Elena had read the phrase in an old leather-bound book she’d found in a secondhand shop in Asheville: “The All is Mind; the Universe is Mental.” It stuck with her like a burr on her hiking sock. She wasn’t sure why.

Weeks later, she was foraging for mushrooms on a misty trail in the Smokies. The forest was damp, alive, humming. She crouched to inspect a cluster of golden chanterelles pushing through moss when the thought returned: If the universe is mental, then this moment exists only because I am perceiving it.

She froze, hand hovering above the mushroom caps. The fog curled between the trees as if eavesdropping. For a moment, the entire forest felt like it was inside her head — the rushing creek, the distant thrush song, even the breath in her chest. All of it was happening through her, not to her.

Elena laughed softly. She wasn’t lost in the woods; the woods were blooming inside her awareness, the way a dream fills the night. She picked the chanterelles gently, carrying them like thoughts that had ripened into form.

When she emerged from the trailhead hours later, the world of cars and pavement didn’t seem so separate. She felt as though she were still inside the same vast mind — a hiker moving across landscapes that weren’t places at all, but pages in a thought too immense to fully read.

That night, cooking the mushrooms in her small cabin, Elena whispered the words again, almost as a prayer: The All is Mind. The Universe is Mental. Then she smiled and took a bite, tasting the forest, the trail, and the mystery — all folded neatly into her own awareness.