What Mushrooms Taught Me

by Lindsay Roznowski

When the pandemic hit in March of 2020 and all of our worlds shut down, I was working as a counselor at an all-residential boarding school for 9th through 12th graders. I lived on campus, like all faculty at the school, and although my living where I worked gave the shut down an intense spin, I was grateful that my workplace also included 2,200 acres of nature preserve for me to explore. I always appreciated the richness of the woods around the campus, but in the early days of the pandemic, long, daily nature walks became my thing. At a time when I felt constricted, confused, and restless, those walks lent me an expansive energy I could not find anywhere else.

One day in May of 2020, as I headed out to the forest, I was talking to a science teacher colleague about all of the creatures I had observed recently on my walks. She suggested I try a science-based image recognition app called “Seek” so that I could find out about the specific species I was seeing. This excited me! That day, I took her suggestion, downloaded the app and spent an hour in the creek learning more about North American Leopard Frogs, Pickerel Frogs, Fowler’s Toads, and American Bullfrogs. As I wrapped up my amphibian adventure, a bright orange pile of something caught my eye on the path by the creek. As I approached, I was sure someone who loved the woods as much as I did left behind the peels of their clementine snack. Upon closer inspection, there were a ton of clementine peels, and they were growing out of the ground. I was perplexed and wowed. I used the image recognition app to identify this dazzling discovery as orange peel fungus. The magic of that moment—the combination of awe, confusion, curiosity—opened up something profound in me.

Since that day in 2020 when my fungal discovery filled me with wonder, amateur mycology (the study of fungus) has become my passion. Over the past three years, I have identified 356 species of fungus in the wild. I have learned a lot over that time about the science of mushrooms, but also about letting myself love what I love, the magic that lives in the woods, and the power of awe.

I recognized the feeling of awe in my body when it hit me unexpectedly, but I wanted to know more about the psychology and science behind it. Why did it feel like the kind of emotional and physical lightning bolt I needed? Merriam-Webster defines awe as “an emotion variously combining dread, veneration, and wonder that is inspired by authority or by the sacred or sublime.”