortunately not full-size or I’d never be able to get my thighs around it. My quads strain with the climb, but it’s just a few more pulls before I’m at the coveted polypore.
I pull my knife from my hip pocket and flip open the blade, sawing at the woody base of the mushroom.
Then, a crashing sound moves my way at an alarming speed. I go into lizard brain mode. Is it a tree? No, the tree would have fully fallen by now. Is it an animal? Definitely, but what kind?
It’s getting closer, and closer. Is that . . . two legs? I drop the mushroom into my basket below, right as my legs give way and the figure appears.
Red hair. Broad shoulders. More muscles than I can count.
Brown eyes I know all too well.
I fall right onto Brodie Campbell, my first kiss and my worst enemy.
TWO
BRODIE
My head is killing me.
My vision is blurry, but it looks like some nature-goddess woman is leaning over me. Her black wavy hair forms sheets around her face, but her eyes are obscured by a . . . baseball cap? I guess witches come in all flavors these days.
I gurgle out some sort of sound. She shushes me, then lifts a large knife.
