Cabinet · Loam Gospel
The Cap-folk of the Field-Margins
Field Notes, Terra Incognita, Plate II
June 1, 2023 · “The divine speaks through dirt.”
Widdershins Project Archive · File 3A-9
The farmland is the one I grew up on, or one enough like it that I stopped drawing and stood a while. Cut hayfield, the second growth just coming, the dew still down. I had come for the light on the fields and found the specimens instead, at the margin where the mower never reaches. I had walked past a thousand of them and called them toadstools. This close, at first light, they were not standing where I had left them. A red-capped one had drawn its roots up out of the ground into a fistful of pale legs, and moved. Not far. A hand’s breadth in the hour I watched. But a mushroom is not supposed to choose its ground, and this one had.
There is no wind in a fairy ring, and there was none here. What passed between them passed underground. I have read since that the fungus below a field is one connected body, mile on mile of thread, and that it carries word from root to root, that the trees warn each other of drought through it. If that is science, then this is only the science with its face turned up. The caps I drew are the parts that surface to be seen. The creature is the field.
I took the specimens I could and left the ring unbroken. A man who mows his lawn on a Saturday has killed more of these than he will ever meet, and thought he was tidying.
An earlier telling of this plate, recovered with it. Kept as found.
In the heart of the enchanted farmlands, where the golden hues of dawn embraced the dew-kissed earth, I stumbled upon a realm of surreal wonders. As I ventured through the emerald fields, the air itself seemed to hum with an otherworldly melody, and the verdant landscape began to morph into a dreamscape. To my astonishment, the once ordinary mushrooms, bathed in the iridescence of an ethereal glow, stirred with a life of their own. Tiny faces emerged from their fungal abodes, each cap adorned with expressions as diverse as the colors of a fantastical sunset.
These sentient mushrooms, guardians of the enchanted farmlands, whispered secrets in a language known only to the wind and the ancient spirits that dwelled in the soil. They danced in unison, their slender stems swaying to a melody woven by the harmonious interplay of nature’s magic. As I stood there, a mere mortal captivated by the surreal spectacle, the mushrooms beckoned me into their whimsical world, inviting me to partake in the secrets hidden beneath the enchanted soil and to witness the unseen wonders that thrived in the heart of the magical farmlands.