I have often asked myself why a simple forty-five-minute walk can induce such moments of profound elation; why a shooting ray of tawny afternoon light striking a leaf, a spider's thread, or a hovering insect can hold my attention longer than a good sentence in a book. My response can only be that at these moments I forget my dominant place in the natural world and view myself as part of the forest itself–an element of nature composed of the same fiber and liquid as the natural objects surrounding me. Within the time from the day's first light to its last, I become one with the budding plants, the developing leaves, and the ripping growth of nuts and saplings. Yet within the landscape of this natural world, I’ve always had a special fascination for the most mysterious and fleeting of all fruits, the mushroom.
