Lichens: Fungi That Have Discovered Agriculture

When I moved to the Ozarks for graduate school in 1989, the place terrified me. First there was the Pig Trail, which is what the locals call the stretch of highway between Alma and Fayetteville, Arkansas. As I embarked on the steepest stretch of it, I saw a sign that read, “Caution: Eleven people killed on this road in the last two years.” The sign changed every year or so to update the count. Even though the Ozark mountains are more like hills, they were steep enough to make me wince; I’d come from the prairies to the west, so the precipitous roads and drenching humidity of this territory struck me as unnatural. It didn’t help that some of the locals pronounced “Fayetteville” as “fateful.”