Summary

“Natural History – Bemushroomed,” continued. The next morning, Stametz takes Pollan on his first mushroom-hunting expedition, and after some initial failures and frustrations, Pollan eventually finds one; Stametz finds several. That night, as they are drying out the mushrooms, Stametz warns that this particular species has the potential to be dangerous: some people who ingested it found themselves temporarily paralyzed. Pollan then asks himself, and the reader, a question that had been bothering him: why would these mushrooms have this substance in them? What benefit was it to the mushroom – unless, he comments, that the communicative fibers in its roots were “the language in which nature communicates with us” (121), an idea he finds more poetic than scientific.

As he considers how Stametz is likely the best person to have a discussion on this question with, Pollan also considers his conversation with Michael Beug...