First it was a rather flat massive mushroom with the color of old butter and with healthy porous gills galore. After a rain, they came up in various masses, pressed together so closely that they pushed the edges of their neighbors up at odd angles.
Now these pure white mushrooms have taken over and they seem particularly well suited to life beneath the great White Pines. These push the pine needles up - even before the mushrooms are visible - so that you know where the next is about to pop.
These white mushrooms are so perfectly formed and so pristine and clean that I think I must bring them home for a meal. But, no! I know nothing of them and don't relish the thought of death at so early an age.
Better to wait for spring when the sponges again hide from me in the leaf litter of a nearby woods. They are unmistakable, they are delicious and they await me on the other side of winter like buried treasure.
Yet all mushrooms intrigue me. If not food for the body, they are all food for the soul.
