I love mushrooms. Not to stroke or name or befriend—just to eat. Portobello, shiitake, oyster, button. Any mushroom will do, so long as it isn’t Death’s Cap. And honestly, I wouldn’t trust myself to know the difference. I place my faith in Safeway, in Trader Joe’s, in the tidy borders of the produce aisle.
Mushrooms aren’t plants. They’re not animals either. They grow like plants, breathe more like animals, and under the soil, they network with a complexity that feels uncomfortably sentient.
Some scientists think plants can communicate. Mushrooms, then, might be whispering entire sermons beneath our feet. The largest known organisms on Earth—miles wide—are fungi. Not whales. Not redwoods. Fungi.
And eating mushrooms, if I’m honest, sometimes feels like eating brain tissue. Not literally—but the texture, the taste, the uncanny neutrality of flavor. It’s like a thought that hasn’t decided what it wants to be.
I looked them up, and the internet offered me cheerful illustrations. Little toadstool homes. Cartoon caps. Furniture fit for elves. But I don’t want whimsy. I want to know what I’m eating.
Because fungi are not friendly. They are not unkind. They are simply other. They decompose the dead, connect the living, and likely ignore our metaphors altogether.
Still, I love eating mushrooms. I’ll keep doing it. But maybe I’ll do it quietly, and maybe I’ll do it in the dark. Out of respect.
