by Nathan Poell
We’re reasonably certain it was last fall’s burn off that sprung them. I’ve been reading up a bit on them lately and a good scorching seems to be a fairly common precursor to a big fruiting. I don’t think we ought to burn again this fall – I’m afraid we might damage the mycelia. But, we’re encouraging all our other neighbors to burn, staggering them year to year. It’s doubtful we’ll get mother lode type fruitings, but hopefully we can get decent ones regularly, as heading out to pick wild morels is such a pain in the ass. (Not nearly as dangerous as it used to be, though.)
We’ve also been gathering and using some psychedelics. As the squash failed last year, I took to helping out at Rob and Heather Montgomery’s farm. There’s not a whole lot one can do when a crop just sputters like that, so I figured I’d make myself productive. By mid-November, after all our harvest tasks had been accomplished, I was working almost full time out there. Feeding and watering the cattle, general maintenance, stuff like that. (Built up some goodwill for us, which made mooching bones and a little bit of meat from them over the winter that much easier.) Anyway, I was out in their pasture to load up the cow patties. Most of them that I saw had clusters of little brown mushrooms poking up out of them. I picked them out and kept them separate from the dung, and asked Rob whether I could keep them. He eyed me for a few seconds, then laughed and said to just be careful, as he knew for a fact that they were pretty potent. Ended up with almost two pounds of them, dry weight! I took a few ounces back to Rob; he was happy to have them. And he was right, they’re phenomenal. It made me want to tie dye things again, but without a good source of dye we’re probably out of luck. They’re psilocybe cubensis, according to the couple guides we consulted (and we did consult them before consuming the shrooms).
We tripped on them once in early January, and Roger went off on how civilization had fundamentally changed in the last four years. That we’d become like mushrooms themselves – growing out of the old, dead civilization. Of course, it was stoned rambling, but he was sincere about it afterwards like he’d glimpsed something really basic about the world.
I have to say that I disagree with him. You and I both know that most mushrooms are saprophytes – years and years of hunting morels with grandma was a pretty good education fungus-wise – but that is emphatically not what this culture of ours is now. In fact, I’d argue that, as a cultural organism, we’ve shifted from being saprophytic to being somehow mycorrhizal or almost truly photosynthetic. For example, think about all the ways in which pop culture and fashion used to simply regenerate itself out of stuff that had fallen out of favor a decade or so prior – I have bell bottoms from both the 70s, early 90s and early 00s as evidence. Things now are so totally punk, not as in shitty music, but as in forging your own way and the do-it-yourself ethic. I guess there were always streaks of that originality in culture prior to everything going dark, but it was all so overshadowed by catty, horrible people trying to sell others on the repackaged, rehashed, rewarmed versions of that original stuff. The irony is almost all gone now, and to be honest, we really like it that way. I guess I just muddled everything here, but of course, neither Roger and me are real biologists – naturalists, yes, but not trained scientists – or cultural critics, so please don’t hold us too accountable for the real appropriateness of the metaphor.
Finally, and this is the other main reason I’m writing you – other than the fact that I love you and want to keep you informed of the general state of affairs around here – we’re pregnant. Well, I am. Hee hee. The long winter, coupled with the fairly meager harvest and relatively plentiful intoxicants meant lots of cuddling was virtually a necessity. Probably too much information for you, but there it is. So yeah, it’s underway. We’re excited, eager, gut-bustingly nervous and all sorts of other emotions all at once right now. Doc says I’m about two months along, so you can expect to be an uncle in late November or early December.
I know you’re worried about the risks we’re taking with this. We know, and we know they’re even greater than the last time we tried. But we’re at a point now where we feel that we can chance this again. Hope springs eternal, right? If not, well, at least we’ve got mushrooms to put in the soup.
Hope you, Pat and little Jeff and Joan weathered the winter well. Best wishes to all of you for a happy, peaceful and productive year.
Love,
Roger and Megan
P.S. - The spore print here is taken from one of the cubies I gathered last fall. Chances are very good that the spores are viable. Just tear off the print, slip it in a well-watered compost or shit pile and I bet you’ll get a decent crop this fall. (Wash them off before you eat them, of course.) Have fun.
To: Jill Bielefeld, Emporia, KS
From: Kyle Oort, Neenah, WI
Jill-
I had my hopes for the opposite, but all the same I anticipated you would respond the way you did. And it’s true that sometimes I leap head first into things that probably could use a bit more thinking through. As you said, it just comes naturally because “we are who we are.” (Not just quoting you here but including the originals to show I really am reading what you wrote!)
“Getting stoned and/or drunk off our collective asses after work and dinner, almost every night it seemed, only to get up at the buttcrack of dawn and work another ten hours the next day.” You can do that here. There’s been such upheaval with regards to the drug culture that nobody even cares whether you grow it, smoke it, whatever. I’ve got a couple plants in back with my little garden, but buy most of it from a dude I knew from high school. Hell of a nice guy. Oh sure, we’d have Stella to take care of, but she’d have friends to play with around here. There are quite a few children in the neighborhood, including that aforementioned dude’s. He’s got a daughter and a son – rambunctious, too, just like Stella sounds. And I’ve got plenty of room now that dad has passed on, God rest him. It’s been confusing to me lately, what to do, what to do with all this space, but it really would be perfect for you and your daughter. Even got a new solar heater installed last year, so it gets plenty warm during the day even if there is no firewood. But there is!
Speaking of which, “What could you do to support not just yourself, but Stella and me as well?” Point well taken, but after some thinking I know that yes I ABSOLUTELY CAN support you both. I’ve figured it out, how to fit into the Double-Star-and-Bar operation. So, it’s a ranch, right? Bunch of cows. Well, “Remember the number of majors you had as an undergrad? I do: four.” Now, remember what one of those majors was? Dairy science. I’ll readily admit that it only lasted a semester, but I picked up sooo much I know that I can make a big impact in the variety of the products the ranch can offer to its customers! There’s really not all that much to it, if I remember correctly. Feed the cattle, milk them and add rennet and salt – which, hey, plenty of cows means you’ll have plenty of rennet available. Put it into molds, then, a few weeks later you’ve got cheese!
Again, the option is yours. If you decide you want to come up this-a-way, just let me know soonest. I know a trip up this fall would be virtually out of the question, but if you wait just a season or so, I can save up a bit and send it down to you to fund your exodus. After all, “It’s really intolerable here.” Alternatively, if it’s still “such an unconscionably large risk” that you can’t take, I think I’ve adequately stated my ability to help you make ends meet down on the ranch.
With high hopes!
Kyle
P.S. - Yes, I re-used the letter you sent, but only because we’re still working on steam operation for the mills. Progress has been slow, and they may have to cut our staff further if there are further cock-ups (pardon) and/or delays, but I think things will work out.
Previous letter
Dear Kyle,
So good to hear from you the other week. I must say that I was a bit surprised by what you proposed. Let me start by telling you that I’m remarkably flattered you feel this way, and that you are a wonderful man and will be a wonderful husband to
someone. But, difficult as it is for me to do this, I must decline your offer. I hope to make clear why in this letter.
First and foremost, I was so sorry to hear your father passed away. I remember meeting him that first summer after we met.
Now, to the heart of the matter, and I’m sorry if this is hard for you to read – and it’s harder for me to write than you can imagine – I feel that you are prone to snap judgment and sometimes really rash decision-making. Granted, you kept yourself to the biological sciences – more or less – but still, you did a lot of jumping around. I remember being so glad you settled on forestry. Summers on the Superior NF’s trail crew. Man, what times. Out for days, maybe weeks on end at spike camps. Not showering for days and days – remember when that used to be fun. Now not bathing, much less showering, is just a way of life (around here, anyway – no doubt you have better access to water up there).
More to the point, I’m not sure you’ve thought this whole thing through. How would you get down here? I know Neenah might be a bit lonely – especially in the winter – but you still work for Georgia-Pacific, or whatever it is now, right? However you’ve managed to hold on to that job, you’d better keep on doing it. Cling to it, because there isn’t anything better down this way. (And, needless to say, there are no forests down this way, no good work for you despite your experience and education.)
I’ve mentioned this before, but Emporia still smells like Satan’s asshole... pardon my language. After six plus years, you’d think all that stuff would have finally been converted to whatever it turns into, you know... found some kind of state where it can’t decompose any further. Maybe that’s the case, in fact, but the odor still permeates the entire city. Have to get a few miles out of town – to the west – to catch a whiff of any real fresh air. The whole area around the railyard and packing plants are simply deserted, you can’t even get close to them without retching. Paper mills might have smelled a touch worse than the slaughterhouses before, but I’ll bet they’re like a spring bouquet in comparison these days. Especially now, at the height of summer. And we’re accustomed to it out here – as habituated as you can get to the smell of tons of rotting meat, anyway. I don’t mean this to be discouraging to you, but it’s just a statement of fact that the whole town smells real bad.
They’ve reconstituted a bit of the ranching out here, from some of the cows that weren’t killed before the lights went out. I was really lucky to get on as one of the tutors at the Double-Star-and-Bar ranch, which has been doing about as good as any of the others. I kind of had an in with them, as Stella’s father is the son of the owner of the ranch. Hadn’t filled you in on that previously. Never meant to mislead you at all about anything. I’d known him forever, it seems, from before college. We’re not together in any real sense of the word. The desperation I felt after the lights went out and I couldn’t get out of town again... it was a mistake I’d not repeat given a second chance... I don’t want to revisit it in my mind more than necessary.
Regardless, the upshot is that they can’t really fire me without there being a big stink – haha! – and I can raise Stella and tutor her along with the other kids at the ranch, so she’ll get a modicum of an education. At the same time, I’m pretty much tied to the ranch. They put me and Stella up, feed us and make sure we’ve at least got clothes and a couple creature comforts. Their fortunes are my fortune, now, for better or worse. And, there’s been real serious talk of the ranch moving to an entirely different city. Moving the whole damn operation so it’ll be closer to a reliable source of water. Martin and his father have had scouts out looking for good routes on which to move a herd, but no one’s told me where to, of course. Might be up to Council Grove, might be to Burlington, or even further afield. Just can’t say where we’ll be MOVING ON to.
As for the suggestion of Stella and I moving up to Neenah, well I just can’t entertain the thought of it. I have a fair idea of where you’re located, but no reliable transportation, much less any money or goods with which to barter our way up north. And even if we were able to and did get there, what if you and she – hell, you and me, for that matter – don’t get along? She’s a... lively and strong-willed child. Not her fault, really, just the situation she’s in and the fact that her father and I... well, that . And the winters up there. I know you’re connected with a good source of firewood, but the climate would be such a change from what we’re used to...
It’s just . It’s one I can’t take. I just can’t.
I really and truly don’t mean to sound hostile towards you. We’ve always been close, and I’m fond of you – all the fun we had at Carleton, reading your letters and writing back. It’s just that... I feel like I need to reiterate these things, as you sometimes seem to not listen (or read) as closely as you ought. Regardless, do write back please, and soon. Again, I enjoy corresponding with you, reminiscing about the “good old days” and learning of your latest adventures up in Wisconsin.
Best wishes, Kyle. Take care of yourself.
Your friend,
Jill Bielefeld
To: Martha Klundt, Lindsborg, KS
From: Rod Doornan, Eau Claire, WI
February 4th, 20+4
Dear Martha and Kids,
Hello from Wisconsin!
I’m writing this right now so I have it ready to go first thing when the courier shows up, which will probably be mid-March. There hasn’t been all that much to do for the better part of four months except sleep, cook, eat, sit by the fire and nap or read, and occasionally venture outside to scrape off the solar heater windows, snag more wood for the stove and scoop up some snow for making water. Well, OK, all that does take up quite a bit of time, but I made a damn big batch of stew earlier this week and have been eating it straight out of the pot for the past three days, and not cooking has freed things up. Haven’t made such good stew in a long time. I’m proud of it, actually, and have attached the recipe for you. See, when it comes right down to it we men can take good care of ourselves.
And damn, yeah, those forays outside have been more and more occasional as the winter has progressed. It has just been so cold lately. It’s been a slightly above-average year, snow-wise, and there hasn’t been even one warmish streak since mid-November. So everything’s just piled up outside. So quiet now that you wouldn’t believe it. It’s to the point that I don’t even look at the thermometer on the kitchen window when I get up in the morning. I know that little red knob will still be stuck at the bottom.
I know I haven’t written you for a while, but I’ve had reason. The Chippewa flooded last May, took almost half the town with it. Most fortunate was the fact that only a handful of people around Eau Claire drowned – maybe half a dozen. But it almost ruined the mill we’d just finished building the summer prior. It had been in operation for all of nine months. Sure saw some use in that time, especially the other fall. One of the milliners swore he saw smoke coming off of it after a few really intense days in early September. The good thing is that the millstone didn’t get washed downstream, and the basic structure was still more or less intact. Just needed to clean it all up really good, replace the few lost parts – the water wheel, mainly – and wooden parts and get the mechanisms pieced back together and put into in running condition again. Easier said than done, of course – it took about a half-dozen of us all summer and then a bit into fall to get it all back into working order. What with all the rain that spring there was a hell of a good crop to process, and most of it got put through in good order (before the mice got all of it). Bad part of it was that we weren’t able to get any beer down for the Octoberfest this year. Yeah, we still celebrate it – how else are we going to get our rocks off before everything freezes shut up here? Well, we did have plenty of cranberry/maple brandy, so it wasn’t a total loss. I didn’t feel much like drinking last fall, anyway. I sure hope we have a decent crop this coming year to feed into the mill. (And that it doesn’t flood here again!)
Haven’t heard back from Vernie, have you? I still
, for the life of me, can’t imagine why he’d just up and leave like that. Not that I don’t take you at your word. And, for the record, he’s not my brother any longer. I have had no indication that he would do so, but if he shows up here, he’ll get turned away. Forget how cold it is, he’ll not be allowed in this house. If he comes back to you, then and only then will I welcome him back as a brother. Until that point, he is persona non grata up in my neck of the woods. (Yes, persona non grata. All this winter reading is paying off in the vocabulary department.)