This was started during the September 14, 202 Gateless Writing Salon hosted by the fabulous Noelle Janka.
Mushrooms stand apart from both the plant and animal kingdoms. They can be full of poison or protein – or both, sometimes advertising an inedible status with bright neon colors, and other times deceptively colored to nestle in with a group of innocuous edibles. They play by their own rules, these Others of the natural world, not caring as mycologists pull their hair out in attempts to put labels on them.
Scientists, chiefs, famers, artists and writers have all been fascinated by the humble-looking fungus, but perhaps none more so than Lewis Carrol in describing Alice’ adventures down the rabbit hole, leaving Alice forever associated with mushrooms.
“One side will help you grow taller and one side will help you grow shorter,” advises the Caterpillar. Alice is briefly stymied by the fact a circle does not have sides, but, as a literature professor once pointed out in a class I took on Victorian Children’s Literature (a fascinating experience), this is the point where Alice realizes dream logic is what you make of it, and designates her own definition of sides, and from then on she will be a participant rather than just an observer of her own story.
Go Alice. She imagined she had agency and it came true, with the help of a mushroom.
I’ve been thinking a lot about mushrooms recently; not the kind that could give you crazy dreams of hookah smoking caterpillars, but the edible kind that can sustain you, provide nourishment, and not be too finicky about environmental conditions, like the way some of your more hoity-toity flowers can get.
I want to plant mushrooms on Mars. I am imagining a story of humans on Mars, and humans need to eat, and too much freeze dried food might push an astronaut over the edge into madness, like all those horror movies set on Mars that I watch disdainfully, sneering as I watch the blood splatter and think: they got the gravity wrong.
I want to have a farm on Mars, with all the algae and duckweed and spirulina and other plants scientists here on Earth are sure will grow on Mars, and I want to see them thriving away under grow lamps in aquiculture flower beds lining the walls of the domes to provide the needed greenery to keep people sane. But also think there needs to be something a little more homey in the mix, and the common little mushroom fits the bill.
Seal up an empty lava tube (the volcanoes are extinct, the experts 40 million miles away from said volcanoes swear this is true!) once sealed, pump in some air, laydown some dirt, and you have a neat mushroom farm all ready to go, tiny little umbrella sprouting on the ground, opening up to provide the hope of a homemade soup or gravy lovingly ladled onto a plate.
A brand new home – and Mars would be as new a home as any human could find – needs a bit of old homes brought in – not just the framed photo and fluffy blanket, but also the scents and tastes of what was known as we journey into the unknown.
I am imagining a story of hope and optimism. A story where success doesn’t require someone being oppressed. A home built for everyone who arrives, and everyone gets to have a voice. This world would need the most advanced technology on hand, some that is still being designed by fourteen year olds, but it will also need the so called “small” touch of the domestic, and something as homey looking as a mushroom could do it, a link from the foragers daring each other to eat things they hadn’t invented the language to name yet, to the explorers, daring each other to go further than we ever have before.
With the help of mushrooms, I dream of an optimistic future, and hope it won’t just be a pipe dream.
Kara Race-Moore Writes More 