Karelia fungi trip (wednesday walk) - 22 foto

My yesterday turned out to be very special, this rarely happens in my life ... very rarely! Yesterday was 146% filled with mushrooms. It was impossible to make a decent report about it yesterday, I was overloaded... but today I 'came back' and tell you the story in full.

A few days ago @bambuka invited me on a joint forest hike - a mushroom hunt. Could I resist such a tempting offer? Of course not. I prepared an additional battery for the camera, put lenses, a knife, a raincoat in my backpack, made sandwiches with cheese and ham - and went to bed, because it was very early to start: at six in the morning!

We safely got by car to the place of our landing - a forest located 80 km north of the city. The road flew by unnoticed by the discussion of blockchain news, and of course the growing bitcoin rate. The weather made us happy, there was no exhausting hot sun, no downpour, and the light mushroom rain dripping from time to time through the branches of the trees was almost invisible. The forest growing on the Karelian land is beautiful: young pines, rare inclusions of birches, and an innumerable amount of moss.

Looking ahead: a few hours later, I became indifferent to mushrooms, my eyes no longer looked at them - there were so many of them around. Every, literally every square meter of moss was dotted with colorful heads of edible mushrooms! Mushrooms could have been mowed with a scythe ... There was some devaluation of the mushrooms ... in any case, if at first I rushed to photograph the mushroom I encountered, then by the middle of the walk it passed.

It can take a long time to list exactly which mushrooms we saw, felt and put in our baskets. I think I'll talk about this next Friday in the #fungifriday challenge hosted by @ewkaw. But some mushrooms, of course, I have to show - after all, this was a mushroom walk!

Fluweelboleet (Xerocomus subtomentosus) is not the 1st grade mushroom, but it is often inexpressibly attractive to look at. An ocher amber velvet cap and dense texture ... when you take it in your hands, you feel: this is a real thing !!! Mother Nature has produced it so well.

A huge tasty redhead ... alas, we were not the first to find it. The worms got the mushroom. Well, we got the opportunity to take a beautiful photo.

Amanita is one of the most beautiful mushrooms in the Russian forest. Whenever you meet him, it’s impossible to resist kneeling down and spending a couple of minutes in his company ... choosing a better viewing angle and pulling the trigger. Once we were lucky, and we found fly agarics growing on the slope (apparently, this hole is a trace of artillery shelling - active hostilities were conducted in these places during the Second World War; we also found traces of trenches).

@Bambuka used this luxurious rare opportunity to photograph the mushroom from below angle. And I photographed him photographing a mushroom - one of favorite genres of photography when walking together, isn't it so?

The first ceps mushroom that I found on that day. I must note that we did not have any competition or this type of rivalry ("who will foray more"). And I also admit that a) @bambuka did find much more than me, and b) generally he was discovering Ceps mushrooms very well, from a sniper distance, even those that hid very well in the most secluded places. It's really amazing! After such a joint hunt, I only solidified my feeling that he is tuned into the same wavelength as the mushroom mycelium.

Every living tree, or a dead rotting trunk, is covered with millions of mosses, lichens, and mushrooms. Paradise for macro photography ... but I deliberately left my macro lens at home so as not to stick to every tree :) otherwise I would not be able to pick mushrooms, but only took pictures.

But by the way, if you are photographing large objects, then the 50mm lens does a good job and gives a beautiful macro!

... In fact, I didn't have a basket, but only a backpack for the camera and sandwiches ... I put the mushrooms in plastic bags, and I returned home with two bulky and heavy bags of mushrooms. I barely got there! I can still feel how tired my muscles are.

This amount of mushrooms is difficult to process even for two pairs of hands (of course, my wife helped me, saying that I was a hero and a breadwinner!). We peeled, chopped and boiled three quarters of the mushrooms, and the rest is left for today. That is why I was not able to show you these photos yesterday.