OK, ok, Michael Phillips wins this year’s There’s Fungus Among Us Award for this well-crafted sentence in his new book Mycorrhizal Planet:
“Beneath the imprint of one’s foot, extending down into the soil but mostly meandering nearer the surface, are 300 miles of fungal hyphae. Inconceivable. I could walk from our farm in the White Mountains of Connecticut to Montreal & back along the gossamer filaments found under a single footstep.”
Which reminds me: At the very first Earth Rally in Arizona, I was asked to talk a bit after Dave Foreman got us all to howl, about how we could all get better rooted.
So I passed out a bag of Glomus deserticola mycorrhizal propagules & had everyone put some in their shoes. Some of those Earth Firsters never left the room. They rooted right through the floor & should be approaching the sizes of fruit-bearing cardons & saguaros by this time.
-Brother Coyote
