my beloved scientist and friend R had rented a car, arranged permissions, and prayed for rain. word at the labs was that joker's hill was ripe with black and white morels.

subject: mushroom, mushroom!
> will you pick me up?
We'll come get you.  I let you know the details by Friday.
>will we go rain or shine?
We pray for rain. But if it's sunny that's okay.
> do i need to bring anything other than my love and respect for kingdom
> fungi?
If you have a nice straw basket that's good.  I'll bring paper bags.
Bring a lunch and some good shoes and rain gear (as you would know).
The fifth kingdom loves and respects you too courtney.  Even that keratin
degrading stuff that grows on your toe nails.
love,
R

i had spent last night out at the (awesome) slowcoaster show  with Driusan, 256, erso, MissTrish. and our usual accomplices. we had all managed to leave the bar separately, and when we regrouped at the shawshack at 2AM, 256 had not yet made it home. we shrugged it off and managed to settle ourselves into sleep. at 4AM i woke up and discovered that 256 had not come home. panic set in, i woke erso up and spent a fretfully hour pacing the house before 256 tumbled in with a story of an entirely unremarkable adventure.
when the alarm woke me up at 8AM, no hangover or lack of sleep could contain my excitement at the promise of a day in the woods.

R, his lady friend the captain of Team R, and i exploded out of the car, scrambled over the fence, and lept into the forest. Tussilago farfara! Fagus grandifolia! look, polyphores!
R called out the all the fungi, i called out all the vascular plants. joker's hill was once a private forest, pockets of old growth, overgrown farmland, old pasture and reforested clear cuts, creeks, ponds and bogs, make for a huge range of habitat in the tiny reserve. we found our first white morel just a few hundred metres from the road. we left it, sure of the many other bigger, less slug eaten ones we had been promised deeper into the woods.

R takes us to the plot he worked in. introduces us to each of the trees, from 1 to 2037. he showed us  all the little secret mossy circles, all the old hemlocks and cedars, the clear cold streams, the fallen logs, the soil full of white hyphae that would turn to glorious mushrooms by fall. i found polygala and some watercress. his captain tried to keep us on the path. R wanders off at the first sign of rot, toadstool, decay or deep leaf litter. i wander off towards the glossy leaves of hepatica, the soft grey leaves of the wild ginger, the tallest beech and oak. the captain keeps calling us back to her, back to the path. she writes notes on our brown paper specimen bags, and    shows as much excitement at the actinomycetes as she does at the violets and blue jays.

we find no morels. we find some of the most glorious spring oyster mushrooms, we devour the peanut butter and jam sandwiches she has brought, we loose ourselves in a heady rush of latin names and soft forest floor.
we jump over streams giggling, we rush over to fallen logs, we tiptoe to old rotten logs and quickly roll them over trying to catch a glimpse of a newt.
i see what i think is a ring-necked snake. we run over and R feaks out.
"oh my god, DON'T TOUCH IT!"
the captain is baffled, i recoil in terror from what i see now is a millipede.
"no, don't freak out. they don't bite" she reassures us. "if you pick it up it will curl up into a little coil. see how it's legs are in pairs?" the captain and i are now gently stroking the steely blue creature, admiring it's red jointed body, the tiny red legs, the grace with which it moves each tiny foot in turn.
"holy shit! don't fucking touch that shit! it's a GODDAMN centipede! those are fucking creepy- NO! don't pick it up! you're gonna get HPV from it!!"  
R is afraid of it.
"DUDE! what are you going on about? HPV is sexually transmitted. you don't get it from bugs. i thought you were a SCIENTIST." the captain is clearly embarrassed by R's overreaction.
i bask in the glory of yet again getting to fit vaginas full of centipedes into my daily conversation.
"awww, R baby," i coo seductively, "don't worry, you can't get HPV from centipedes!" he's recoiling from the captain, i step over and pet his neck. "baby, my vagina's SO FULL of centipedes and i'm totally free of papilloma viruses."
he is so repulsed i feel kinda bad. the captain laughs so hard i think she's going to fall over.
our bags are full of oysters, but still no morels.

finally we find 3 rotten black morels. we seemed to be here a day or two too late. we take spore prints, and wander back out of the woods. R is really disappointed, but we pour over the field guide and id some of our specimens, and he cheers up.

the rush of the day now over, i quickly fall asleep in the car. promises are made to go back, soon the summer oysters will be fruiting, and the hundreds of other delicious mushrooms will be popping up in the next few weeks. i'm forgiven for my centipede comments, and we part ways. i pull of my soaked boots, peel off my wet socks and lie down for a nap. i awake an hour or so later in agony, the day spent in the wet forest has done something terrible to my poor feet. i'm sadly too swollen and itchy for dancing tonight!

i regret nothing. now, i am going to enjoy some fresh wild spring oysters with provolone cheese and nurse my poor feet. the deliciousness of wild forest fungi will be worth any discomfort. hopefully i can lure someone to stay in tonight and watch a movie with me. i'm still flushed with the romance of a day spent in the woods, the sound of latin purring across R's lips, and the scent of ferns and forest floor.