Indeterminacy 155

Lois Long (the Lois Long who designs textiles),
Christian Wolff, and I climbed Slide
Mountain along with Guy Nearing and the Flemings,
including Willie. All the way up and
down the mountain we found nothing but Collybia
platyphylla, so that I began to itch to visit
a cemetery in Millerton, New York, where, in
my mind’s eye, Pluteus cervinus was growing.
By the time we got back to the cars, our
knees were shaking with fatigue and the sun had
gone down. Nevertheless, I managed to
persuade Lois Long and Christian Wolff to drive over
to Millerton. It meant an extra hundred
miles. We arrived at the cemetery at
midnight. I took a flashlight out of the
glove compartment, got out, and first
hastily and then carefully examined all the stumps
and the ground around them. There wasn’t
a single mushroom growing. Going back to
the car, I fully expected Lois Long and Christian
Wolff to be exasperated. However, they
were entranced. The aurora borealis,
which neither of them had ever seen before,
was playing in the northern sky.