Fruiting Bodies

I meet Conor in the spruce forest. He whistles his whereabouts; I return his call. It’s mid-July and a mild summer wind breathes through the trees, a low moan that envelops us in the cool island gloam. I follow the sound and scour the ground for what mushrooms might be growing: summer chanterelle, puffball, deceiver. It’s the kind of forensic looking that I begin in July and don’t give up until the trees are naked and the hills are the color of rust. A fast, careful, sieving of images—birch leaf, tree root, crisp packet, coin—a longrange and close-up searching for the gifts of this Scottish island: the edible, the poisonous, the one in a million. The friend that took me two years to meet, though we lived in the same small town. The mushrooms he taught me how to find.