It rained last night, and the forest smells of pine and earth. The three of us tread up the hill. The wicker baskets swings into my knees. My footsteps sink luxuriously into the mud. As the path steepens my hands grasp at soft wet moss. I rest on a trunk and close my eyes. River rapids softly thunder in the valley below, and somewhere beyond, a cockerel celebrates.
Reaching the plain, we meet a meadow of wildflowers, and further on, a strip of darker grass where the promised fungi hide. If we get lucky, tonight our van dinner will be to gorge on buttery mushroom omelette. The thought creates a spring in my step, and I head towards the far side of the field, where rockroses and mustard bell-heather line the fence.
My path is bordered by exquisitely miniature succulents, creating flame-coloured perfect little worlds. I kneel to get a closer look. Vivid yellow buttercups with their rounded smooth flowers sit between miniature lilac geraniums, too fragile to touch. I see what my granny once told me was white campion, sharing its patch with another vibrant yellow thing. I open a nature app (the foraging team now far ahead) and am shocked yet delighted at their names: St John’s Wort, Common Hogweed, Sneezewort. So ugly and lumpy. A far cry from the gently poetic ‘Love-in-a-mist’.
My border-collie bounds over, upset by the distance between me and my husband. He drops a stick and pleads with his eyes. I throw the stick and sit with the flowers. The bird chorus intensifies and I try what Nan Shepherd calls listening with the eyes. The trilling song of a warbler, the shrill call of a chaffinch, the mad jazz of a blackbird and the steady hoot of a pigeon.
I reach the darker grass, almost up to my knees. It’s wet with the last of the dew, and smells almost sweet. Rubén stumbles on a big cluster and celebrates ostras son enormes! I feel the sun emerge from the clouds and warm my neck. The collie drops another stick and pleads. I bend down. And then I spot a little one, peeking out from the clover. Its thin stalk and helmet-like top. The bronze-brown colour with a nuttier coloured peak. In Catalan they’re called carreretas, because they grow in clusters of ‘roads’, and sure enough, I spot its siblings, parallel, and more cousins, a metre away. I smile in that moment, amused by their uprightness, their collective gathering, a Sunday market crowd, eagerly spreading neighbourly news. I pick as many as I can, careful to cut the stalk with my nail and leave the root in the earth.
“All are aspects of one entity, the living mountain.” I think of Nan Shepherd as I lie back, pleased with my findings. Below me is the rock and soil, above is air, cloud, and sun. In one moment, this earthy patch must have combined these elements to create a moisture, temperature, wind and shade, perfect for the spores to wake and grow.
Hearing my name, I turn back to my wicker basket, where the little miracles lie, uprooted and upside-down, their delicate papery gills on display like secrets.
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