Alexis Smith - Marrow Island

“I go to the fire lookout,” I say.

“The fire lookout?”

“Or Mosquito Lake. I went there today.”

“Where’s Mosquito Lake?”

“The lake up by the old scout shack.”

“It’s called Cougar Lake.”

“Well, I’ve only ever seen mosquitoes.”

“You won’t see a cougar or hear it, but it can still snap your neck.”

“A lot of good GPS would do me.”

“At least I’d be able to find you.”

“Parts of me.”

“Luce.”

We still aren’t touching. He’s still afraid.

“I can think of worse ways to die,” I say, and wonder as the word die crosses my lips if this will be the last time, the last thing, the last push I give him before he gives up and walks away. He shakes his head, his jaw set.

I jump on the bed and take off my shirt, my socks, my belt, nearly fall off, trying to kick my jeans from my ankles. He watches me, bewildered but pissed. I take off my bra and fling my panties at him. They hit his chest and drop at his feet.

“Which part would you eat first?” I ask.

“You’ve got a sick sense of humor,” he says. But he reaches for my hand, draws it up to his face, and rests his cheek in my palm.

I tell him on the drive back to the cabin that I am going to see Sister J. in Spokane. He doesn’t say anything at first, just nods. A young buck appears at the edge of the trees. I see it first, coming out of the woods on my side and getting ready to leap the ditch, jumping onto the berm. We’re going about fifty and I holler, “DEER,” and Carey slams on the brakes. The buck stops in the middle of the blacktop and stands like a statue, like they do when death has come to a screeching halt in front of them. They don’t even blink. There are no other cars. We wait, hearts rattled. He stares us down while a doe scampers across the road behind him and takes off into the woods on the other side. A logging truck turns the corner ahead, coming at us. The buck doesn’t take his eyes off us till Carey lays on the horn and revs the engine. Then he follows his mate into the woods. The truck barrels by, the driver flashing his lights to thank us for chasing the deer off the road, bark and lichen flying onto our windshield from the bundle of trees on its bed. I wonder whether the buck would have stayed there, staring us down, while death came at him from the other side.

When we start driving again, I’m holding his right hand on the seat between us. We’re quiet, but the air in the cab feels heavy. Finally Carey says he thinks I should wait until he has a weekend off, so he can drive with me to Spokane. It’s not about protecting me, he says. He knows I can take care of myself. It’s just better to be traveling a distance like that with someone.

I traveled farther alone to come out here from Seattle.

“The letter came weeks ago,” I say, “and she’s not dying any slower.”

MARROW ISLAND, WASHINGTON

OCTOBER 11, 2014

“SPAWN?” I ASKED.

“Spawn.” Jen nodded.

We were in a nursery of sorts. A Quonset hut among the trees behind the barn, where Tuck left me with Jen to get back to his work. It was partially dug into the ground, earthen-floored, unlit, and ran at least thirty feet, with a door at each end. The doors were open, making boxes of light on the dirt, but we wore headlamps. The air was cool around my ankles and warm and heavy around my head, like in a greenhouse. There was a sweet, pungent, yeasty odor in the air, like fresh bread and soil. This was where they stored their spawn — young mycelium colonies of various species.

“I’ve been mushroom hunting,” I say, “and I’ve seen growing kits for oysters and shiitakes, but I’ve never seen mushroom cultivation like this.”

“So, mushrooms are just the fruiting bodies of the much bigger organisms,” Jen explained. I nodded. I knew this. “Before they’re mushrooms, they look like this.” She held up a gallon-size freezer bag full of what looked like moldy brown rice, small specks completely overtaken by soft white fuzz. “That’s alder sawdust from downed trees, inoculated with Grifola frondosa —maitake mushrooms. We inoculate the medium — sawdust, wood chips, sometimes cardboard or burlap or straw — and the mycelium overtakes it, rapidly, tiny white threads hundreds of miles long in some cases, bound up together. Spawn.”

“And this is how you — the Colony — has been remediating the soil?”

“Yeah.”

“Mushrooms?”

“Mushrooms. When they’re not trapped in a bag like this, when they’re in a forest, say, or a field, the organism can stretch for miles right there under your feet.”

“I’ve read about the use of microorganisms in oil spills — bacteria especially — but they work too slowly for broad commercial use after big spills.”

“How slow is too slow for the planet?” Jen asked. “And how much more harm did ArPac do when they threw dispersants all over the oil in the sea out here?”

“You’re right, obviously, I agree with you,” I said, walking down a row of stacked burlap sacks. “But, I mean, how many years does it take? And how do you even know that it’s working?”

“We regularly send soil samples for testing. Obviously, the entire island isn’t okay, yet. I mean, we’re not done . But given the right spawn, in the right conditions, we can create healthy, viable soil in six months. Sometimes less. ” Jen took me outside to show me a mitigation field at the bottom of the goat pasture, where they covered waste runoff with layers of inoculated sawdust, straw, and bark. The whole was covered with burlap to protect it from the hot sun and watered if it started to dry out.

“It’s like a giant compost heap, but working three times faster to create soil,” she said. “We start with sterilized medium, inoculate them with the variety of mycelium best suited to the medium and conditions. We turn the pile every so often, until the materials are soil, ready to be added to the fields and gardens. The mycelium is then acclimated to the climate, the conditions; it infiltrates the existing soil, and the remediation process continues.”

“How?” I asked. “How exactly do mushrooms remediate? Are they digesting the heavy metals, the toxic chemicals?”

“Sort of. Yes. Some mycelia can break chemicals down into their elemental parts, rendering them less harmful. Mycelium produce enzymes to decompose plant and animal matter, and some of those enzymes also break down petrochemicals, plastics, complex chemical compounds created in a lab and unleashed on the world. Others can absorb heavy metals into the mushrooms themselves, so they can be removed from the ecosystem. It doesn’t all happen at once, but over time, with different applications and different mycelia, gradually the natural balance of interdependent plant, insect, and microbial life can return. It all starts with the mushrooms.”

“So you don’t eat these mushrooms?”

“No, not the ones directly involved in restoration.”

“So, what do you do with them?”

“We put the mushrooms through the process again, in the soil, with a fresh batch of spawn from some other species. Mycoremediation isn’t new and neither are the methods. We’ve learned and borrowed from others who have been studying them casually or on much smaller scales for decades. No one has ever had the opportunity to try something like this.”

She took me back to the hut and showed me more mycelia. Varieties they cultivated for food and medicine, and experimental species donated or exchanged with mycologists around the world.