Two Worlds

 "There are two worlds: the world that we can measure with line and rule, and the world that we feel with our hearts and imagination.  To be sensible of the truth of only one of these worlds is to know truth by halves."  - Leigh Hunt

I just read the above quote in a wonderful book about writing creative nonfiction.  Ironically, as I was preparing to take another few photos of mushrooms growing in my lawn, the transparent ruler pictured above slipped out of one of my old mushroom guides, Mushrooms of North America, by Orson K. Miller, Jr.  I find it interesting that while the book comes with a ruler and the strong message that measuring is a significant part of appreciating mushrooms, implying a great respect for "accuracy," the book bears no copyright date.  A quick search on Amazon, showed that a second edition of this book came out in 1972, but I haven't been able to find a date for the original.

So, I decided, "what the heck, I'll go outside and measure a mushroom."

 Here's the book, lying in the dew next to the target mushroom, and ...

...here's the proof that the cap of this mushroom is 2 1/16 inches across, or 52 millimeters.

I've been a little guilty of this "scientific" slant in recent photos of the Orange Peel Fungus in which I used a penny for scale and included a few calculations in the text.  But I thought the penny had some aesthetic appeal in its own right.  I never had the urge to actually place a ruler next to the fungi until now.  It was actually a kind of letdown.  I'm going back to the penny.  Actually, a prettier coin I might use is an old Peso Azteca from Mexico, but then that would limit the audience who could make use of it for measurement.  I guess I'll have to include the math in the accompanying text.  Meanwhile, I hope my readers enjoy the emergence of many kinds of mushrooms this fall.