Morels

That time of year again, some more rain coming today, guess it's time to head to the woods

Setting : a morel hunt after a forest fire “burn” in California

Michael Pollan

Omnivore’s Dilemma / a natural history of four meals

pp389

excerpt :

Along Beaver Creek that afternoon the morels were totally on, as Ben would say; almost everywhere I looked the honeycombed dunce caps appeared, and I filled a bag in less than an hour. My hands by now were black with soot and stunk of smoke, but I could still smell the meaty perfume of the morels, these fleshy buttons of protein popping out of the dead earth, this seemingly spontaneous combustion of food. I was talking to them, cheering on their every appearance, and they we talking to me, or so it seemed. I exulted at their sudden ubiquity, which I took, weirdly, as evidence of some new connection between us. It sounds crazy, but there is something reciprocal about the transaction, the looking and the appearing, as if we each doing our part, throwing a line of affiliation across the gulf of wilderness. I’ve no idea how deep into the woods I’d wandered, but I was more outside than I can remember ever being, and more than a little lost, but not to the morels, who weren’t hiding from me any longer. Maybe I’d gotten good at this, had my eyes on; or maybe it was them, revealing themselves at last because I had found a way out of my world and into theirs.