Fungi Friday: The Winter Sun

A wintry view from the Cherry Lane path at Agraria.

By Maureen Fellinger

Another gray day. For me, the winter blues start rolling in early, right after Halloween. When the sun disappears sooner and the comfortable autumnal temperatures drop, I feel more sleepy, sluggish, and sad. Suppose you notice drastic shifts in your mood during certain times of the year, especially during the bleak, dark winter months. In that case, you may have seasonal depression, also called Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD). I have never known how to combat The Big SAD effectively; using a light therapy box or taking Vitamin D supplements are two of the most common treatments. This winter, I have a new approach to facing my depression: Be like a mushroom.

Like mushrooms, we can still grow and thrive without the sun's warm presence. Fungi do not contain chlorophyll; therefore, they do not need light or photosynthesis to grow. Often, fungi flourish more in darker environments. I plan to be mindful of this fact to help myself embrace the throes of winter. Now is the time for rest, reflection, and regeneration; we can still radiate light within ourselves in the darkest of months.

As I walked around the Cherry Lane path on my lunch break earlier this week, I looked up at the sun, eerily small and dull in the sky. I sat at my favorite lunch sit spot (by the towering persimmon tree at Agraria) and embraced the cold. The land's beauty spoke to me as I breathed in the brisk air. Bright pops of nature's reds sang their quiet songs– from the invasive yet gorgeous Asian bittersweet berries, to a curious nearby male cardinal, to the enoki mushrooms nestled sweetly on a log. Despite the overall monochromatic grayness of dormant plants and bare trees, there was still color and life.

I began to make my way back to the office, and I felt a familiar warmth on my back. I turned around to see that the clouds had shifted, and the sun was making a brief appearance. With gratitude, I welcomed the light, knowing it was only stopping by for a quick visit. Moments later, it was back to the unsympathetic cold of December. But I welcomed that, too, because experiencing the unbridled cold of winter makes me not only appreciate the warmer seasons more profoundly but also helps me to appreciate myself more deeply. As Albert Camus once wrote, 'In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.'

*Maureen Fellinger is Agraria’s Education Administrator & Media Specialist.