Living in harmony with Nature-- on a scientific basis --is pretty much the most crucial challenge facing our (global) civilization right now.

I was just reading about Muir and his communication with the living Nature around him. This isn't "mystic" mumbo-jumbo: many of the chemicals being used in these tree+fungus networks are also used in our "internal" systems. We speak tree on the chemical level.

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I want to report on some events in a backyard here in San Francisco.

The western part of the city, from Twin Peaks to the ocean, is mostly built on sand. Before the houses were there it was scrub and beach for more than a mile.

The backyard in question consisted of this very sandy soil, with just enough organic matter to bind it a little and turn it tan-brown. Some plants had been set in years earlier, a couple of rose bushes, lilacs, some calla lilies. Grasses and oxalis and some other things were doing their best, but there were patches of bare dirt, and by dirt I mean of course just dirty sand.

So I went to the store and got a bunch of bags of organic hummus/mulch and just plastered every open space with it an inch thick. It was rife with mycelium and the fungus lost no time in binding and sealing itself together in a single mass over the sandy soil. Realizing this I made sure to connect all the patches together by thick bands of mulch so the whole yard could communicate.

The specific thing I want to mention is this: After a few weeks, maybe less, I was watering a patch of the mycelium mulch one day when I stopped and stuck my finger into the ground to check absorption depth. While the surface was completely wet, even drenched, imagine my astonishment when I found that just under the surface less than a quarter of an inch down it was bone dry.

I watered that patch for a solid minute until puddles has formed in every slight depression. Still it was completely dry just under the surface. But the puddles vanished in seconds!

I watered it again, just dumping water on it from the hose. A certain amount would puddle up, but the bulk of the water simply vanished. Gallons of water and still the soil was bone dry just below the wetted top layer.

I poked around a bit more and found that the mulch had become nearly solid mycelium bound around the little wood chips and other media in it. It had a glossy sheen and was forming a sort of sheet or membrane rather than just strands. The point is: that fungus had sealed the water off from the sandy very-high-drainage dirt underneath and was channeling it somewhere.

There is much still to learn about how Nature works.