What then happened was that new interpreters emerged, to communicate between the soil and the trees. Little mushrooms appeared at the base of each tree trunk. First there were chanterelles everywhere, yellow among the black earth. Underground, the threads from these fungi grew into the hairs of the roots, so that they couldn’t be separated. Everything was a blur and tangle. The threads gathered little messages from the soil and the rock. These mushrooms were new in the forest. No one had seen them before. The trees fed the fungi their sugary drinks and in exchange the fungi diverted away from the trees anything they thought might be harmful to them, the toxins or metals, and when they had gathered enough of these elements they transformed into ever crazier varieties of mushroom: porcini, cepes, boletes. Everything was a form of thinking and comparison. If water fell in one area, too far for the trees to reach, it could be transported back to the trees through the filaments of the fungi. It was an education, a little process of apparent self-assembly – the way a group of people might take over a disused gas station and somehow transform it into a cinema for the benefit of the whole community.
What could be the utility of thid humble collection of texts? I would love that they appear as an introduction to the chapters of a Science book, as the same way as some novels begin with a quote.
Such a good description of the micorrizic symbiosis! It seems like the text belongs to The Living Forest, by Wenceslea Fernández Flores. An hyperbolic critic said that the author was the new Martin Amis, but I disagree with he, because thatś much to say
