“Holy shit, Tuck, what is this?”
“These are wood-eaters. Psilocybe azurescens,” he said. He squatted down next to me, carefully lifted away old needles around some of the mushrooms, and showed me what they had been growing from: the wood of fallen trees, now almost dust, almost soil, but with that same silky white web running throughout.
“Psilocybe? They’re psychedelic?”
He shrugged, gestured around the forest floor.
“That’s one use for them. They also happen to be miracle workers,” he said. “The mushrooms are just the fruit that grows from the mycelium. They can go on for miles just under the soil, taking up what’s there—vegetation, animals, mineral—breaking it all down, leaving soil the plants can thrive in. We’ve been inoculating different parts of the forest with different species, watching to see which species naturally occur, which to add. But it all depends on the rain out here. We’ve been waiting for a good rain to start the fruiting season. You came just in time.”
He wanted to show me more. I followed him across the creek and on for a quarter mile, toward the refinery, until we were within sight of the old chain-link and barbed-wire fence at the property line. He walked up to a cedar, the bark no longer umber and fibrous but scraped away, ashen. But at the base of the trunk were large white tufts of another mushroom, like sea sponges tossed under the tree.
“Sparassis crispa,” Tuck said. “Cauliflower mushroom. These trees were some of the first inoculated. Sarah Chen, one of the research scientists Sister J. convinced to come here, she and her students from Evergreen started the experiment. They wanted to see if they could expedite the soil restoration with the help of mycelia. Mycelia don’t just digest vegetation. It can break down bone, fur, feces, and—it’s been known for some time—plastics, petroleum and crude oil, industrial chemicals like hexane, even heavy metals like arsenic and mercury, cadmium, vanadium . . .”
While he talked, Tuck stooped down and ran his hand through the duff below the trees.
“They started with soil at the Colony; hauling in inoculated sawdust and wood chips from a mushroom farmer on the Nisqually Indian Reservation. They built mitigation fields one by one, layering dead, contaminated trees and plants, the mycelium starter, soil. The mycelium breaks everything down, creating new soil, clean soil.”
My phone was in my back pocket. My battery was low, but I started taking pictures of the mushrooms, the trees, the revived plant life around the creek. I turned and the refinery appeared on the screen, through the trees. It was a beast. Concrete slabs and metal pipe works, now charred and broken, rusted, scattered over a grassy expanse of a few acres between the fence and the blacktop surrounding the refinery itself. I thought I could see the path the fire took, over those two days that it burned, from the shattered machinery at the hot center, out through the corridors and windows, along the weedy edges of blacktop, through the fence.
I couldn’t take a picture of it. I looked past it, to the water. We had hiked half the island to get here, and I could see Orwell, Waldron, other islands, hazy in the distance.
“Living trees burn slowly,” Tuck was saying. I had tuned him out again. “Many of these trees you see, the ones that are blackened, they were still alive inside for some time. Eventually they suffocated, with no way to photosynthesize.”
I turned away from the refinery, looked up to where the tops of the dead trees met the sky.
Suffocation, the word wrote itself over and over inside my skull.
Six
The Woods
MALHEUR NATIONAL FOREST, OREGON
MAY 2, 2016
WE’RE EATING FANCY burgers and drinking craft beers at the hotel restaurant in Prairie City. It’s still my birthday for a few hours.
We talk about work for the entire meal. It’s not unromantic; we’re interested in the same things: ecosystems and how humans use and interact with them. Public lands attract all kinds, mostly the decent people. But all populations have a fringe. For park rangers, the fringe is everything from well-armed anti-government militants and poachers to nature-worshipping spiritualists and Bigfoot enthusiasts. But day to day, the bulk of Carey’s work involves preparations for the next “big one”—the next big fire. In the last five fire seasons, every one of them has seen a fire that was larger and harder to fight than the previous season’s worst. The pattern has put them on notice.
He tells me stories about being a smokejumper, parachuting into remote, roadless locations to fight fires. I have seen his scars, the burned patches of arm and leg that look like topographic maps. Some of these stories I’ve heard before, but I like listening to them. I can run my hands over his scars, feel the texture the fires have woven into him, but the stories come from a part of Carey I can’t touch.
I’m supposed to be working on my own story. I have an editor waiting for new pages. And I do write—I tell Carey—I am writing. But I’m not writing about then; I’m writing about now. I write what we had for dinner the night before and how we both farted all night and opened the window though the screen was shot and the mosquitoes came in. So we closed the window and swore we’d go a month without eating any beans at all.
“That’s what you write about?”
“It’s what I want to write about,” I tell him. “It’s like this: every day I start in the present, and I think back, one day at a time.” I’m drawing in the air, as if I’m connecting dots on a line, right to left. “But I’m also cooking oatmeal, or hanging laundry out on the line, or hiking up a mountain. I’m tired of looking back.”
I drink my beer. Carey’s waiting for me to continue, but I’m waiting for him to catch up and come to the conclusion on his own.
“Okay,” he says, chewing, swallowing, “so, the story of today just keeps heading off into the future, and your story is in the past.”
I beam at him. You get me, I’m about to say.
“But”—he puts up his hand—“and I’m asking because I’m curious, not because I’m objecting to what you’re saying. But doesn’t writing require pausing, sitting in one place? You can’t stop time, but you can be still.”
I chew a mouthful of burger.
“I’m having trouble being here and there at the same time.”
After the check, Carey tells me we are going to stay the night at the hotel. He booked a room, not just dinner reservations. I didn’t pack anything, but Carey has: toothbrush, paste, a pair of jeans and a shirt for the next day. The only thing he didn’t pack for me was clean underwear.
In the room there’s a bottle of wine, a huge piece of chocolate cake, and a gift, wrapped neatly in newspaper. It’s a watch with GPS tracking.
I sit on the bed, looking at it. I feel chastened.
“You don’t have to wear it every time you leave my sight,” he said. “It’s just to be safe. When you’re out there alone.”
I can’t look at him.
“Thanks, I guess.”
“Luce.”
“It’s a tracking device, Carey. Like I’m an endangered species you’re studying.”
“Jesus, I didn’t mean it that way. I have one for work, Lucie. You could track me down in a tornado. I don’t know where you are, ever.”
He wants to touch me, I can tell. But it will hurt him so much if I recoil or, worse, if I don’t respond at all. I know this about him, I can feel this about him, as I sit on the bed, three feet away. I am like a wild animal.
“I go to the fire lookout,” I say.
“The fire lookout?”
“Or Mosquito Lake. I went there today.”
“Where’s Mosquito Lake?”
“The lake up by the old scout shack.”
“It’s called Cougar Lake.”
“Well, I’ve only ever seen mosquitoes.”
“You won’t see a cougar or hear it, but it can still snap your neck.”
“A lot of good GPS would do me.”
“At least I’d be able to find you.”
“Parts of me.”
&nb
sp; “Luce.”
We still aren’t touching. He’s still afraid.
“I can think of worse ways to die,” I say, and wonder as the word die crosses my lips if this will be the last time, the last thing, the last push I give him before he gives up and walks away. He shakes his head, his jaw set.
I jump on the bed and take off my shirt, my socks, my belt, nearly fall off, trying to kick my jeans from my ankles. He watches me, bewildered but pissed. I take off my bra and fling my panties at him. They hit his chest and drop at his feet.
“Which part would you eat first?” I ask.
“You’ve got a sick sense of humor,” he says. But he reaches for my hand, draws it up to his face, and rests his cheek in my palm.
I tell him on the drive back to the cabin that I am going to see Sister J. in Spokane. He doesn’t say anything at first, just nods. A young buck appears at the edge of the trees. I see it first, coming out of the woods on my side and getting ready to leap the ditch, jumping onto the berm. We’re going about fifty and I holler, “DEER,” and Carey slams on the brakes. The buck stops in the middle of the blacktop and stands like a statue, like they do when death has come to a screeching halt in front of them. They don’t even blink. There are no other cars. We wait, hearts rattled. He stares us down while a doe scampers across the road behind him and takes off into the woods on the other side. A logging truck turns the corner ahead, coming at us. The buck doesn’t take his eyes off us till Carey lays on the horn and revs the engine. Then he follows his mate into the woods. The truck barrels by, the driver flashing his lights to thank us for chasing the deer off the road, bark and lichen flying onto our windshield from the bundle of trees on its bed. I wonder whether the buck would have stayed there, staring us down, while death came at him from the other side.
When we start driving again, I’m holding his right hand on the seat between us. We’re quiet, but the air in the cab feels heavy. Finally Carey says he thinks I should wait until he has a weekend off, so he can drive with me to Spokane. It’s not about protecting me, he says. He knows I can take care of myself. It’s just better to be traveling a distance like that with someone.
I traveled farther alone to come out here from Seattle.
“The letter came weeks ago,” I say, “and she’s not dying any slower.”
Seven
The Islands
MARROW ISLAND, WASHINGTON
OCTOBER 11, 2014
“SPAWN?” I ASKED.
“Spawn.” Jen nodded.
We were in a nursery of sorts. A Quonset hut among the trees behind the barn, where Tuck left me with Jen to get back to his work. It was partially dug into the ground, earthen-floored, unlit, and ran at least thirty feet, with a door at each end. The doors were open, making boxes of light on the dirt, but we wore headlamps. The air was cool around my ankles and warm and heavy around my head, like in a greenhouse. There was a sweet, pungent, yeasty odor in the air, like fresh bread and soil. This was where they stored their spawn—young mycelium colonies of various species.
“I’ve been mushroom hunting,” I say, “and I’ve seen growing kits for oysters and shiitakes, but I’ve never seen mushroom cultivation like this.”
“So, mushrooms are just the fruiting bodies of the much bigger organisms,” Jen explained. I nodded. I knew this. “Before they’re mushrooms, they look like this.” She held up a gallon-size freezer bag full of what looked like moldy brown rice, small specks completely overtaken by soft white fuzz. “That’s alder sawdust from downed trees, inoculated with Grifola frondosa—maitake mushrooms. We inoculate the medium—sawdust, wood chips, sometimes cardboard or burlap or straw—and the mycelium overtakes it, rapidly, tiny white threads hundreds of miles long in some cases, bound up together. Spawn.”
“And this is how you—the Colony—has been remediating the soil?”
“Yeah.”
“Mushrooms?”
“Mushrooms. When they’re not trapped in a bag like this, when they’re in a forest, say, or a field, the organism can stretch for miles right there under your feet.”
“I’ve read about the use of microorganisms in oil spills—bacteria especially—but they work too slowly for broad commercial use after big spills.”
“How slow is too slow for the planet?” Jen asked. “And how much more harm did ArPac do when they threw dispersants all over the oil in the sea out here?”
“You’re right, obviously, I agree with you,” I said, walking down a row of stacked burlap sacks. “But, I mean, how many years does it take? And how do you even know that it’s working?”
“We regularly send soil samples for testing. Obviously, the entire island isn’t okay, yet. I mean, we’re not done. But given the right spawn, in the right conditions, we can create healthy, viable soil in six months. Sometimes less.” Jen took me outside to show me a mitigation field at the bottom of the goat pasture, where they covered waste runoff with layers of inoculated sawdust, straw, and bark. The whole was covered with burlap to protect it from the hot sun and watered if it started to dry out.
“It’s like a giant compost heap, but working three times faster to create soil,” she said. “We start with sterilized medium, inoculate them with the variety of mycelium best suited to the medium and conditions. We turn the pile every so often, until the materials are soil, ready to be added to the fields and gardens. The mycelium is then acclimated to the climate, the conditions; it infiltrates the existing soil, and the remediation process continues.”
“How?” I asked. “How exactly do mushrooms remediate? Are they digesting the heavy metals, the toxic chemicals?”
“Sort of. Yes. Some mycelia can break chemicals down into their elemental parts, rendering them less harmful. Mycelium produce enzymes to decompose plant and animal matter, and some of those enzymes also break down petrochemicals, plastics, complex chemical compounds created in a lab and unleashed on the world. Others can absorb heavy metals into the mushrooms themselves, so they can be removed from the ecosystem. It doesn’t all happen at once, but over time, with different applications and different mycelia, gradually the natural balance of interdependent plant, insect, and microbial life can return. It all starts with the mushrooms.”
“So you don’t eat these mushrooms?”
“No, not the ones directly involved in restoration.”
“So, what do you do with them?”
“We put the mushrooms through the process again, in the soil, with a fresh batch of spawn from some other species. Mycoremediation isn’t new and neither are the methods. We’ve learned and borrowed from others who have been studying them casually or on much smaller scales for decades. No one has ever had the opportunity to try something like this.”
She took me back to the hut and showed me more mycelia. Varieties they cultivated for food and medicine, and experimental species donated or exchanged with mycologists around the world.
My right ear was ringing; my headache hummed, and the light coming in from the far door made me turn back toward the recesses of the hut, where the bright white mycelium spawn, in their bags, in long wooden bins, seemed to give off a light of their own.
“Are you all right?” Jen reached for my arm.
“Yeah, I’ve just had this headache all day.”
Walking the path under the firs, I asked Jen how she first heard of Marrow.
“One of my professors at Evergreen had come out here. He was an ecologist, really into the microbial relationships. He was all charged up about soil remediation when he got back. And God. He said he felt God here.”
“God? This professor is a scientist?”
“I know. I’m an atheist,” she said. “I think he was somewhere in the Intelligent Universe camp, but he came back talking about God. I wanted to see for myself. Sister J. inspires different feelings in different people—for me, it’s not G-O-D. You’ve met her, right?”
I nodded. “I grew up Catholic; my dad’s parents were devout. They’re both gone now. And when my dad died, my
mom and I just stopped going to church. I went to parochial school, an all-girls’ school. But I was never confirmed, and we don’t practice. I call us absentees.”
Jen shook her head. “Yeah, I can see how you might lose faith after losing your dad. Mine’s gone, too. But I was an atheist before then.”
“Are a lot of the colonists Catholic? Or were they?”
“Only about, maybe, a quarter of us. In the early days, there were more. There was a sort of radical environmental movement afoot in the Diocese, and Sister was the leader. She held meetings and gave talks on ‘earth ministry.’ When the archbishop told her she had to stop—you know, when the Church was investigating all the nuns for being social activists?—she walked away from her order. She said she had a higher calling to minister to the earth, not men. She gained a lot of supporters that way—outside of the church, too. Followers and benefactors. ‘Saints don’t follow orders,’ they say.” She turned to look at me, raised her eyebrows.
“Saints?”
“I don’t really believe in saints, but if anyone qualified, it would be Sister J. She put herself on the line. She did something she knew would get her kicked out of her order and her church, her whole life and community for twenty years, to try something no one had ever tried before.”
Marrow Island Page 10
