by Sonja Hakala

Edie Wolfe glanced at her beeping phone as she hooked her book bag over her shoulder. It was another weather alert, the third since early morning. “Rain stopping at 3:16. Will resume 17 minutes later.” She snorted softly, a noise her mother would have appreciated as a “sound of ladylike derision.” After a glance at the gray skies, she pulled up her jacket’s hood, and picked up the pace of her walk to Carding’s Frost Free Library. It was Book Club day.

“The weather people could just say showers all day and be done with it,” she muttered as she stuffed the infernal telephone into her pocket. Edie maintained a vigorously antagonistic relationship with technology because, to her mind, it didn’t make anything easier, just more complicated. 

The gathering book club members waved briefly to one another as they scurried along toward the library’s open door. “Looks like it’s going to be a big crowd,” her friend Agnes Findley said as she joined Edie in sprinting through the rain.

“Yeah, it’s wet so gardening is out and the summer folks from Mount Merino have started moving back to town, and they’re all lookin’ for something to do,” Edie said. “And I’ll bet that none of them have the foggiest idea what the topic is for this month’s meeting.”

Agnes chuckled. “Happens this time every year.”

Edie sighed. “I know. It’s just that I prefer our wintertime club meetings where everyone really wants to talk about books. All the Mount Merino people want to talk about is where they spent the winter.” She glanced at Aggie. “Sorry. I’m being petulant. So what did you bring to talk about?”

The rain pattered harder. “Let’s duck under the trees,” Aggie said.

They ran toward the biggest of Carding green’s sycamores, hugging the huge tree’s trunk. “I brought an umbrella,” Edie said, struggling to fish it out of her raincoat pocket. 

“Here, here, I’ve got you covered.” Ruth Goodwin said as she raced up to join her friends, her blue and white golf umbrella providing enough shelter for the three of them. “I see that the Mount Merino summer contingent has arrived. Makes me almost wish it was winter again.”

“Do you think they’ll try to change the rules again this year?” Edie asked.

“Hmph, how much time did we waste last year trying to pick a book that everyone wanted to read?” Aggie said. “I mean, that’s why we opted long ago to pick a topic, and share what we’ve all read about it. I get so much out of that.”

Ruth laughed. “Me too. How long is your reading list now?” 

“Oh, I’ll never reach the end of it, especially since I add three or four books to it each month.” Aggie reached into her book bag. “Edie was asking what I brought, and I just finished this last night.” She held up a copy of Entangled Life by biologist Merlin Sheldrake. “This was amazing. I learned so, so, so much. It reaffirmed by faith in open-ended questions, and that there are more mysteries in a thimble-full of soil than there are raindrops in these clouds.”

The hiss of the rain grew louder, and the three friends stood in silent regard of the watery curtain that now surrounded them. Edie’s phone pinged again. “Heavier rain expected in Carding, Vermont for the next hour,” she read aloud. They sighed as one. “You do realize we have a decision to make. Either finish our walk to the library or…”

“Hold our own meeting at the Crow Town Bakery?” Ruth finished. 

Edie turned around to look at her house on the other side of the green. “Or we could pick up some muffins from the Crow and have tea at my house,” she suggested.

“Well, that’s settled then,” Aggie said. 

Twenty minutes later, the three friends were pouring hot water into cups as they unearthed their reading treasures from their bags. 

“So this month is nature and I figured you’d bring a Robert Macfarlane,” Edie said as Ruth put her books on the kitchen table. “Is that one your favorite?” she asked as she pointed to a book with a blue and white cover.

Ruth stroked her copy of Landmarks. “I think so. Though I still love the first Macfarlane that I read, The Old Ways. You know how much I love to walk, and I can never get over the history of those paths in England. And yet, I love the language in Landmarks. I think I’m going to re-read this one, and start my own collection of words about the natural world in Carding.”

Aggie picked up Landmarks. “I’ve never read this one. Isn’t it a kind of dictionary?” 

“Hmm, more like a dictionary of lost and forgotten words for weather, natural events, types of soil, the faces of the sea from all over the British Isles, and they’re so specific and so different, it’s like another language.” Ruth handed the book to Aggie. “You love words as much as you do plants so I’d say this has your name all over it.”

Aggie opened the book at random and started to read. “Oh, these are words about soil and earth. Listen. ’Chawn—crack in the ground caused by dry weather. Clarty—of earth: sticky, boot-clingy.’ Boy, that’s us in mud season, isn’t it? ‘Jingly—warm, easily crumbled, stony soil.’ You’re right, Ruth, this book could be addictive.”

Edie picked up Aggie’s copy of Entangled Life. “Everyone I know who’s read this says exactly what you did. What makes it so amazing?”

“Well, you both know my fascination with plants.”

“On a par with your fascination with words, right?” 

Aggie laughed. “I think that’s one of the best things about having good friends is they know, understand, and accept your addictions. So, Entangled Life, yeah. You know how we’ve all been fascinated by the work of Susan Simard, and how she discovered that trees communicate and protect one another through a network of fungi in the earth.”

“The mycelial network, yeah,” Edie said. “Fascinating research.”

“Well, Sheldrake takes all of that several steps further, into all the history and research that’s gone on and going on with fungi and algae and bacteria and lichens, and he’s one of those rare scientists who can write about it in clear English. And the scope of that whole area of science, which we never hear too much about, is breathtaking.” Aggie opened the book to one of her marked pages. “Here’s a little sample. ‘A mycelial network is a map of a fungus’s recent history and is a helpful reminder that all life forms are in fact processes not things. The “you” of five years ago was made from different stuff than the “you” of today. Nature is an event that never stops.’”

“An event that never stops. Ooh, I love that,” Edie breathed. 

“Yeah, me too.” Aggie took a sip of her tea then continued. “‘As William Bateson, who coined the term genetics, observed: We commonly think of animals and plants as matter, but they are really systems through which matter is continually passing. When we see an organism, from a fungus to a pine tree, we catch a single moment in its continual development.’”

“You can see that in people,” Ruth said. “Just look at how much we’ve changed in the time we’ve known one another, in our bodies, in our perspectives, in our minds.”

Her friends nodded in agreement. “And part of what Sheldrake does is to explain all of the potential healing that’s coming our way from all of this research. Did you know there’s a company in New York called Evocative that’s using agricultural waste to feed fungi that grow products that are made into boards, bricks, acoustic tiles, and molded packaging. The Dell company ships its servers in mycelial packaging.”

Ruth and Edie could hear the excitement in their friend’s voice. “Here’s one more idea to think about,” Aggie said. “Listen to this. ’What we call plants are in fact fungi that have evolved to farm algae, and algae that have evolved to farm fungi.’ I’m not kidding. This book will alter your perspective and blow your mind in the process.”

“It’s what I’ve always believed,” Edie said as she stroked the silky ears of her cocker spaniel Nearly. “We’re all made of the same stuff, and when we disrespect a plant or an animal or a rock or a river or the soil in our gardens or the air we move through, we disrespect ourselves because we are all made of the same stuff. We humans made a fundamental error in our thinking when we decided we were better than the other life forms on earth. We aren’t. Not at all.”

The three friends sat in companionable silence while the last of their tea cooled. Finally Edie stirred. “So do you think we were, perhaps, premature in ducking out of the book club meeting today?” 

They looked at one another for a long moment. Then Ruth wrinkled her nose. “Nope, not feeling it. The older I get, the more I savor this type of connection, and understand that this is the whole point of it all. Do you know what I mean?”

Edie smiled as she got to her feet. “So then, more tea? There are still books on the table to talk about.”

---

The Carding Chronicles are short stories written by author Sonja Hakala about the Vermont town that no one can quite find on a map. They feature the characters in the four Carding novels.

The Carding books are available from Amazon and the Chronicles appear here, on this website, every Monday. Hope to see you next week.