I love hiking. I’ve loved it since I was a boy of only six years old. Today, I’m fifty-six and I have grown to like it even more.
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Hiking is extremely important to me: as a means of mental relaxation, to keep my physical strength and fitness, to enjoy the wonders of this magnificent Earth, to experience peace. I wouldn’t want to do without it.
Nonetheless, when you hike you can focus on different things. You maybe go for the views, the trees, the wild life, the flowers or sounds and smells of the forest, the change of the seasons, well, it’s endless.
By chance, in 2016, I got interested in mushrooms. I had bought a camera and was just taking pictures of various things I found interesting during my hikes, and showing them to an acquaintance, she said: “… those mushrooms are very tasty.”
Well, that changed a lot in my patterns of hiking. By the way, the mushrooms she addressed were Chanterelle mushrooms, which were abundant were I lived at the time in the South of France. And until today, it’s still my favorite edible one.
The thing is that I have always liked eating mushrooms, although to me it were only the “Champignon de Paris,” the well-known Agaricus bisporus as they are known in scientific terms. So, although I had been eating mushrooms as a child already, and always bought them in the supermarket as an adult, it were only those.
In fact, the remark of my acquaintance opened a whole new world to me. I became a mushroom fanatic. I bought books, browsed websites, joined forums, and my hikes increasingly involved (edible) mushroom hunting.
In the past ten years, having lived in different places around the world, I have learned about many types of mushrooms, and looking for mushrooms has become and integral part of my hikes. Although I like to spot various kinds of mushrooms, my favorites are the edible ones.
I find mushrooms simply totally amazing. In a short time period, they pop-up from “nothing” becoming a beautiful “flower.” The power of mycelium (the root-like, often white vegetative part of a fungus, primarily composed of thin, thread-like structures) is just incredible. From some threads it can create large mushrooms in just a few days. I would say fungi are the fastest growing species on Earth.
Anyway, foraging mushrooms is such a nice experience. I love the surprise, see their colors, the varieties, and above all — I love it when they are the ones that provide free and tasty food. Nevertheless, how ever much I like eating mushrooms, I don’t like it when they “taste like mushroom,” but that’s stuff to talk about in another post.
Well, it’s just like I love eating egg as long as it doesn’t taste like egg, or having fish that doesn’t taste like fish. Go figure!
