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Lois Long (the Lois Long who designs textiles),
Christian Wolff, and I climbed Slide
Mountain along with Guy Nearing and the Flemings,
including Willie. All the way up and down
the mountain we found nothing but Collybia
platyphylla, so that I began to itch to visit a
cemetery in Millerton, New York, where, in my
mind’s eye, Pluteus cervinus was growing.
By the time we got back to the cars, our knees
were shaking with fatigue and the sun had gone
down. Nevertheless, I managed to
persuade Lois Long and Christian Wolff to drive
over to Millerton. It meant an extra
hundred miles. We arrived at the cemetery at
midnight. I took a flashlight out of the
glove compartment, got out, and first
hastily and then carefully examined all the
stumps and the ground around them. There
wasn’t a single mushroom growing. Going
back to the car, I fully expected Lois Long and
Christian Wolff to be exasperated.
However, they were entranced. The aurora
borealis, which neither of them had ever seen
before, was playing in the northern sky.
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