This is a speckled shield lichen, I think Punctelia caseana. It’s on a little log in my backyard. The fungus gets to eat sunlight, and its algal companion gets to live on some bark like a boss, all and only because of each other. The feeling is: mutual!
I long for that for us. It helps me to have a vision to practice towards, and one I hold close is The BREATHE Act, from the Electoral Justice Project of the Movement for Black Lives. Concrete analysis of current conditions, and practical proposals grounded in care that we can point ourselves to right now in our smallest interactions, even as we work for big beautiful change.
This week I lichen-practiced in conversations with my neighbors about caring for a shared oak tree. We came up with a witchy, ritualistic plan that involved my three year old. We were helped along by having already had some deep conversations about god and politics, and having shared baked goods and plant starts.
How about you? You can reply to send me an email, or text me, or just sing softly to yourself about what you find in the BREATHE act, what you are practicing, what you are coming up with, what is helping you along. Who or what are you feeding sunlight, and/or is feeding you? Who or what are you making a place for, and/or is making one for you?
What’s a lichen, though?
A lichen is not one organism, though it appears so. It’s at least two, in symbiotic mutualism: a mycobiont, a fungus that can flourish in all kinds of places, and a photobiont, usually an alga that can nourish with its photosynthesizing clorophyll. Sometimes there’s cyanobacteria, too.
Lichen are obviously, visibly, gloriously interdependent af. When these fungi and algae have each other, they make a thing that’s nourished by sunlight and flourishes in otherwise inaccessible places.
And: they are sensitive. They don’t happen everywhere. Conditions matter. They are indicator species because if the air is shitty, no dice. No lichen dice.
You can probably see where I am going with this. We can make and be glorious things together that we can’t make or be apart, and conditions matter. If you need me and this, I and this need you right back. So write back? (like literally you can reply to this)
key influences/references: BREATHE Act, M4BL, Field Guide to Lichens of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Sophie Lewis