Five things to Love about Fall

Posted on October 6, 2012 by Catherine Austen

There are the leaves, of course.
There’s the back-to-school energy.
There’s the first fire in the woodstove.
There are, ahem, the shoes. (Yeah, I know, but I have some beloved closed-toed numbers I haven’t worn all summer.)
And there is one grossly under-appreciated Fall wonder: the mushrooms.

BTW, this post isn’t about writing. Except to say that if leaves are Fall’s best-sellers, the award-winners, the attention-grabbers, with great reviews and stacks 20-deep on the shelves at Chapters, then mushrooms are the micro-press chapbooks, the quirky translations, the single copies of quiet novels in indie bookstores, the early writings of unknown poets lurking in second-hand shops (the books, I mean, but the poets are probably lurking there, too).

I like best-sellers and award-winners. I’m eager to discover them and they deliver every time. But when I stumble on a great book I’d never heard of or about, I feel like I’ve made a more important discovery and been given a greater gift.

And in just that way, I love fall leaves. But jeez, I’m crazy about mushrooms. I get down in the dirt to take their pictures.

I love them for their colour:

I love them for their texture:

I love them for their personality:

I love them for their fragility:

I love them for their unobtrusiveness:

I love them more than my ladybug shoes (and I really love these shoes):

So as you stroll through the beautiful Fall, take a moment away from those ruby maples and rusty oaks, and look beneath the fallen leaves at the humble fungi. (And seek out an obscure book or two.) And you will feel rewarded.