Elusive mushrooms

The pictures I will be sharing with you in this lovely #FungiFriday community by @ewkaw are from last Thursday. Unusually for me I went for a forest walk after I came back home from work that day.

It was already around 7pm in evening when I went there and the light was not perfect for the pictures, but I was desperate to get even a few fresh pictures for last Friday and… I still didn’t post them the following day! Just how I roll 😂

After seeing many mushrooms in the most random places over the summer and especially with all the rain we had, I was expecting to find lots of yummy mushrooms that evening. I even walked past some puffballs, rushing deeper into the forest and thinking I’ll skip it as there will be plenty more to capture.

But no! Eventually I had to slow down and capture the usual tree growing fungi, as I realised that the forest wasn’t packed full of mushrooms at that time. Edible or not, there just wasn’t many around.

So here goes more tree mushrooms!

Clearly the time for more juicy ones has not arrived yet, so I had to get busy capturing whatever I could find. I found a hole in the ground for example and a tree wigwam made by some kids 😉.

It’s funny really how our brains work and how we develop some weird expectations. Going back around 5 years I didn’t even know that the small stretch of woods that starts about 10 minutes walk from my house extends to a whole, big forest if I take the left turn at the T junction after this bridge, rather than the usual, right.

It was my ex, who decided to tak3 the left turn during one of his running sessions and then came back home to tell me all about this beautiful forest.

We spent hours and days exploring it and feeling utterly grateful for what we have found almost at our doorstep. We mainly stick to the paths, as there was enough of them to get lost there at first. Forestbathing is just so good on its own.

If it wasn’t for those tree mushrooms we’ve noticed all around, we I might not even had an idea to get off those paths and look into the forest floor to see if I can find eng edible mushrooms that I can remember from my summer mushroom hunts with my family back in Poland.

It’s also not like they’re not pretty, they make for really nice pictures when the light is better than on that Thursday evening. The come in a huge variety of colours, shapes and sizes too.

It’s just that somewhere along the line, after eating tons of yummy shrooms from this beautiful forest, I developed those weird expectations that I always have to find something good to eat or even capture. And I do! Sometimes it’s just not what I expect to find.

Rushing through the forest that evening and getting frustrated with the lack of fungi brought all those reflections suddenly.

When was the last time I went for a walk in the forest just for the sake of exercise and to enjoy being out in nature?

Well, that’s a bit of an issue right there. those past months since around April/May, living with sudden anxiety made me somewhat detached and numb to the beauty all around me.

Arriving at my secret chanterelles spot only hightened my frustration. Yes, there were a few of them here, but look at the state of them!

All dry and sad and with the sun almost ready do set, I couldn’t even capture them properly. Flashlight only made things worse.

I couldn’t believe how dry they were with all the rain we’ve had over the summer. Just a week of sunshine and all their juice was gone! I guess living on the hill didn’t do them a favour, as the water slides down the hill, leaving not much to them to live on.

I found a few in a slightly better condition and those went back home with me. Usually I’d ponder whether to take them now or let them grow more, but at that point I just wanted SOMETHING.

Hello, are you still with me, dear reader? Let’s just take a little break from the mushrooms and see if anyone actually reads in between those pictures 😉 I feel like giving a little gift to those champions (pun intended) and reward you with 1 HSBI Unit each. Just reply to this post with code blue, however you may interpret it to let me know you read and hopefully enjoy my content.

Now back to those cuties. The forest didn’t mind me ranting in my head and getting frustrated for various reasons. Or maybe it liked the fact that I suddenly reached those reflecfions and in hope to bring me back for a walk it showed me a few goodies to take home with me.

I was tempted, I swears! Look at the prestine spikes underneath this hedgehog mushroom! I simply love the steucture of them. Momma nature is really amazing at creating work of art! The top however was already eaten by some bugs and it was so dry to the touch, that I threw it a few meters away ffom the spot I took it from in hope for the spores to settle in new place for the next time I’m looking for some.

It did look quite picturesque growing slightly tilted at the side of another hill. Yes, that’s a worthy candidate for the cover picture of this post 😍

Half satisfied with my findings, I rushed back out of the forest. The sun was already setting and I had a long walk back racing with the looming darkness.

Anxiety helped with this race. After all, that’s the sole function of it… to mobilise our bodies in sight of impending danger. The issue starts when the body seems mobilised to fight all day, every day. But that’s a topic for another post that I started drafting some weeks ago. Of course it will be long before it sees a daylight, cause as I mentioned before, that’s how I roll 😉