Sunday 13 September 2009


Mid September; the sun gets up at around seven... A month ago I'd have driven to the woods before six and had to sit on the car and eat a sandwich before it was bright enough for me to see into the leaves.. Sitting in the wood, a scout in early to report back home whether or not there's a point to putting on the rubber boots and a basket.

I suppose that as soon as one comes to terms with liking their parents, one accepts the inevitability of becoming like them. My mum and dad are cool. They have a shitload of their own demons, naturally, but they must have done something right, since the house they live in in their ripe age, their dogs, their food, their gardens, their orchards, their hobbies, how they spend their time and how a machine breaking down is the worse that can happen to them - and, of course, they have ME :D - is what they've built around themselves to grow old in old age and it's good. Realizing that, I've stopped trying not to be like the two and their habits have passed from one generation to another slowly, gradually and rewarding.

Say: mushroom hunting.

The forest we do it in is probably where I've been conceived. I can look back 30 years to when I could barely crawl and remember stumps, rocks, clearings, fallen trees and odd trunks that I've been put on to play while my dad spiraled around in search of porcini (the king boletes) and foxies (chanterelles). In Prekmurian dialect (Slovenian region close and very inegrated into the western Hungarian regions, tho you may never bring the similarity up to a full-blooded Prekmurian..) the boletes are called 'gerbanji'. We kind of call them 'jurčki', 'georgies'. Anyways, those are the main prize.

Personally, I do it for the woods. When it's still too dark and my eyes haven't adjusted yet, I just stroll around the timeless landscape and look for vermin skulls and funny looking fungi and cool sights for Porky.. Mum and dad are avid pickers, they get really emotional about it, so dad always lets mum find more and his ability to maneuver her towards the loot is artisan.

That's two or three hours in an early morning of poking things with a walking stick, making sounds to check other's locations and making a completely idiotic fuss when one's found..

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