Endless Threads and Spores: How Fungi Meet Their Needs
In this episode, we’ll learn how fungi meet their needs and the unique teachings they offer us through their millenia of experience adapting to life on Earth. Fungi are masters of absorption, decomposition, and collaboration, and most of us could use a dose of their teachings.
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Welcome to A Wild New Work, a podcast about how to divest from capitalism and the norms of modern work and step into the soulful calling of these times we live in. Which includes the call to rekindle our relationship with the earth. I'm Megan Leatherman, a mother to two small kids, writer, amateur ecologist, and vocational guide.
I live in the Pacific Northwest and I'm your host today.
Hi friend and welcome. I'm so glad that you're here today. I'm really honored to spend this time with you. I'm recording in the middle of the spring. The sun is in the sign of Taurus. We're really in the heart of this. season now, you've probably noticed that there are more flowers blooming, pollinator activity may have kicked up, you might see more, you know, younger animals coming out of the nests.
Life is definitely here, it's all happening, and we're part of that, and all of the life we see around us has changed. It needs things, needs materials, nutrients in order to grow right now, and that includes us. And we learned certain strategies to meet our needs inside of capitalism, strategies like competition, domination over each other, over the land, manipulation, some of us might have learned helplessness, and to meet our needs through appearing, you know, helpless and not able to meet them on our own.
And so there's a lot of weird, wonky, unnatural strategies happening in our human communities right now in terms of how we meet our needs. And I think we need to look outside of the human community to learn new strategies for how to be here in a good way, how to meet our needs in ways that don't diminish Others around us, including the more than human beings that we share this planet with, and I would like to be learning right now from beings who have been here a lot longer than us, who have found clever ways to survive, ways of surviving that don't deplete the planet, but that actually build it up and give it life.
So today we're going to be learning from fungi, from the mushrooms, molds, yeasts, the often invisible beings who are turning dead matter into life again, who have made it possible for plants to evolve out of the waters and onto land millions of years ago. These beings who have given humans so many foods through mushroom foraging but also through fermentation and who provide powerful medicine at times and necessary medicine. Fungi are incredible and I think learning about how they meet their needs is going to open up some new ideas for how you can get your needs met in your life and your work right now.
Before we dive in, I want to share a couple of quick announcements. The first is just that on Saturday, May 18th, here outside of Portland, we're hosting the second gathering of Rise Up Rooted, an adult rite of passage program. I'm co facilitating this with my friends, Heather Dorfman and Megan Hain. And this is a process in which we're really looking to support people with a heart for the village. People who want to integrate their gifts more and let their talents flourish in their lives and their work and their communities. And our second gathering in this series will be outside on beautiful Oak Island, my favorite place in the world. And we will be spending a few hours connecting with each other and with the land there to see how your gifts want to be expressed in the village right now.
There are two more gatherings after this one, including an overnight. And you're welcome to join us just for one or two or for the entire rest of the series. And you can learn more about that at awildnewwork. com slash rise dash up dash rooted. My other announcement is just that if you're not in Portland or you need some deeper support through a big work transition right now, I support folks one on one through those, through these junctures and crossroads in our vocational journeys.
I love supporting people who want to do good work in the world that is meaningful to them and that is life giving in ways that aren't harmful to others or extractive and that can be hard to do on our own sometimes and so I walk alongside people through that journey as well and you can learn more about that at awildnewwork. com. Alright, well let's shift into our opening invocation. So wherever you are, just taking a moment to notice what it's like to be in your body right now. Noticing the effects of gravity on you. You might want to take a deep breath in. Maybe feel a little lighter or feel your solidity pulling you closer to the Earth.
May each of us be blessed and emboldened to do the work we're meant to do on this planet. May our work honor our ancestors, known and unknown, and may it be in harmony with all creatures that we share this Earth with. I express gratitude for all of the technologies and gifts that have made this possible, and I'm grateful to the Multnomah, Cowlitz, Bands of Chinook, and Clackamas tribes, among many others, who are the original stewards of the land that I'm on.
Okay, well, before we shift into talking about fungi, I want to talk about our needs first and just make sure we're all on the same page about what I mean when I say that word, which is a complex and very full thing. But what I want to say right now is that is that needs, when I refer to needs, I really mean what you need in order to feel good in your life at a foundational level.
And we talked about this in depth in episode 120, so I won't go too deep here. But the four that I identified in that episode were your needs for closeness, So knowing that you are loved and bonded to others, including the world around you. Sustenance, your needs for clean air, for food and water. Your needs for shelter, a home base from which you can meet the rest of your needs for closeness and sustenance.
And then freedom, the The need that you have to experience your life and be as you are in the ways that are natural to you. That is an essential human need. So whether you resonate with that list or not, the fact is that you have needs. We all do. Your needs aren't more important than anyone else's needs, but you do have them.
And if you're used to overwriting them, In order to meet the needs of others, that may be something that you want to look at in this middle spring time. Because there are ways to meet your needs and grow right now that don't mean not supporting others meeting their own. It's not a zero sum game. It's not like there are, you know, 20 needs that can be met and I have 15 and you have 5 and you know, too bad you can't meet your own - the others that you need. It's not like that. We can both have our needs and find ways to meet them that are collaborative and creative and really rich. Of course, the other thing is that not all of our needs can be met all of the time, but one of the lies that capitalism propagates is that it's natural for some people to have all of their needs met and for many other people to not have their needs met.
That is not the way it has to be. That's not a natural, inevitable phenomenon. We have been told a story that says that it's natural for some people to be rich with resources and for others not to be. There are many other wonky stories around needs. I could go on and on. You might think about how there's sometimes a line that will come up with clients that says, you know, you can meet your material needs, but you will lose emotional closeness.
Or that if you're poor, but you're loved, you know, that should be enough. Or that if your needs aren't met, it's because you're doing something wrong. On and on and on. But if we just look around us, We see that other beings are able to meet their needs without having to purchase things or to prove that they're worthy of having their needs met.
You know, the sunlight flows freely to everyone on this earth. It flows freely to all the plants. The rain falls on everyone, regardless of whether or not you filled out an application or whatever, you know. So this is what our pre capitalist, even pre civilization ancestors knew, that if we come into closeness with the we will freely receive what we need without toil.
Not that there's not hardship or lean times. Of course, that is all there. Of course, life was not perfect before civilization or before the advent of capitalism. But I think the toil is what is different here, that day in, day out, working to earn money, usually at the behest of someone else in pursuit of something that is not meaningful to us for 50 years or however long, still feeling as if your needs aren't met.
That's toil, and that's wrong. That's not natural to the human experience. That's not how it has to be for anyone. So those are just some foundational things I want to say about needs at the outset, and now I want to shift into fungi and what these beings are like, how they meet their needs, how they reproduce, and what they can teach us about how to unravel some of these weird things that we have inherited, these beliefs we've inherited, ingested from living inside of a capitalist culture. I should say that, you know, I've done my best to do good research and to summarize it here in ways that are digestible, but I do apologize if I get anything wrong.
Fungi are a vast and complex topic. I think I read that there's, you know, two to six million different types of fungi.
They all possess their own very localized strategies for meeting their needs. I think that's one of the treasures here is to remember that the way you met your needs, you know, 10 years ago or five years ago or the way you met your needs living in that city or that place or with those people, may not translate into how you need to meet your needs now, that you're living in a unique time and place, that you are inside of a unique ecosystem, and that the way you meet your needs here should be adapted to the environment around you.
That's one of the treasures of learning about. Fungi and all beings really is how adaptable they are and how localized so many of these beings are. So I'm keeping it high level today, but of course, I encourage you to learn more about fungi if you feel called. It's a precious place to become more educated and in kinship with these incredible beings.
So the, like a basic definition from the Oxford Dictionary is that fungi is any member of a group of spore producing organisms feeding on organic matter. So this would include molds,
Fungi are not plants. They don't photosynthesize. They don't have many of the characteristics that plants do, like roots or leaves or flowers. They're not animals either. They can't ingest their food. They don't move. They don't have central nervous systems or hearts. There are many other differences in classifications, of course, but fungi are their own special type of organism.
And fungi and animals are actually more closely related than animals and plants are. We share a common ancestor. Fungi absorb their nutrients by breaking through and into the matter that they seek to consume. And I'll talk more about this in a minute. So they break into. soil, or wood, or a carcass, and they do that via tiny threads called hyphae.
And these tiny threads, some of them are invisible to the human eye, at the end of these they can secrete digestive enzymes and break that matter down into nutrients that the fungus can then absorb. And collectively, hyphae, these little filaments that are the means of, that the fungus uses to break things down.
Collectively, hyphae are called mycelium. So a network of hyphae is called mycelium. I'm sure you've heard that word before. So fungi then, at some point, will reproduce by sending out an abundance of spores that will land in an area, and if the conditions are right, those spores will then sprout their own hyphae and form new mycelial webs for the fungus to eat from.
Let's dive in a little bit deeper to how fungi feed themselves. Fungi, like us, like animals, are heterotrophic. They're not able to make their own food. They have to consume other matter in order to live. You could contrast this with plants, which are autotrophic. They make their own food via photosynthesis.
They receive the sunlight and they make food from it. They don't have to stretch out and ingest something or absorb other organic matter. Fungi absorb nutrients, again, through their hyphae, these tiny filaments that secrete digestive enzymes that break down whatever they can eat, whether it's wood or bread or toxins in the soil or dead flesh.
Fungi generally need the environment to be moist in order for the mycelium not to dry out. And while fungi generally use the same strategy of absorbing nutrients through their mycelial webs, What they eat can be broken out into three major categories. Most fungi are saprotrophic, meaning that they consume dead matter.
So you might think of a tree that has fallen in the forest, and you'll often see different types of fungi growing on it, breaking down that wood into nutrients. These fungi are essential decomposers and recyclers. recyclers in our ecosystems. Without them, life could not be renewed at the rate that it needs to be. Our forests would be full of dead trees and nothing else could grow. So when you walk past a log that has a bunch of fungi on it, you can imagine These tiny hyphae are moving into the wood itself, breaking it down, and the mushroom that you see is usually the fruiting body, the reproductive body, that comes out of those mycelial webs and is fed by the nutrients that are moving through in and out of those hyphae.
The second category, that I want to talk about is parasitism. So other fungi are parasitic. They absorb nutrients from living beings and to the detriment of those living beings. So you might think of like ringworm or certain molds that can become parasites or parasitic fungi that can attack trees. Um, there's a really wild example called the zombie ant fungus and this is a type of cordyceps that's found in tropical forests, and it's a type of fungus that will infect a carpenter ant and actually change its behavior, making it a zombie, as you can tell by its name.
This fungus will lead the ant to to leave its colony and head to the forest floor, where the environment is ideal for the fungus. And from there, the ant will then attach itself to a main vein on the underside of a leaf, and it will die. During which, the fungus actually sprouts a fruiting body out of the ants you head.
So you can look up pictures of the zombie ant fungus and you will see an ant with a mushroom coming out of its head. And the ant got there because the mushroom was able to manipulate its behavior and turn it into a zombie, essentially, and get it to a place where the mushroom could then fruit and reproduce and be in an ideal condition to proliferate.
The final category is a symbiotic relationship between fungi and plants known as mycorrhizae. So parasitism is a form of symbiosis, but in a With a parasite and its host, the parasite essentially diminishes and even kills the host that it's inhabiting. In a different type of symbiosis called mutualism, both parties benefit from the relationship, and that can be found between fungi and plants.
In a mycorrhizal relationship like this, the fungus attaches its hyphae to the plant's roots and is able to absorb glucose from the plant. The plant makes that through photosynthesis. And in turn, the funguses hyphae extend the plant's root system so that it can reach out further and absorb moisture and other nutrients that it couldn't otherwise reach.
And it's actually been cited that plants could never have evolved on to land without the use of photosynthesis. these partnerships with fungi. And some plants, like the vanilla orchid, are completely reliant on fungal networks to help them become established in the beginning of their lives. So all of the plants, 90 percent of the plants that you see around you, are dependent in some way on fungal networks underneath the ground to extend their roots and absorb the nutrients that they need.
So they're, is this vast web of connection under our feet that is sustaining life, literally feeding us, enabling us to eat fruit from the fig tree or the apple tree or the, you know, sunflower seeds, whatever plant it may be. So those are the major categories of what fungi will consume all through the method of infiltrating and absorbing nutrients through their hyphae.
They don't grab it and put it in a mouth and ingest it. They literally absorb it. You could imagine like absorbing your food through your skin. That might be the closest approximation of what that could be like for us. Once the fungus has established its food source and has received enough nutrients, it will meet its reproductive needs by creating a true abundance of spores and emitting those into the atmosphere.
These tiny seeds that we often can't even see that are floating around, all around us, and those spores will get picked up by the air will land in a place, and if the environment is hospitable, it will sprout its own hyphae and begin to grow a new network of mycelium and eventually create its own fruiting body, possibly in the form of a mushroom. So that's it.
Whatever stands out to you about fungi is the most important thing. It's like if you hear a story or read a poem. Whatever line or character or scene feels most resonant or stands out to you is where the medicine is for you. And I think that's true in this case as well. Whatever it is about fungi that might pique your interest or surprises you or feels most important, comforting, whatever it is, that's what you should roll with. I encourage you to explore that and take it as a little idea that could have some teaching for you. But I will share my own observations and I encourage you to take what is useful here.
So, I think the first lesson that I see in terms of how to meet our needs and how the fungi can teach us in this regard is that much of our work with needs is happening below the surface.
We have been enculturated inside of capitalism and we have internalized ideas about our needs. What's okay to have, what's okay not to have, when it's okay to ask for something or not, whether or not we're worthy of having our needs met, whether or not others are worthy of having their needs met, and on what terms.
It's messy. And it can really fuck up our inner hyphae sometimes we aren't sure when it's okay to put out tiny threads with which to meet our needs, or how to do so, or where to send them. So with our needs, how can we start with the inner work that's there, the subterranean? What did you learn as a young person about your needs?
You learned something for sure. You learned some stories about what needs were okay to have and when and how best to meet them. My parents had five kids, there were five of us, and it was inconvenient for me to have needs sometimes, that's just how it was. So it was, you know, it wasn't always, great if I had to go pee and we are in the car and we just stopped and there's four other kids with needs or if I didn't want something at dinner, you know, was my mom going to make a separate dinner for me when there's seven of us trying to eat?
No, I had to eat what was there. And some of that is just healthy socialization, I think. Like, yeah, we can't all have our needs met 100 percent of the time if it's not in the best interest of the group. I think that There is truth to that, but I did learn that sometimes it wasn't okay for me to have needs, and I'm unlearning that now.
So, sometimes I'll find myself assuming that someone will say no if I were to ask them. Sometimes I won't even ask. Um, I've had to learn that It's okay to hold other people up if I have to do something or meet a need real quick, or that it's safe to ask my spouse, Chris, to watch the kids so I can lay down for a bit.
There's just a little bit of tweaking required now that we're adults, and we're still having to learn and unlearn things about our needs inside of this society and in this way of working, and we're all still navigating that in real time. It's not just about unlearning Happened in childhood, but that's a huge piece of it that informs what we do and how we make choices about our needs now.
So if you're feeling the tension between needing something and not having that need met right now, an excellent place to start is by examining your beliefs about that situation. The things you think are true about it that may or may not be true. That's where I would start.
The second lesson that I see in learning from the fungi this week are that we are constantly reaching out for nutrition.
Our bids for connection with others are like little filaments reaching out for nutrients. The way we inhale the air, is a reach. Hyphae are often invisible to the human eye. They're so small, and we possess them too in an energetic way. We are in constant exchange with the environment around us through our breath, our skin, our senses, our energy, and what we ingest.
And I think it's important to acknowledge that and to live in a way that honors the fact that Where we are matters, that who we're around matters, that the time we spend indoors or outdoors matters, that we are these organic beings who are in a constant conversation with life and who need to absorb healthy things, a healthy environment.
The third thing I want to pull through is this idea that food is all around us. While we may not absorb nutrients like fungi do, I think there is truth to the idea that if we can pause for a moment, we can tune into the sustenance that surrounds us. This would have been much more true on a literal scale for our ancestors who ate a wide variety of foods found just around them, many of which would have been fungus.
And it's true for us in other ways today. If we pause and go into a sort of fungal mindset, we might be able to see how much our needs are already met. We might be able to feel closeness with the plants around us, or with our loved ones who have died, or feel the way our bellies are actually full right now, or our thirst is quenched, or feel the solidity of the shelter that we have, or feel the comfort of the clothes on our skin.
Right now, even though there are scary and hard things happening in the world, I bet you have needs that are met. There is nutrition right here, even in the hard times.
The fourth thing that I want to pull through is that one way to feed ourselves is to decompose more. Remember, most fungi are saprotrophic.
They break down dead matter and turn it into food. So where can you actively digest challenging things in your life and turn it into sustenance? Can you absorb the truth about capitalism and why we work and meet our needs the way that we do? Can you absorb the truth about your lineage or family history or what's happening to the ecosystems around you?
Can you digest these truths in small ways and let them activate you to take up more presence in your own life? We avoid so much, and that might feel good in the moment, and of course, can be what we need at times. It may be necessary to avoid certain things. But if all we do is avoid what's dead or rotting around us, we will succumb to disease.
We need to break it down and turn it into something else so that new life can grow, so that we can be fed. So how do we get our own digestion going? We slow down. We breathe as we eat and take in nutrition. We notice the nutrients that are around us. We stay hydrated. We move so that the digestive acts can happen as it's meant to.
All of those things can be mapped onto being in our lives in a good way. So the, the things that are literally good for our physical digestion can also be good for our spiritual digestion and being fed in the environment and in our lives from the things that are decomposing or that are challenging or that are dead and rotten.
Finally, Once a fungus is established in the soil, or in whatever organic matter it's feeding on, whether it's, you know, the orange you left out, or the body of the mouse that was, you know, consumed, half consumed by an animal, whatever it is, once the fungus has established itself and is, has a source of food, it creates a fruiting body that will send spores out into the environment, often through the gills on the underside of a mushroom. There are many other ways to send spores out, however. And it doesn't just send one or two out, it sends tens of thousands out. So once we are in a groove of examining the internal subterranean experience of our needs, we may feel more able to offer those needs up to the land, to the universe, to spirit, whatever term fits for you. The mushroom puts the spores out into the ether, not knowing where it's going to go, where they're going to go, but trusting that the air and the wind will take them somewhere and then its spores will find a hospitable environment. So there, it's an act of faith, essentially.
You know, personally, it takes a lot of effort for me to ask and ask and keep asking for what I need, and I think this is true for many of us. But I have found that it's actually much more natural to do that than it is to hold everything in and pretend that I can figure this out on my own. So, what would it be like if you took yourself on a nice walk outside, alone, and as you walked What would it be like if you just asked for everything you need right now?
What if you made 10, 000 requests? Could you turn over all of your concerns to whatever force is holding us all together? Could you even just stand to hear yourself make 10, 000 requests? And maybe some of those spores won't land, won't go anywhere, they won't find a hospitable environment. Maybe some of those spores will land in a friendly place where they can grow.
Maybe some of those spores of prayer could be spoken to the people in your life if you need help meeting your needs from others. But some of them will definitely find hospitable environments in which to grow. And in doing that, you can have and be blessed with even more sources of nutrition. But none of that can happen if you don't release Those spores, if you don't allow your needs and desires to be taken up into the air and taken somewhere else or carried by another.
So I hope that this has inspired you to relate to your needs in a different way or to experiment with something else. new this week, whether it's related to your life or your work. Thank you so much for being here and exploring fungal wisdom with me. I hope that you can weave in some more of it and take more time to notice and appreciate these incredible beings who really do help sustain life on our planet.
Thank you to those of you supporting the show financially. I so appreciate your contributions. And if this podcast resonates with you and you have the means, I'd be so grateful if you chipped in once or monthly at buymeacoffee. com slash Megan Leatherman. I'll put that link in the show notes as well. I will be back with you in two weeks to talk about how plants meet their needs.
It's a very different approach, but I hope it will inspire and encourage you to keep growing this season. If you ever feel down about your needs or unable to meet them or unsure of where to go or just you have this desire for closeness or sustenance or shelter or freedom, I encourage you to remember your fungal neighbors and remember that even as we explore the ways that plants and animals meet their needs, it all sort of comes back to fungi because fungi, um, allow so many of these plants to live and thrive in the soil and on this earth.
And so if you can come back to the sort of underground quality of your needs, the energetic kind of signature behind your needs and how you want to meet them and ensure that there's some integrity there, then all of the other strategies that we explore for the rest of this spring season of the show will come from a really sturdy, connected, mycelial, rich kind of place. And that's really what I want for you this season. So take such good care, be well, and I'll see you on the other side.