Read Online The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins by Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing - Free Book Online
Authors: Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing
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a livestock yard and then into an internment camp. Hiro joined the U.S. Army and served in the Nisei 442nd Regimental Combat Team, famous for the sacrifices it made to rescue whiter troops. Afterward, he worked in a forge, making heavy equipment. For that long life of work, he receives $11 a year in pension.
From this history of discrimination and loss, Hiro has helped to build an active Japanese American community. One component ismatsutake: a symbol of both fellowship and memory. For Hiro, giving away matsutake is one of the greatest pleasures of picking. Last year he gave matsutake to sixty-four people, mainly older folks who couldn’t get to the mountains to pick for themselves. Matsutake builds a sense of enjoyment through sharing. As such too, it has become a gift that elders can give to the young. Before one even gets to the woods, then, matsutake conjures memory.
During the drive to the forest with Hiro, memory gets personal. He points out the window, “That’s Roy’s matsutake hunting place; over there it’s Henry’s special spot.” Only later do I realize that both Roy and Henry are deceased. But they live on in Hiro’s map of the forest, recalled every time he passes their spots. Hiro teaches younger people how to hunt for mushrooms, and with the skill comes the memory.
As we walk into the forest, memory gets specific. “Under that tree, I once found nineteen mushrooms, a whole row, stretching halfway round the tree.” “Over there I found the biggest mushroom I’ve ever found, four pounds it was, and still a bud.” He shows me where storms have felled a once good mushroom tree; there will be no mushrooms there. We look at the places where a flood wiped off the topsoil, and where pickers have undermined a bush by digging. Once those were good mushroom places: no more.
Hiro walks with a cane, and it is amazing to me that he can still clamber over fallen logs, through brush, and up and down slippery ravines. But Hiro does not try to cover ground. Instead, he goes from one of his remembered mushroom spots to another. The best way to find matsutake is to look where one has found it before.
Of course, if that spot is in the middle of nowhere, under a random bush near a random tree, it’s pretty hard to remember that place from year to year. It would be impossible to catalog all the places one has found a mushroom. But, Hiro explains, one doesn’t have to. When one arrives in the spot, the memory washes over one, making every detail of that time come suddenly clear—the angle of a leaning tree, the smell of a resinous bush, the play of light, the texture of the soil. I have often experienced just that wash of memory. I am walking along what appears to be an unfamiliar stretch of forest, and suddenly the memory of finding a mushroom—just there—bathes my surroundings. Then I know exactly where to look, although finding is still as difficult as you can imagine.
This kind of memory requires motion and inspires an intimate historical knowledge of the forest. Hiro remembers when a road was first opened to the public: “There were so many mushrooms by the side of the road that you didn’t have to go into the forest at all!” He remembers particularly good years: “I found three orange crates of mushroom, and I couldn’t figure out how to carry them to the car.” All of this history is layered on the landscape, threaded in and out of the spots we check for new life emerging.
The power of this dance of memory struck me particularly hard when we spoke of people who could no longer perform it. Hiro brings mushrooms to those who can no longer walk in the forest. Gifting mushrooms re-inserts the ill and the widowed into the communal landscape. Sometimes, however, memory fails, and then, for better or worse, all the world becomes mushrooms. Hiro’s friend Henry told the poignant story of an elderly Nisei with Alzheimer’s, confined to a nursing home. When Henry visited, the old man told him, “You
From this history of discrimination and loss, Hiro has helped to build an active Japanese American community. One component ismatsutake: a symbol of both fellowship and memory. For Hiro, giving away matsutake is one of the greatest pleasures of picking. Last year he gave matsutake to sixty-four people, mainly older folks who couldn’t get to the mountains to pick for themselves. Matsutake builds a sense of enjoyment through sharing. As such too, it has become a gift that elders can give to the young. Before one even gets to the woods, then, matsutake conjures memory.
During the drive to the forest with Hiro, memory gets personal. He points out the window, “That’s Roy’s matsutake hunting place; over there it’s Henry’s special spot.” Only later do I realize that both Roy and Henry are deceased. But they live on in Hiro’s map of the forest, recalled every time he passes their spots. Hiro teaches younger people how to hunt for mushrooms, and with the skill comes the memory.
As we walk into the forest, memory gets specific. “Under that tree, I once found nineteen mushrooms, a whole row, stretching halfway round the tree.” “Over there I found the biggest mushroom I’ve ever found, four pounds it was, and still a bud.” He shows me where storms have felled a once good mushroom tree; there will be no mushrooms there. We look at the places where a flood wiped off the topsoil, and where pickers have undermined a bush by digging. Once those were good mushroom places: no more.
Hiro walks with a cane, and it is amazing to me that he can still clamber over fallen logs, through brush, and up and down slippery ravines. But Hiro does not try to cover ground. Instead, he goes from one of his remembered mushroom spots to another. The best way to find matsutake is to look where one has found it before.
Of course, if that spot is in the middle of nowhere, under a random bush near a random tree, it’s pretty hard to remember that place from year to year. It would be impossible to catalog all the places one has found a mushroom. But, Hiro explains, one doesn’t have to. When one arrives in the spot, the memory washes over one, making every detail of that time come suddenly clear—the angle of a leaning tree, the smell of a resinous bush, the play of light, the texture of the soil. I have often experienced just that wash of memory. I am walking along what appears to be an unfamiliar stretch of forest, and suddenly the memory of finding a mushroom—just there—bathes my surroundings. Then I know exactly where to look, although finding is still as difficult as you can imagine.
This kind of memory requires motion and inspires an intimate historical knowledge of the forest. Hiro remembers when a road was first opened to the public: “There were so many mushrooms by the side of the road that you didn’t have to go into the forest at all!” He remembers particularly good years: “I found three orange crates of mushroom, and I couldn’t figure out how to carry them to the car.” All of this history is layered on the landscape, threaded in and out of the spots we check for new life emerging.
The power of this dance of memory struck me particularly hard when we spoke of people who could no longer perform it. Hiro brings mushrooms to those who can no longer walk in the forest. Gifting mushrooms re-inserts the ill and the widowed into the communal landscape. Sometimes, however, memory fails, and then, for better or worse, all the world becomes mushrooms. Hiro’s friend Henry told the poignant story of an elderly Nisei with Alzheimer’s, confined to a nursing home. When Henry visited, the old man told him, “You
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