are we mushrooming???

[Michael Herman]

i read this introduction to an article about mushrooms and other fungi
today, and of you all, us all, and what we do.  any of this sound anything
like your experience in open space?

more of this is posted at
http://www.thesunmagazine.org/issues/386/going_underground.  the whole
article is seven pages long, was sent to me scanned rather than as text, but
i could forward to anyone who mails to me directly.

enjoy...

michaelh

----
Going Underground Paul Stamets On The Vast, Intelligent Network Beneath Our
Feet*by* Derrick Jensen

*For several years people from different places and backgrounds kept
recommending the same oddly titled book to me: Paul Stamets's *Mycelium
Running: How Mushrooms Can Help Save the
World<http://www.powells.com/partner/32206/biblio/1580085792>
*(Ten Speed Press). Everyone told me it was one of the most mind-bending
texts they'd ever read. With so many recommendations, I perversely hesitated
to pick the book up, and when I finally did, I prepared myself to be
disappointed. *

*I wasn't. Stamets fundamentally changed my view of nature — in particular,
fungi: yeasts, mushrooms, molds, the whole lot of them.*

*When we think of fungi, most of us picture mushrooms, those slightly
mysterious, potentially poisonous denizens of dark, damp places. But a
mushroom is just the fruit of the mycelium, which is an underground network
of rootlike fibers that can stretch for miles. Stamets calls mycelia the
"grand disassemblers of nature" because they break down complex substances
into simpler components. For example, some fungi can take apart the
hydrogen-carbon bonds that hold petroleum products together. Others have
shown the potential to clean up nerve-gas agents, dioxins, and plastics.
They may even be skilled enough to undo the ecological damage pollution has
wrought. *

*Since reading *Mycelium Running*, I've begun to consider the possibility
that mycelia know something we don't. Stamets believes they have not just
the ability to protect the environment but the intelligence to do so on
purpose. His theory stems in part from the fact that mycelia transmit
information across their huge networks using the same neurotransmitters that
our brains do: the chemicals that allow us to think. In fact, recent
discoveries suggest that humans are more closely related to fungi than we
are to plants. *

*Almost since life began on earth, mycelia have performed important
ecological roles: nourishing ecosystems, repairing them, and sometimes even
helping create them. The fungi's exquisitely fine filaments absorb nutrients
from the soil and then trade them with the roots of plants for some of the
energy that the plants produce through photosynthesis. No plant community
could exist without mycelia. I've long been a resident and defender of
forests, but Stamets helped me understand that I've been misperceiving my
home. I thought a forest was made up entirely of trees, but now I know that
the foundation lies below ground, in the fungi. *




-- 

Michael Herman
Michael Herman Associates

http://www.michaelherman.com
http://www.openspaceworld.org
http://www.chicagoconservationcorps.org

312-280-7838 (mobile)

*
*
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