"Fungi have made it possible to think with a different model: one in which the aboveground is just some of the story, and perhaps not the most interesting part. Indeed, the aboveground can be made just as alien as its more hidden neighbor, when viewed through a fungal lens. When I look at the mysteries and illegibilities of fungi, I can relate. Learning about them has taught me to dwell more comfortably in mystery, even as I pursue answers and better questions. Plenty of the material conditions and habits of thought that root and connect people to things and to one another on this planet can feel somewhat notional for me, as a neurodivergent, naturalized US citizen from the Caribbean, and a descendant of enslaved people. I've lived my life within an epistemological framework in which those true, to-the-center-of-the-earth roots were for others, not me. And since my family tree came from a clear-cut forest, I would of necessity be relegated to a surface kind of existence. But the more I learn about the ancient origins and tantalizing futurity of fungi, about their potential for earthly and mental remediation, the more I've realized that my kinship lines feel more mycelial than tree-like. That, like fungi, the stuff I'm made of (that we're all made of) has the power to move in darkness, to thrive undetected, to quietly work until such a time as there's nothing left to do but fruit. All eukaryotes have a common ancestor if we go back 2 billion years, anyhow. In this way, I recognize fungi as my kin. I truly can, and do, relate.
As of this writing, huge strides toward an ecologically sound understanding of our planet are being made by using a fungal lens. The North American Mycoflora Project, which turned into the Fungal Diversity Survey (FunDiS), is mounting a heroic effort to encourage citizen scientists in their documentation of the rich fungal biome we live with every day. The scientists behind SPUN (Society for the Protection of Underground Networks), an international effort to map our mycelial networks by taking thousands of richly myceliated soil samples from around the world, began work in 2022. Popular participation in science is enjoying a nineteenth-century-style uptick: via online applications like iNaturalist and Mushroom Observer, crowdsourcing is expanding the mycological record. At the same time, those who've thought of themselves as the center of humanity are being forced to admit that the margins (and those they sought, and seek, to bury underground there) are where the keys to our continued existence can be found. Reckonings abound as our planet continually tips toward apocalypse. And as this dark renaissance takes root, I've begun using a fungal lens to bring my own mental and ancestral underground into focus. The essays here are a record of that exploration. As I sought a path to a more integrated sense of my past and the future, I found there's nothing lime the study of fungi to encourage ecological thinking and explore notions of discrete individuals, lone actors, and single-stream histories."
Fearless, Sleepless, Deathless: What Fungi Taught Me about Nourishment, Poison, Ecology, Hidden Histories, Zombies, and Black Survival by Maria Pinto (2025, The University of North Carolina Press)
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