LICHEN
The preface to all this, the prologue that we skimmed through too quickly before flipping to a stark page full of unknown plot twists and fears, seems so far away these days. Like blowing onto glass and peering out at the world through a fuzzy haze, memories take the same blurred quality. I write this with the intent of breaking the looking glass effect, uncovering a connection with organisms beyond my 6ft bubble.
Also, because I have really taken a-likin’ to lichen, and perhaps you have too?
Growing up, lichen, like many other of the mysterious offerings a forest brings to a child’s hungry imagination, was an integral prop in our fantasies. Sprinkled with abandon over our mudpies as delicious garnish, picked and thrown by the fistful as fairy dust, stuffed into pockets to be fabricated into shoebox-dioramas in Canada’s colder months. I’m doing my best to resist the cliche temptation to stumble into “back in my day” speak, but whoops, it sounds like it’s happening anyways. Without getting overly sentimental and pessimistic about the current “shelter in place” orders’ affect on children’s (and adults’!) exploratory forest wanderings and wonderings, I want to remember how vital it is to poke around at strange “tree dandruff” whenever I stumble upon it.
That’s why I’m all the more grateful to the Canadian Museum of Nature who recently launched a contest to elect a new National Lichen! What came up in my internet moseying last month was a community of passionate (understatement!) scientists who found it a great shame (truth!) that the great white north was doing without a mascot of the lichen variety. Curious about why this particular mascot was potentially more crucial than a national…frog let’s say, I dedicated an ample amount of my social isolation spell thus far to lichen research.
It turns out that Star-Tipped Reindeer lichen (the contest’s winner), like all lichens, is a perfect model for studying symbiosis. The concept of symbiosis, a Greek-origin word meaning the process of living together, was actually created to explain the relationship of fungi and algae that was thought to produce lichen. The recent reveal in this juicy tale of monogamy is that there has been a third player in the relationship the entire time, cue the dramatic audience gasp! Another fungus, basidiomycete yeast, has been contributing to the interactive harmony of lichens all along. And this scientific development feels like just the reminder that the world could use in times of physical distance.
As a self-professed luddite, I had initially tucked my head under a rock (a trick I learned from lichen), and figured I could wait out the time it would take for the COVID19 upheaval to blow over. Alas, what a naive ostrich I was! We might be in this twilight zone of Zoom calls and popcorn-for-dinner for quite some time, and I for one am NOT going to get through it alone. I’m very lucky to be sharing my isolation with another body that I love immensely, and yet, like the algae we previously thought to be in isolation with only one fungus, the lichen teaches us that we need more! We need humans! Family, friends, coworkers, fellow Magic The Gathering enthusiasts, lovely folks to share meals and laughs and obscure 90’s commercial references with. We need furry beings! We need trees and flowers and shores who’s waves sing to us constantly. So if like me, you find yourself in need of a wake-up call to get your head out of a computer and reach out to a fellow fungus friend, then let lichen be your inspiration.
If you’re hungry for more lichen content, or just some juicy reads/listens/watches, I highly recommend:
-Future Ecologies Podcast, Episode 2.1: “Enlichenment and the Triage of Life”
-Donna Haraway’s staggering book, “Staying with the Trouble"
-Canada’s proposed National Lichen video
-National Geographic’s short film, “What’s in a Lichen?”
-Okay Kaya’s infinitely lovely song, “Symbiosis”
FEIJOA
“I’ve been coming every Friday for the past couple weeks, but I gotta ask, do y’all got any fruit?”
This was the first exchange I’d had with any of the Food Pantry’s community members since I began interning at the farm 2 months ago. I hadn’t realized how much I needed this moment of connection with the folks who share the land and its fruits (or in this case, vegetables) with me, until it was delivered in this soft-spoken question. I was practically bubbling over with zeal, the kind that only hours working under a hot sun can brew, and ready to engage with something more vocal than a head of cabbage.
“Nope, apples and strawberries are pretty much past season. We might have some citrus coming in the next few weeks, so look out for that. Have you tried the kale?”
“Yeah, I took some. Just looking for something,” they paused, probably trying to find a word that wouldn’t insult the clear reverence I had for the leafy greens in my delivery box, “sweeter.”
Ah, there was the rub. I sank a little deeper into my muddy hiking boots to consider that, as much goodness and green and gosh darn gorgeousness kale possesses, sweetness it doth lack. And is there anything stronger than a wholehearted craving for something sweet and round and born from so many turnings of the earth in summer’s peak? To deny hunger for a fresh apple would be akin to burning the book on thousands of years of human mythology. And equally as difficult would be to ignore the yearning for strawberry jam licked from sticky fingers, or ripe peaches sliced over a puddle of vanilla ice cream, or everything that was good and pure in the middle of childhood. My Dad, who doles out Confucius teachings on wellness over dim sum fried donuts, has long guided me along the middle path, walking roads both bitter and sweet, salty and sour, and respecting the necessity in each. My Mom, a clinical dietician for 37 years, whispers “it’s all about balance” like it’s an incantation to fend off the evils of excess and extremes. Looking up at such a hopeful face, I needed to brace myself for the difficulty of extolling kale’s virtues, to sing the song of bitterness, arguably the most challenging note to hit.
Until I remembered what the farm was growing in heady supply. A fruit I had never seen before my internship, resembling a tiny dragon egg with smooth, dimpled skin turned tender as it ripens. A fruit of such unassuming inner colour, the faintest hint of yellow, that disguised a sweet explosion of old fashioned bubblegum in taste. The feijoa. I started beaming, an ode to the feijoa is a tune I’ve learned well, some of which was passed down to me from older interns, but most which came from enthusiastic exploration. One bite is all it takes to succumb to a kind of worship for the fruit and its tree, which continues to provide well into San Francisco’s winter season. I described the location, look, texture and taste to my curious audience before returning to the day’s other duties. I don’t know if they ever did try the feijoa, as I never saw them at the pantry again. But for myself, the encounter was a call to my nose, a reminder to sniff around, flip over rocks, question the bees, hunt through the earth, ask for help, whatever is needed to reclaim the sweetness that we all deserve.