Ed Steck

 MycoMountaineer from At The Mountains of the Mycoverse

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I am a spelunking, trekking, foraging, veteran
myco-mountaineer equipped with all-terrain-
positioned outer textiles, skin-wrapping body
warmers, o-hiking tools and gear, a fine hat.  

I am embarking on a mycelial mountain range,
a trek rare for a human being. Connection to
the mycelial network before ascent is essential
for cerebral-mycelial balance.

I ingest six mushrooms extracts daily
(agarikon, lion’s mane, reishi, turkey tail,
cordyceps, chaga), as well as 0.4 grams of
psylocibin in a cold-pressed, algorithm-free
MCT oil, sacred living water blend tincture. 

In higher altitudes, a 20 strain blend mycelial
booster injection is necessary for proper
ascent.

With twenty-eight hecta-seasons under my
ascent-belt, heroic solo terrain scales became
hailed dares. I climbed the renowned Trellis
Trio Peaks, scaled the north face of the Yeti-
Fold freehand, encountered the legendary
infrared mystics on the crimson heights of
Mount Stamets. Yet, I dampened with sweat
thinking of this trek into the inner chambers
of the inescapable scrapes, paths, cliffs, crags,
illusory modes of sprawl, mirages of core-
paths undeniably present even in recorded 
argumentative data, reports of unknown soil-
breathing inhabitants, slippages in timestream
stability, shambling pseudo-primates, weather
anomaly discrepancy, otherworldly entity
sightings, and those inverted skies over the
looming, shadowy, misty Mycelial Mountains.

Inverted skies so lucid, standing upright is
enough to drown in one’s own delirium. 

Mountains are quite confusing. 

Do not get lost if you would like to return. 

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Have you heard the one about the chronos
slug mass ingestion, causing time to ripple
mountaineer gut health back to the primordial
state? 

Or, how about the one where mountain
mimesis effects were so strong that infinite
generations of mycomountains disoriented
trekkers into a recursive state of ascent?

Or, the one about the atmosphere static? 

The cerebral cortex lichen occupations?

The extracted doorways to the Minus
Caverns?

Arc-trails to the inner-mycelial pathways?

Discarnate entities?

Forest doorways? 

Dimensions shamble limitless in the
myco-mountains.

Unknown unknown enough to crack your
mind open, like a subordinate cosmos spill. 

You must have a map if you wish to travel
these mountains: a map with a set agenda,
real-time arranged traits, inner-locking key. 

The map is used as a grounding tool, not a
navigational tool. 

To remind the wary-traveled mind that one is
still, even in the most theoretical and unbound
sense, tethered to a physical world—a world
to put ones foot down on. 

Your map must indicate natural landmarks,
hiking trails, tunnels, waterways, waterfalls,
docks, ports, herb sites, cliffs, edges, animal
sites, entity sites, camp grounds, vortexes,
eternal doorways, brush, fish sites, sites of
disappearances, elevation, notable rocks,
notable boulders, stones, tactile and ethereal
convergence points, invisible sites, invisible
points of entry, mushroom patches, rings of
bioluminescent mountain mushrooms, small
doorways found in trees and stones, sites for
meditation, sites for sleeping, sites for astral
projection, anti-time convergence points,
wormholes, daffodils, improvised shelters,
utility sites, mining sites, site of memory,
holes, sites of thinning time, unseen stones. 

Navigation must be determined strictly
through cerebral trails linked by manufactured
direction only, and simply, through the natural
remembrance of selected sites. Organically
generated linkages will start to plot points of
interest along the accumulating path. One unit
to a second unit to a third unit. Each time a
completed cycle of three appears, one of the
units in the cycle is paired to a similar
signifying unit of another cycle, either as a=a,
or a=b, often represented as: abab

A frog to a pathway to a stone-shaped log. 

A mountain-stream to a bog to a lost canteen.

An unseen thing to a far-off timbre to a rock. 

These patterns will guide me on my travels. 

Even an unknown unit such as a previously
unencountered discarnate entity is mappable.
In fact, the nature of it being unknown allows
for new pathways to unfold, creating a higher
probability for discoverability. The rarity of
these units allows for the chance to enter new
mycomountain doorways. 

Beings and place outside of recognizable
moments. 

Mountains materialize, mountains reorganize:
in the flux, a concrete-cluster of known peaks.

Mountains channel inner-mountains forming
inverted mountains. Each mountain created
by the natural mountain mimesis generator
mechanism is real. All multiplied and repeated
objects, organisms, atmospheres are
real—existing as references to their primary
source.

I thought this encountered world unthinkable
for its recognition is centered far beyond the
self. As coordinates in the unfolding structure
of the network, each landmark of the self is
registered as a select trait to navigate a
map-user. 

Ascension makes one realize the patterns of a
lived life. Whether these patterns reflect or
coincide with the known elements of the
moment or not, the execution of a lived life is
a handle for the continuation of molecular
remnants. These moments continue, then. 

This is key to maintaining one’s sense of
neutrality in the fold of unknown spaces. 

This continuation: a moment in patterns. 

A moment in patterns is the disruption of
homogeneity of surfaces: each chlorophyll
crinkle, crag abrasion, fungal intervention,
sudden fauna emergence, the cybernatural
phenomena of binary digit entranceways in
forests, mountains, swamps, gardens, water. 

Spaces sans moment are smooth replicas of
non-homogenous patterns. The areas in
which the fog of cerebral recognition has yet
to be uncovered—the land in which the falsity
of the simulation begins to masterfully
replicate the exact traits it learned to
reconstruct in order to establish its
authenticity. Therefore, a smooth mountain is
not a false mountain, but an abstraction of the
source of a mountain—which can be
unlocked, entered, and re-patterned. 

I am on a quest to enter a smooth mountain
pattern. 

I believe the core source of abstraction—an
elementary bit from which the totality of the
replicated—is behind the entrance. 

On the second pass of the curved trail,
etching myself against the unforgiving cold
mountain wall, further in this time, so much
so that binary digits of replicated mountain
cliff stones are adhering to my smoothing
skin, I see behind stone broke loose by roots,
a built-in shelf, there by accident or creation,
holding a pamphlet, a notebook, and a folded
one-sheet. 

A folded one-sheet, in depressed-gilt print:

‘Ozone poem’ by Orgone-ic Slate LTD A-783-EP.
Opening windowpane — outstretched in circles/
aberrations of pestilence blow in through vents/
to extinguish all languid, thrashing complexities—
slumber dedicated only to those willing to cease
all operational artifice / a campaign of diligence
to extend lengthening light even further into it all
— an updated body for total cerebral clairvoyance
to mimic the human divergence of pen-to-paper / 
to disrupt the collective optic lens system / to 
champion total levitation of arbitrary networks: a
dismantling of known-knowns in circular motions
/ a sphere appears in the lowest corner of the map

I see a sphere with no form in front of me. 

Another world is true. 

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Ed Steck is the author of An Interface for a Fractal Landscape (Ugly Duckling Presse), The Garden: Synthetic Environment for Analysis and Simulation (Ugly Duckling Presse), The Rose (with Adam Marnie, Hassla), Far Rainbow (Make Now Books), and others. He lives in Pittsburgh, PA.

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