Dear Little Bean Sprouts!

Day 21: Dear little bean sprouts! I was afraid they were gone for good. Every year about this time, I start checking one of Pack Forest's lesser-known trails for Clavaria vermicularis, aka "Fairy Fingers." To me, this member of the club fungi carries the apellation "bean sprouts" because that's what they look like in both size and colour. I am quite fond of them simply because they're unusual, and I'd become quite attached to this lot. I saw them last in 2019. In 2020 when I visited the site, I was shocked to see that it had been disturbed. What was peculiar about the disturbance was that it was limited to the exact 12" square of moss where the "bean sprouts" had always grown. The moss had been lifted as a neat rectangle, leaving the soil bare below, and had been dropped a foot away. Evidence pointed toward human interference, not that of an animal. I replaced the moss in its original location and then spent the rest of the day and some time thereafter puzzling over why anyone would have done such a thing, or indeed would have even known where they grew. They are neither edible nor hallucinogenic, so I concluded that they had been harvested as a specimen. It was the only logical justification I could imagine. The following two years were "sproutless" as well, so I almost didn't stop today, but I thought, "It's quick. I might as well check." And there they were...not in the original site, but on the spot where the clump of moss had been dropped by a person/creature unknown! Apparently, it had been full of spores because there are now more "bean sprouts" than ever before. It doesn't take much to make me happy. This made my day.