Pray to the Moon: (Wild) Hunt

Saturday, August 30, 2014

Mycophilia: The Wild Hunt 2014

Last year's Wild Hunt chronicles came to a screeching halt with the sudden & most disturbing coma-like sleep of the laptop. Let it not happen again this year.

Wee Ones snacking on an Emetic Russula (Russula emetica).
Obviously less troubling to their systems.

Last year I wrote in the never completed, never published entry:

"When we hunt, we hunt for food,
& non-food supplies,
but even more fervently, we hunt for Beauty. It is so easy to find.
It's the experience of being present that drives us, the excitement of discovery, sharing, learning, knowing. The familiarity & the unknown. The piecing together of connections, relationships..."

And this is all still true, but I discovered something else this year.

Sometimes, when I am out there in the forest, either alone or accompanied by my people, I get high. That is to say, the hunting (or something) gives me a high & unsophisiticated as it sounds, there is no more straightforward was of describing it.

The Hunt makes me high.

Or something.

And when this happens, my head swims & everything smells in technicolour & I can 'hear' (intuit?) whisperings (or is it that I sense presences, like radar?) & I get a little frenetic & breathe fast & perhaps I get a bit sloppy because this is when I stumble over logs & nearly step on moose & ptarmigans & anyone else who isn't a fungi...

And just to be completely clear (a laughable aim, I admit) it isn't the acquisition that feels good -- it is the discovery, the sensing & the knowing.

With that, some fungi porn from our wanderings during this Wild Hunt 2014.

❋❋❋❋❋

This year seems to have an abundance of brown. For the humans who like nomenclature, everything below we will just call an "LBM" unless otherwise indicated, partly because I don't know everything & partly because I really would rather be back outside than labeling photographs.