Moistness lingers in the woods, deepening the green of the grapevines and grass, the leaves and the needles of trees.  And it's warm again, for shorts; I'm lighter out of layers. All week I'm on the hunt for fungi to photograph, looking along the sides of trails near rotting trunks of fallen trees for mushrooms springing to life. I like to see new ones, their first morning after pushing, pushing up from invisibility, with pine needles and little crumbs of soil on their heads, newly birthed, like babies. Three of my own babies pushed and pushed out of me into this world. Like these ones, so delicate, so vulnerable, so eager and innocent and unspoiled. When my third child was born, a daughter, my youngest, I said, show me the placenta, and they did. I wanted to see where she came from inside of me, my organic matter, the place we made for her to grow. 

Suddenly, as if I'm collecting treasures on a beach, I find an oyster shell. This fungus is truly nature as art.

By the railroad tracks where sunshine falls on others days, a funny looking fungus blooms white-fresh in disturbed oily soil amidst the man-laid gravel. Although they look so playful now, while young, they look less so, I learn, as they mature.

Even though I stop for a photo, these mushrooms have a creepy look and I have not been able to identify them. I neglected to examine their stalk and gills. Although some visitor seems to have dared to taste this one, it wasn't me.

All photos and words copyright Kelly DuMar, 2016, unless otherwise attributed.