It was late morning and I was in my daily routine of gathering the bowls from the prior night’s Raccoon and Possum buffet.
It is an act I don’t even think about any more. I can’t really remember a time when I wasn’t doing this. I know it has only been a few years but it feels like forever.
So much of life just passes us by when we operate in routine mode, but out of the corner of my eye, as I approached the main feeding area near the big oak tree, I spotted a couple of tiny pleated parasol mushrooms as they broke through the canopy of the green ground-cover.
I have seen these little guys a few times before but they are so fragile and fleeting, I think it behooves us to pause and pay respects to something so temporary, yet so beautiful.
Their life cycle is less than 24 hours and they reach wonderful peak about 8 hours into their life.
At that moment, they have fully spread their pleats and stand proudly and pristine above whatever lies around them.
Their stalk is as fragile as their parasol and picking them (for whatever obscure reason you might have) is pointless. So, the right course of action is to simply stop and admire.
I took a few shots to help these little guys achieve some measure of immortality if only in this silly little blog. They are at the end of the blog and I hope you get the chance to enjoy.
Four or five hours later, as I went back out to place the newly filled bowls near the base of the tree, they were gone.
Not gone as in someone took them, but all that remained were two tiny little shriveled threads that were almost impossible to tell from their surrounds any more.
Though I fully expected, even knew this would happen, it still saddened me.
Only I, perhaps a cat or two, and maybe a bird that passed overhead … only us even knew that such wondrous beauty had once existed.
To all else, there was no clue. No knowledge that once a loving pair had once existed.
I have added the “loving pair” comment to my thoughts, because in a life so brief, I hope each was somehow aware that they were not alone. I hope that as they gazed out over the green surrounds that they saw each other and maybe even smiled.
The short cycle they went through made me pause and think of our own lives and our time here on earth.
We think of 80 or 90 years as a really long period of time and we imagine our story is somehow known and maybe even told to others when we are gone.
But our time is also so brief when held in comparison to the millions of years that this planet has acted as our garden. And it will still be here (in some form) after all of us are gone. In fact, the arrival and duration of mankind’s presence on the planet is barely a blip on the timeline of eternity.
Which in turn makes our own life cycle little more than a micro-blip.
Our importance is only a sense we give ourselves and in the grand scheme of things is quite laughable.
When Patty Pleat looked out yesterday and saw that she was the tallest pleated parasol for as far as the eyes could see, did she give herself a sense of importance commensurate with her discovery.
Did she lord it over Polly Parasol, the one nearby soul she saw a few inches away? Did she think she was so much better than all those green ground cover creatures beneath her?
In the time they were here, did they write a good book that commanded how they should behave and promise eternal life in return for compliance?
Did they struggle, argue or even fight over whose version of their creator was the more correct?
Did they dedicate their hours of life to an obsession with the eternity that would follow in the arms of their one true god?
Did they deride other mushrooms that were a different color or seek to destroy any creatures that were not as elevated as they?
Walk with me today through the overgrown ground cover that I call a yard. Look for a single trace, if you wish, that these wondrous little lives were ever here.
“What the fuck, Neville. They are only mushrooms”, I can hear you say.
“But feed us enough shit to grow up on to where we elevate our own level of importance, and I’m sorry … but so too are we.
… just a thought.
