The Story of the Mushroom
Here’s a story I heard on my trip. Not sure if I heard someone tell it or if it was just the voices in my head but does the authorship of any given folk tale really matter? No, no it doesn’t. I’ve written it down to the best of my memory but I may clean it up if I remember more details. For now, I hope you enjoy this fungal fable.
Long before the age that mankind walked the earth or surfed the web the planet was completely devoid of natural cover. It was a naked orb of cooling rocks separated by vast oceans. Onto this world two Gardeners were dumped by the Creator. These two were given the task of covering the naked rock not only for practical reasons but for reasons of taste. In short, they were told to cover the earth and make it look like a nice place that the Lords of the Universe might like to stop off at for a cup of tea or perhaps a belt or two. The Gardeners were told to think ahead as the Creator might like to add lunch service a few eons down the road.
The two Gardeners set about their task by first covering some of the rock with a substance called “soil” that could support and nourish living entities that they named “plants”. These plants were diverse in form and function; some could be eaten by the Lords of the Universe should the Creator get that lunch service straightened out; some held the soil and would become the home of small creatures called “animals” (who don’t figure in this story – they hadn’t been invented yet) and some grew tall and could be used to shelter the Gardeners as they got older and the world got colder (they weren’t immortal beings, just long-lived skilled tradesmen who subcontracted to the Creator).
The Gardeners spent a lot of time making a lot of different kind of trees and as those trees grew and spread their seed some moved south and created their own families of trees in the warmer climes and never returned to their northern origins. Other trees stayed nearer to where they had been created, and this is why you have different trees in different parts of the world.
After several eons of covering the surface of the Earth with plants, the Gardeners grew old and passed on leaving behind their husks. Some of the trees lovingly buried the Gardeners and maintained a beautiful plot commemorating them and thanking them for bringing the plant kingdom into the world. But there was one needy tree who had the idea that it could become more powerful by draining any life-force that the Gardeners might’ve left behind in their husks. This was a tree that was resentful of the way that it had been made by the Gardeners and so had migrated far away. It only headed back North when it heard that the Gardeners would not be alive much longer (trees were a bit more mobile in the old days before animals took over the walking bit).
This tree came back North and drained the small bits of life-force out of the husks that the Gardeners left behind when they passed on. However, in doing so the tree had to keep burrowing underneath them to get what it needed and by the time it had absorbed all of what it thought it needed it had become a new kind of plant, on that lived almost entirely underground with only a few tendrils that would break the surface here and there.
Thus, the first mushroom colony was born.
Over the ages different types of mushrooms evolved but they all share one trait: they lurk below ground until there is a passing on of a tree or even a whole forest and then they arrive to take what they need, release their seeds, and then depart. However they must continue live almost entirely below ground to survive in this manner. They will never be as close to the sky and therefore to the ultimate home of the Creator and the Gardeners as any other plant. Instead they live in a damp, smelly subterranean world of their own creation.
And periodically bits of them get cut off and used on pizzas, sauces and salads. Yum!
Long before the age that mankind walked the earth or surfed the web the planet was completely devoid of natural cover. It was a naked orb of cooling rocks separated by vast oceans. Onto this world two Gardeners were dumped by the Creator. These two were given the task of covering the naked rock not only for practical reasons but for reasons of taste. In short, they were told to cover the earth and make it look like a nice place that the Lords of the Universe might like to stop off at for a cup of tea or perhaps a belt or two. The Gardeners were told to think ahead as the Creator might like to add lunch service a few eons down the road.
The two Gardeners set about their task by first covering some of the rock with a substance called “soil” that could support and nourish living entities that they named “plants”. These plants were diverse in form and function; some could be eaten by the Lords of the Universe should the Creator get that lunch service straightened out; some held the soil and would become the home of small creatures called “animals” (who don’t figure in this story – they hadn’t been invented yet) and some grew tall and could be used to shelter the Gardeners as they got older and the world got colder (they weren’t immortal beings, just long-lived skilled tradesmen who subcontracted to the Creator).
The Gardeners spent a lot of time making a lot of different kind of trees and as those trees grew and spread their seed some moved south and created their own families of trees in the warmer climes and never returned to their northern origins. Other trees stayed nearer to where they had been created, and this is why you have different trees in different parts of the world.
After several eons of covering the surface of the Earth with plants, the Gardeners grew old and passed on leaving behind their husks. Some of the trees lovingly buried the Gardeners and maintained a beautiful plot commemorating them and thanking them for bringing the plant kingdom into the world. But there was one needy tree who had the idea that it could become more powerful by draining any life-force that the Gardeners might’ve left behind in their husks. This was a tree that was resentful of the way that it had been made by the Gardeners and so had migrated far away. It only headed back North when it heard that the Gardeners would not be alive much longer (trees were a bit more mobile in the old days before animals took over the walking bit).
This tree came back North and drained the small bits of life-force out of the husks that the Gardeners left behind when they passed on. However, in doing so the tree had to keep burrowing underneath them to get what it needed and by the time it had absorbed all of what it thought it needed it had become a new kind of plant, on that lived almost entirely underground with only a few tendrils that would break the surface here and there.
Thus, the first mushroom colony was born.
Over the ages different types of mushrooms evolved but they all share one trait: they lurk below ground until there is a passing on of a tree or even a whole forest and then they arrive to take what they need, release their seeds, and then depart. However they must continue live almost entirely below ground to survive in this manner. They will never be as close to the sky and therefore to the ultimate home of the Creator and the Gardeners as any other plant. Instead they live in a damp, smelly subterranean world of their own creation.
And periodically bits of them get cut off and used on pizzas, sauces and salads. Yum!
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