The Mushroom that Saved the Day! 😳😊

 

I have to admit this is a terrible picture of such an important mushroom. I did come better prepared this year with a real camera in place of my iPhone - if only I knew how to use it!  Why is it such an important mushroom you may be wondering? It’s a long story. 

After reading some of the history books here at the house, Kirby and I went in search of an old radar tower that the Americans built in the wake of the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1963. Relying on information from Google, we drove eight miles to the tiny visitor center for Soberanía National Park, figured out where to park (which was no small feat) and started out on a trail we hoped would lead us to the tower. 

It’s only a few miles away but this forest is so different from the one that encircles Gamboa.  The trees were much smaller and the vegetation on the forest floor less dense. The trail was wide and clearly marked with large signs - even though the signs didn’t really say anything helpful. Mostly, they gave suggestions on how you can become one with Mother Nature. As helpful as the signs tried to be, these NE Colorado dirt farmers are far from becoming symbiotic with THIS version of Mother Nature. Love it, we do. Understand it, we don’t. 

Soon the trees grew bigger, the forest floor became covered with ferns and vines and the path narrowed. However, seeing the uninformative signs was indication that we were on the right track, or at least on a trail. Until a fallen tree blocking the trail threw us a curve ball. This tree was enormous and the tangle of vines and broken branches made it impossible to scamper over. I used to sing “Going on a Bear Hunt” with my students and so knew just what to do - if you can’t go over it and you can’t go under it, you have to go around it - Right?  We eventually did make it around the tree and back to the trail but not without a lot of slipping and sliding on boggy, soggy ground, scrapes and scratches and a few encounters with multi-legged centipede-like critters we didn’t want to disturb. 

Feeling a little proud of ourselves and relived at conquering the tree detour, we continued on our way pointing out foliage and fungi we hadn’t seen before.  This might seem a little crazy to those from Colorado where the fungi we encounter are those odd, phallic-looking mushrooms that grow up where the sprinkler leaks. Here, the fungi is unique and even beautiful. 

Which leads us to the Hero mushroom and how it saved the day.  😊 This perky, little fella wasn’t hiding in the middle of a decaying log or peeking through foliage at the base of a tree like all the other fungi. It was standing tall and proud right in the middle of the trail, or what we hoped was the trail. I decided this display of bravery and uniqueness deserved a photo and snapped the terrible shot pictured at the beginning of this post. We continued our adventure with much conversation that went something like: “Is this the trail? No, I think it’s this way. Do you see another unhelpful sign?”  Maybe it was this disrespect for the unhelpful signs that led Mother Nature to dump another enormous tree in the middle of the “maybe path” that we were trying to follow. We confidently set off to circumnavigate this second tree. 

In an attempt to keep this long story from getting any longer, we wandered for quite a while without any indication there had ever been a trail. No sightings of unhelpful signs either.  Now the conversation went something like: “Right or left? Wanna flip a coin? Oops - should have gone the other way; I just sunk in muck. This may be where malaria started.” 

Eventually, we stumbled upon - you guessed it - the proud little mushroom I had photographed. As much a beacon to us, as a lighthouse to a ship on a stormy night, this little mushroom pointed us back to the “maybe” trail and then the real trail. Today we didn’t find our way to the radar station but we did find our way back to the car - an even bigger win. 

Some of our friends and family are a little nervous about our shenanigans in Panama and this story doesn’t help, does it? We were never really in danger of being totally lost. This part of the jungle sloped down toward the road that leads to Gamboa. Not ideal because we really do stick to the trails, but if necessary we could have worked our way down, listening for cars and followed the road back to our car. We understand our Gringo status in this unfamiliar world and are very cautious and careful not to take crazy risks. So don’t worry friends and family. Read this story with a giggle because it was written with a chuckle.