{"id":11690,"date":"2020-08-12T20:47:03","date_gmt":"2020-08-13T02:47:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=11690"},"modified":"2020-08-12T20:47:59","modified_gmt":"2020-08-13T02:47:59","slug":"a-new-approach-to-the-locals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=11690","title":{"rendered":"A New Approach to “The Locals”"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"

I wonder when this white fir was cut. The 1950s? Anyway, it seemed like a good place for offerings.<\/p><\/div>\n

This time last year<\/strong> M. and I were picking mushrooms at higher elevations \u2014 and almost were trapped in a fairy portal<\/a>. At least, that is what it seemed like. I might have provoked That Crowd by feeling a little too arrogant about my woodsmanship, but at least I saw the trap in time.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Admittedly, we were right up against the red zone, “extreme drought” in southern Colorado.<\/p><\/div>\n

That event was August 6th. This year we returned to the same spot on July 29th, just to see if any mushrooms were coming up \u2014 there had been a few good rains up high \u2014 but there was nothing, edible or otherwise. It’s been a bad bad drought year, even in the high country (above 10,000 feet \/ 3,050 m).<\/p>\n

But I had another purpose<\/strong>. Drought or not, I wanted to leave something for The Locals. The Other Crowd. Them. I did not know what protocol would work in “the mushroom grounds,” so I just brought some whiskey and a tobacco bundle, made from Nicotiana rustica<\/a> that I had grown last year and dried, tied up in a scrap of old bandana.<\/p>\n

\"\"

Whiskey in a stump.<\/p><\/div>\n

I poured some bourbon into a natural “cup” formed by the stump, and I tied the tobacco bundle to a protruding spike of wood inside the hollow stump.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

We went back up there on August 6th, a year after the “portal” event. Still not a mushroom in sight. But I strolled past that stump and the tobacco bundle was gone. Flat gone. This is not an area that gets many human visitors.<\/p>\n

The lore is that if an offering disappears, it has been accepted. Now if we could have more rain. But that is a different ritual and a different story.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This time last year M. and I were picking mushrooms at higher elevations \u2014 and almost were trapped in a fairy portal. At least, that is what it seemed like. I might have provoked That Crowd by feeling a little too arrogant about my woodsmanship, but at least I saw the trap in time. That […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[68,23,82,31],"class_list":["post-11690","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-animism","tag-colorado","tag-fairies","tag-mushrooms"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6xQTg-32y","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":2564,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=2564","url_meta":{"origin":11690,"position":0},"title":"Occultism and Mushrooms","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"April 17, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"Not necessarily psychotropic mushrooms. To learn more about them, read Andy Letcher's Shroom or the works of Paul Stamets, Dale Pendell, etc. These are metaphorical mushrooms\u2014or mushrooms as metaphor\u2014from an article by Wouter Hanegraaff on the German scholar of esotericism Will-Erich Peuckert (1895-1969): To me, [Peuckert's] book [Pansophie] breathed\u00a0 an\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"occultism\"","block_context":{"text":"occultism","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=occultism"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":13446,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=13446","url_meta":{"origin":11690,"position":1},"title":"A Knife in the Woods","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"August 11, 2023","format":false,"excerpt":"M. and I went yesterday to check our favorite mushroom grounds. The radar had shown thunderstorms up there earlier in the week , but whatever rain fell had soaked right in. Nothing was coming up yet, not even LBMs. ((The mushroom hunter's catch-all term: \"Little brown mushrooms.\" Like \"little gray\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Colorado\"","block_context":{"text":"Colorado","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=colorado"},"img":{"alt_text":"Large butcher knife on forest floor.","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/08\/found-knife-768x441.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/08\/found-knife-768x441.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/08\/found-knife-768x441.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":691,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=691","url_meta":{"origin":11690,"position":2},"title":"A Cultural History of Magic Mushrooms","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"July 26, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"Andy Letcher's Shroom: A Cultural History of the Magic Mushroom is also on my to-buy list.Much stranger than the fictions it has inspired, the world of the magic mushroom is a place where shamans and hippies rub shoulders with psychiatrists, poets and international bankers.The magic mushroom was only rediscovered fifty\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"entheogens\"","block_context":{"text":"entheogens","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=entheogens"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"http:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.com\/e\/ir?t=chascli-20&l=as2&o=1&a=0060828285","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":10758,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=10758","url_meta":{"origin":11690,"position":3},"title":"Getting Lost among the Mushrooms","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"August 7, 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"There are at least five stages to mushroom-hunting. You walk in the woods but do not see the mushrooms. You begin to see mushrooms here and there. Your unconscious is seeing mushrooms. For example, every reddish-tan thing on the forest floor that approximates the cap of a bolete will jump\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"animism\"","block_context":{"text":"animism","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=animism"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/bolete-fb.jpeg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/bolete-fb.jpeg?resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/bolete-fb.jpeg?resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/bolete-fb.jpeg?resize=700%2C400 2x"},"classes":[]},{"id":1051,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1051","url_meta":{"origin":11690,"position":4},"title":"Trout and Mushrooms","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"August 9, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"M. and I are off for a few days to pursue trout and mushrooms. Blogging will resume later next week.","rel":"","context":"In \"blogging\"","block_context":{"text":"blogging","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=blogging"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1214,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1214","url_meta":{"origin":11690,"position":5},"title":"Did a ‘Pagan’ Bury the Staffordshire Hoard?","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"September 25, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"The \"Staffordshire Hoard\" is a cache of 7th-century Anglo-Saxon sword jewels and other items recently found in England (and a great boost for metal-detector sales, no doubt).The caption on one slide of the golden hoard suggests that because a gold cross was folded in on itself before burial, the person\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"archaeology\"","block_context":{"text":"archaeology","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=archaeology"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11690","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11690"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11690\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11705,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11690\/revisions\/11705"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11690"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11690"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11690"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}