A long afternoon in the car ended in time for a hike before
sunset. We were somewhere near
Hazelhurst, which is just south of Woodruf, Wisconsin. The leaves were much more colorful than
they’d been down south, displaying all of the shades of fall… red, orange,
yellow, green, and everything in between.
Is it the death of summer, or alternatively, the birth of winter? In either event, I was hoping for an
Indian summer as I dug for my warmer jacket.
Out on our hike, I spotted some little blue mushrooms,
lavender really, and wanted Andre to take a peek. When we see something especially interesting in the forest,
we usually call the other over.
Otherwise, we often separate staying just within earshot of the call
we’ve developed. On his way over, he found our first lobster mushroom. Lobster mushrooms aren’t really a type
of mushroom, but rather lobsters refer to a host mushroom of some sort that
gets taken over by another fungus.
In the case of this edible lobsters, which is often the case, this
fungus was the color of a lobster (orange like a pumpkin). I found several others nearby, giving
us plenty for a full meal, although I was hesitant to eat them because there is
no guarantee that the host mushrooms is edible. After reading and rereading our
ID book to be sure, I sautéed them in a spoonful of coconut oil and a pinch of
salt. With a bit of leftover
vegetables from the soup I made yesterday, they made delicious lobster
tacos. After dinner, we listened
to the wolves howling nearby, calls that are very different from the coyotes I
am accustomed to hearing down south. During my evening meditation, I felt
grateful to be back in the forest.
No comments:
Post a Comment