20/10/20 Two weeks ago I arrived home from a walking holiday in Cornwall and Devon to find the landscape transformed: I had left in warm late summer, and I was arriving back in the midst of autumn. The air was cool, the ground was wet, the trees were turning and leaves lay on the ground. One of the first things I needed to do in order to ground myself in this new season and my home landscape was to go for a walk. My hoped-for walk on arrival was swept aside by an emergency vet trip, as were most of my positive feelings about arriving home. But in the short period before panic and anxiety set in, I had already felt the relief and joy of arriving back to a place in which I was glad to live. In my desperation to get away in the preceding months, it was easy to forget that. The desperation had nothing to do with attachment to my home and local landscape; it was about getting away from chores and having a mental rest, which I was finding difficult to achieve without altering my surroundings.
My walk was delayed until the next day. I went to The Hobbets, where I spotted hiding in the long grass beside the path a single large shaggy ink cap. One of my favourite mushrooms. No: my favourite mushroom. I greeted it enthusiastically, without checking first there was no one in earshot – I have got used to people happening upon me mid-conversation with some animal, plant or tree. I looked around for others, but found none. I hoped more would appear in the next few days.
On my way home, I started to wonder why I love shaggy ink caps so much. Was it because they were one of the few mushrooms I could identify without any doubt? No, it wasn’t that: I could identify shaggy parasols, giant puffballs, common ink caps, honey fungus and fly agarics. Not a huge selection, but better than nothing. It was definitely to do with their appearance, I decided, and perhaps their name. I love the word shaggy, as well as what it signifies. They are shaggy, of course, and also beautifully white, unmistakably themselves in their distinctive shape even when they are only just starting to poke through the grass. They are a friendly autumnal sight; there is not the slightest hint of malice about them.