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 Page B
Authors: Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing
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anchored to trees, come up again in the same spots, this is a surprisingly productive strategy. We align ourselves with invisible pickers who have gone before us but left us traces of their activity lines.
Nonhuman pickers are at least as important as humans in this strategy. Deer and elk love matsutake, eating it in preference to other mushrooms. When we find the spoor of deer or elk, it often leads us to a patch. Bears turn over logs with matsutake underneath and create quite a mess, digging up the ground. But bears—like deer and elk—never take all the mushrooms. To find a recent animal digging is a sure sign that mushrooms may be around. Following the traces of animal lives, we entangle and align our movements, searching with them.
Not all tracks guide one well. How often I find a lively bump, which, pressed, reveals just air: the tunnel of a gopher or a mole. And when I ask Moei Lin if she follows the guidance of candy cane, she frowns and says “no.” “Other people will have already been there,” she explains. It is too obvious a sign for the subtle entanglements we seek.
To view trash in this light is a big revelation for me. White hikers and the Forest Service hate trash. It mars the forest, they say. Southeast Asian pickers, they say, leave too much trash. Some have spoken of closing the forest to pickers because of trash. But out looking for life lines, a little trash helps. Not the mountains of beer cans white hunters leave, but a little trash tracked through the forest. A wrinkled piece of tin foil, the discarded vial of a ginseng tonic, a soggy box of Zhong Nan Hai Super Cheap Chinese cigarettes: Each of these is a sign that a Southeast Asian picker had passed through. I recognize the line; I align myself with it; it keeps me from getting lost; it puts me on the track for mushrooms. I find myself looking forward to the lines on which trash leads me.
Trash is not the only Forest Service bugaboo. Another concern is “raking,” which means digging up the ground. Anti-raking spokesmen describe raking as the work of single egotistical or ignorant men. Rakers dig the ground with their big sticks, heedless of the results for others. But women pickers show me something different. Sometimes the disturbed ground labeled as raking is the work of many hands. When many hands have touched an area to find its life lines, a collectivelyproduced trough can form. Raking is sometimes the result of many consecutive and entangled life lines.
The ground where Moei Lin and Fam Tsoi pick is not the sculpted moss and lichen carpet of Hiro’s special valley. In the volcanic high desert of the eastern Cascades, the ground is dry; the trees are windblown, sickly, and sometimes sparse. Fallen trees litter the ground, their uprooted butts blocking passage. Waves of logging and Forest Service “treatments” have left a trail of stumps and roads and broken earth. It seems strange to argue that pickers are among the worst threats to the forest. Still, their tracks are there. For Moei Lin and Fam Tsoi, this is an advantage.
By following life lines and aligning their movements with them, Moei Lin and Fam Tsoi cover a lot of ground. We rise before dawn, and after a meal we are in the forest at first light. We may be out in the forest for four or five hours before we contact the men on the walkie-talkie to find out where they have gone. And although the general contours of the hills are familiar, we are always checking new places. This is not the forest of familiar attachments. We scout new territory by following the lines of life.
At lunchtime, we sit on a log and pull out plastic bags of rice. Today, our topping is carp, made into small brown nuggets, mixed with red and green bits. It’s tantalizingly rich and spicy, and I ask how it’s made. Fam Tsoi explains, “You have a fish. You add salt.” She falters; that’s it. I imagine myself in the kitchen with a raw salty fish dripping in my hand. Language has met its limit.
Nonhuman pickers are at least as important as humans in this strategy. Deer and elk love matsutake, eating it in preference to other mushrooms. When we find the spoor of deer or elk, it often leads us to a patch. Bears turn over logs with matsutake underneath and create quite a mess, digging up the ground. But bears—like deer and elk—never take all the mushrooms. To find a recent animal digging is a sure sign that mushrooms may be around. Following the traces of animal lives, we entangle and align our movements, searching with them.
Not all tracks guide one well. How often I find a lively bump, which, pressed, reveals just air: the tunnel of a gopher or a mole. And when I ask Moei Lin if she follows the guidance of candy cane, she frowns and says “no.” “Other people will have already been there,” she explains. It is too obvious a sign for the subtle entanglements we seek.
To view trash in this light is a big revelation for me. White hikers and the Forest Service hate trash. It mars the forest, they say. Southeast Asian pickers, they say, leave too much trash. Some have spoken of closing the forest to pickers because of trash. But out looking for life lines, a little trash helps. Not the mountains of beer cans white hunters leave, but a little trash tracked through the forest. A wrinkled piece of tin foil, the discarded vial of a ginseng tonic, a soggy box of Zhong Nan Hai Super Cheap Chinese cigarettes: Each of these is a sign that a Southeast Asian picker had passed through. I recognize the line; I align myself with it; it keeps me from getting lost; it puts me on the track for mushrooms. I find myself looking forward to the lines on which trash leads me.
Trash is not the only Forest Service bugaboo. Another concern is “raking,” which means digging up the ground. Anti-raking spokesmen describe raking as the work of single egotistical or ignorant men. Rakers dig the ground with their big sticks, heedless of the results for others. But women pickers show me something different. Sometimes the disturbed ground labeled as raking is the work of many hands. When many hands have touched an area to find its life lines, a collectivelyproduced trough can form. Raking is sometimes the result of many consecutive and entangled life lines.
The ground where Moei Lin and Fam Tsoi pick is not the sculpted moss and lichen carpet of Hiro’s special valley. In the volcanic high desert of the eastern Cascades, the ground is dry; the trees are windblown, sickly, and sometimes sparse. Fallen trees litter the ground, their uprooted butts blocking passage. Waves of logging and Forest Service “treatments” have left a trail of stumps and roads and broken earth. It seems strange to argue that pickers are among the worst threats to the forest. Still, their tracks are there. For Moei Lin and Fam Tsoi, this is an advantage.
By following life lines and aligning their movements with them, Moei Lin and Fam Tsoi cover a lot of ground. We rise before dawn, and after a meal we are in the forest at first light. We may be out in the forest for four or five hours before we contact the men on the walkie-talkie to find out where they have gone. And although the general contours of the hills are familiar, we are always checking new places. This is not the forest of familiar attachments. We scout new territory by following the lines of life.
At lunchtime, we sit on a log and pull out plastic bags of rice. Today, our topping is carp, made into small brown nuggets, mixed with red and green bits. It’s tantalizingly rich and spicy, and I ask how it’s made. Fam Tsoi explains, “You have a fish. You add salt.” She falters; that’s it. I imagine myself in the kitchen with a raw salty fish dripping in my hand. Language has met its limit.
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