There were mushrooms everywhere, but most of them weren't edible. That's the challenging part: actually finding the ones you're looking for. A few people have said that I have an eye for mushrooms, but I don't think that's totally true. I don't really look for mushrooms, I think like mushrooms, and then I come across them. If I were a mushroom, where would I be? Where would I be in conjunction to those other mushrooms? Where would be favorable to put my network amongst all the other crazy, complicated and symbiotic things happening in the forest. Think like a mushroom, and then you come home with enough for dinner, even if it's just the end of August. I think the other advantage that I have is that I'm extremely patient, and a sort-of rule that I go by is to not give up and not go home until I've found at least one patch of Chanterelles.
I don't even mind if I don't find the ones I'm looking for, because I'm not only in this for dinner, but to learn about all the mushrooms there are. The deadly poisonous ones, the mind-altering ones, the yummy ones, the edible but disgusting ones, the medicinal ones, ones that have absolutely no known function but look funny or do cool things, like Puffball mushrooms, which let off a little cloud of smoke or dust containing their spores. Imagine if you exploded to reproduce. Well, I guess you kind of do. Hmmm. Anyway, that's exactly my point, it's so fascinating, this world of mycology. I've seen some of the most deadly ones amongst innocent blueberries and other completely toxic ones a foot away from the most delicious. It's a thrilling study, and you have to be extremely careful or you might just end up like the Buddha, who is said to have died from a poisonous mushroom that he found.
After an hour or so of hunting, I'm not even really aware of where I'm going anymore, all I know is that the forest smells seduce me to go further and further, and sometimes I'm so hunched over in my search, that it isn't until I stand up that I realize I'm under a low tree's branches. I never get lost though, and I do admit to having a great inner compass. Sometimes though, I feel like my blood pressure sinks so low in all the slow walking and standing that I feel woozy, and that always gets me worried that I might have accidentally ingested something, perhaps I didn't pay attention to my hands while stifling a cough or.... but no, that's just my hypochondriacal tendencies poking through the soil, like the top parts of mushrooms, part of an un-killable organism that is hidden beneath the surface of the ground. No, I've never actually eaten anything poisonous, and I never eat until I'm as certain as I can be that what I have found won't kill me. I always take my loot home and check on countless online mushrooms guides and compare pictures for at least an hour before I toss them in the pan.
Today I found a few early chanterelles, some smörsopp, brunsopp, sammetsopp, björksopp and a few other sopps that I wasn't 100% sure about, but they didn't appear on any poison lists so I kind of winged it with those. I don't know the english names of all of those, but they are in the family of Boletaceae, and those are generally edible. I chopped them all up and made a mushroom risotto, mmmm. As I was testing it though, I got this strange stinging sensation on my tongue and I totally freaked out. Was there a bad one in there? Am I going to have to throw this whole pot away, really? But then I calmed myself down and figured it was probably just a kernel of black pepper that caught me. Probably, but I haven't felt any symptoms of being poisoned yet, and it's been over an hour since I ate that amazing wild mushroom risotto. I think I'm fine, but the adrenaline is quite actual and acute. If you're into rollercoasters and skydiving and stuff like that, you should definitely get yourself into eating wild mushrooms, because the thrill is so real. There are NO seatbelts or emergency parachutes!
Anyway, it's pretty cool to make dinner out of something that can simply be collected on a saturday afternoon's forest excursion, even if it gets my nerves shaking a bit. At the end of the day it comes down to trusting yourself to make good decisions. I'm not an idiot so of course I'm not going to throw in some random white-brown mushrooms and hope all goes well (most really poisonous ones are light in color). I still often say that a plant or mushroom will be the end of me one day. That might be true, but oh how I would love to die in the breathtaking beauty of natures arms. I could totally die in the forest.
By the way, does anybody know what the above mushroom might be? I have a few ideas but I'm really not so sure. Don't worry, I'm not going to eat it, I would just like to find out. Feel free to comment below if you have any suggestions. :)
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