A Plot Twist with a Mushroom Beret
Stories from an unexpected summer
The frames hang caddywompus on the side of my house that faces the road, where the oversized trucks shake the ground as they scream by. If enough little rattles add up, they can move our frames of reference. It feels like a time of seismic shifts and a million tiny rattles.
Foraging for Beauty
The late summer heat turns the air into a sopping sponge, and elsewhere, the world is on fire.
I decided this season to try to find the cozy part of summer instead of just gritting my teeth until fall shows up sometime in late October. Rainy days have become my new favorite summer refuge.
Most evenings I stand in my front yard watching the colors ebb and flow and transform day into night. My brain has learned to filter out the traffic noise and hear the birdsong that exists around it. And I’m sure I am the subject of speculation... that one-legged woman on the corner who stands in her driveway, craning her neck to study the sky.
To be fair, I’d just lie in the grass if it weren’t for fire ants.
My cottage may be surrounded by a commercial district, but this patch of sky is still wild and untamed. And beauty can be foraged there.
The “silly” idea igniting a movement
On July 3rd, I shared a post on Facebook I expected nothing from. Instagram has been so insufferable of late, I have contemplated quitting there a few times a day since June. But I persist. I have simply been trying other platforms to open up more paths of sharing stories and wonder.
For years, I had a silly little idea in my head. It had been slowly growing out of the soil of things we’ve explored here. What if we could create a whimsical form of scouting for adults? Celebration badges for ordinary moments. Did you do something scared? You get an I did it scared badge. Placed on story sashes that tell the stories we are honoring as meaningful. Local troops with mushroom berets. Because mycelium is the network that allows the trees to talk to one another in the forest. Whimsical times of making things. All undergirded by a structure that makes gathering easy and delightful.
It and follow-on posts have now been seen over 3 million times. People started organizing to find one another in the comment section and all of a sudden I was building the plane while flying the plane. July evaporated into full world-building mode. And now we have over 50 independent troops around the world, 6,000 in our online clubhouse, and it is only growing.
Introducing the Frolic and Forage Society. I built our clubhouse in an adjacent Substack to this one. It’s completely free, unless someone wants to and is able to support financially as a subscriber.
So if mushroom berets, celebration badges, creative adventures, and finding more reasons to gather and make things together sound interesting, come explore the Frolic & Forage Clubhouse here.
Making More Space for Wonder
I am honestly humbled to be stewarding what is happening with Frolic. And it has clarified more than I could have imagined about what it means to make wonder a habit.
The Wonder Habit® has never only been one thing. It’s been art challenges, prompts, and essays. Together we’ve painted and sketched, explored questions, and found tiny moments of beauty in ordinary places.
From day one, we’ve been experimenting with what making wonder a habit might look like. Apparently, it can look like putting on a mushroom beret and gathering with people who were strangers a few weeks ago.
Frolic needs its own clubhouse. Giving it the space it asks for has given me space to dream about what we can make room for here.
And one of the things I want to make more room for in this season is writing.
I want to take you with me as we trace ocean shores and find forests with leaves spun with gold. To share things I’m making and learning as we plumb the depths of what it means to navigate pain, loss, and joy, and stay human in an age of algorithms.
To weave words into stories written from the posture of a neck craned to study a sunset as it leaks its way across the sky.
I’m also opening up more of the stories and essays I’ve written here over the years. If you’re newer to The Wonder Habit, or simply want to wander back through some old favorites, you can explore them here ⬇️.
I am so incredibly grateful for YOU being here and making The Wonder Habit® what it is today. It would not be here without you. And I am excited for a new season of becoming together.
All my love,
P.S. If you’re part of Prompt & Ponder, I want you to know that your paid subscription makes more possible than what arrives in your inbox each week.
Prompt & Ponder is our paid subscription, where I offer a gentle weekly letter of encouragement with thoughtful questions and creative invitations designed to help you slow down, reflect, and make more room for wonder.
But your subscription also supports my larger body of work. It gives me the ability to keep writing, creating, and building The Wonder Habit® and its projects like The Frolic & Forage Society.