Ashland, again

We hit the jackpot, again, although it required hiking in the rain for most of the entire day.  We left our cozy hotel room after a long morning of crappy breakfast and hard talks.  Anticipating our return home to LA has raised questions surrounding what comes next, which can get kind of heavy at times.  All this time, we’ve just been living in the moment, but now we’re suddenly  both forced to face the reality of what comes when we return home.  Reality seems like a strange word to use given that I don’t think I ever want to make my previous life a reality again. 

The forest, walking among big trees, felt nurturing and loving to me, something we don’t always feel from each other.  I was thankful to be in the among the trees despite the fact that most of the first few mushrooms I picked up were too soggy to bother with after last night’s downpour. 

We drove north from Crescent City towards Brookings, not just for the mushrooms but also because we’d been invited to Jacksonville for Thanksgiving.  Our friend, old man Nick’s, who introduced Andre and I to each other a couple of years back, has a cousin who lives in J-town with her family on a goat farm.  They make cheese and raise vegetables.  On the drive, we stopped constantly to hop out of the bus and into the forest for a quick peak.  By the end of the afternoon, we’d found quite a variety of edibles—porcini, chanterelles, another giant cauliflower, lobsters, agaricus, hedgehogs—not too many of any one in particular but quite enough to share for Thanksgiving. 

Most exciting to me was the fact that Nick would soon be joining us.  I was able to find a rideshare online for him and he was expected to arrive around 6AM tomorrow morning.  We stopped hunting just after dark, heated up a little leftover porcini soup in the parking lot, and made our way back to Johan’s apartment in Ashland.  What a funny thing all this driving back and forth had become.

As planned, Nick arrived early this morning.  Andre got up to let him in, and asked if he wanted to sleep a bit.  Nick requested a beer.  Oh, Nick.  We slept a bit longer, but Nick was eager to go out picking so we made a fast breakfast of acorn pancakes topped with the dumpster figs I preserved back in St. Louis and headed up into the hills to poke around the forest.  At 79 years young, nothing stops this man from exploring the hillsides.  We found several pounds of an agaricus variety, although we never ended up keying them out so they made for pretty spore print cards rather than dinner.

We spent the evening cooking in preparation for Thanksgiving dinner, pausing to eat and enjoy wine while we caught up and exchanged stories with Nick.  He’s full of stories, and bullshit.