When you are a mushroom man, you come to know a lot about roots--roots and worms and carcasses and anything else you find just under the surface of the Earth. Of all these things, roots are the easiest to get along with. As long as you let them wind their tangled way to where ever it is they're going, they won't have anything but kind words for you. Sometimes, when the web of roots gets really thick--thick enough to shield out the daylight, the roots will invite you over for a party in their own self-made cocoon of darkness. Poison Pie and I like it when that happens.

All the mushroom people like it. The big mushroom people like it and the littlest mushroom people like it. The black mushroom people and the orange mushroom people and the lilac mushroom people all like it. They clamber to the entrance and line up for miles around when the opportunity arises, which it seldom does, owing to the peculiar and lonesome ways of roots.

When we were in the National Park, I said to Poison Pie, "What is it about roots that makes them so special?"

The roots said nothing, didn't even so much as snicker, which is why everybody loves roots but nobody says the same about mushroom people.