Ode to a Chantrelle

The charred heat of summer is past. Those long days when heat ripples in waves throught the fir bows and maple and the sun sucks the moisture from the duff and moss. The nights cool, the owls quiet. And then comes the first rain. Puffs of dust rise like smoke as the first drops splat on deer trails worn raw, it runs away in rivulets, repelled by the desiccated dirt and so scarred by the summer sun it has forgotten the gift of the fall clouds. You don’t taste this first rain, most gets sucked by the gready mosses, but you smell it, a sweet hint at life to come, and you prepare. Most of your neighbors drank in the spring, drawing up the fridgid snow melt and growing rich with the young sun. But they have crisped and crinkled now, their seeds blown with dry winds and their stems laid down to rest with the fallen needles and detridus leaving this glut to those few of you who waited.

The second rain comes, and the third. These you drink, your wide net of miniscule albino tentacles sucking up the moisture, catching all in your wide spread net. You drink and drink, spreading, pushing, striving for a breath of air, a relief from the suffocating soil and the unending munching of the worms. You have waited with patience and a sympathetic ear through the long summer. But with the cool nights and the gray days of rain all patience is lost and you nearly burst with need. Another rain and you push free, gasping. You grow so fast that the sharp spruce needles are engulfed, leaving rust stains in your cream flesh still hidden. Up, up your flute pushes off the crust of leaves like the lid of a slow motiion jack-in-the-box; a known surprise yet all still jump. You grow fast, aware of your vulnerability. This is the first time you have risen above the surface since the bear. He came with his paws, larger than the bigleaf maple leaves, tearing. And his long tounge slurping you up. You almost did not survive that visit.

Half grown you withstand your first visitor. A chipmunk, black eyed and tail a-twitch, takes mouthfuls, eating away at you franticaly until some noise startles it, leaving you raked with yellow gashes. No matter, you grow still. And now other pieces of you have emerged, popping leaf-lids here and around. All are incarnations of a wider being, springing from that fine fillament web that is your soil-self. A raven sweeps in from a low branch, eyeing his choices with a sideways tilt. He starts with you, his beak taking a punch from your umprella edge. Then he hops to another of your selves and with precision snaps through your trunk with his obsidian razor beak. Cackling at his own cleverness he takes your severed body up and away to pick at it on some private perch.

The next rain splatters and you know its time, almost. You wait for the rain to stop, for a whisper of air to pass along the thick damp needle cast. It is while you are waiting that a last passer-by pauses before you and hunches over your selves by the huckleverry bush. With quick precise movements it slices you off close to the earth with an edge sharper than the raven’s beak. The spruce needles and oldman’s beard are picked away, then you are dropped into an over-sized nest, woven and neat. Many are taken away from the you that stays woven with the fiberous fir roots. The smallest of you are spared, along with your chipmunk-nibbled body. It came to that you and gave a gentle caress on the now crusted scars, rose up and moved away.

For seasons after the bear you had hidden below, healing. You wrapped yourself around new roots, fir and spruce, and fingered through the soil and duff. Now, on this gray day rich with the scent of decay, you reach the climax of your self above ground. That breeze you had been waiting for dances along the understory tickling your delicate folds. With a sigh, barely audible, you find your release and send a pale cloud of of regeneration. to dance with the wind awhile. Hopefully it will spread settling down, seeping in and begin a new network of befriended trees, no longer you anymore.

With that last life spreading breath this chipmunk and raven nibbled bit of you is reclaimed, melting back into the duff. Disolving down with heavier rains you ooze to feed your soil-self, perhaps to be incarnated again next season with the soft patter and sweet smell of rain.