{"id":7436,"date":"2015-08-14T21:06:35","date_gmt":"2015-08-15T03:06:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=7436"},"modified":"2015-08-14T21:06:35","modified_gmt":"2015-08-15T03:06:35","slug":"bemushroomed-in-the-deep-woods","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=7436","title":{"rendered":"Bemushroomed in the Deep Woods"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"mushroomjar.jpg\"M. and I have been hitting the deep woods one day a week as part of the annual Mushroom Hunt. Yesterday was an odd one.<\/p>\n

Actually, the previous hunt, six days earlier, was even stranger. First, I had a full-blown hallucination of a nice Boletus edulis<\/em> (king bolete, steinpilz<\/em>, etc.) I walked over to the spot \u2014 and there was no mushroom. Then I looked above five or six feet away, and there it was. The spirits were playful.<\/p>\n

In his excellent book Shroom: A Cultural History of the Magic Mushroom<\/em><\/a>, Andy Letcher uses the term “bemushroomed” to mean being under the influence of entheogenic mushrooms consumed internally.<\/p>\n

But maybe there is another sense wherein you are just in their force field. Every mushroom hunter knows the perceptual shift of not seeing any \u2014 and then you enter the “field” and you are seeing them everywhere.<\/p>\n

Only maybe you lose track of other things, such as where you are.<\/p>\n

Usually, M. is trance-ier in the woods than I am. I \u2014 having gotten lost in these densely forested mountains before \u2014 am always reality-checking: “OK, the boggy meadow is north \u2014 that’s to the right. I am walking downhill, so west; therefore, the road is about a quarter-mile behind me. But what’s that little knob? \u2014 I don’t recognize it.”<\/p>\n

So having mushrooms moving around in my perceptual field was \u2014 different.<\/p>\n

Then, after two hours or so, we are back at the Jeep, and she is looking stricken and slapping at her pants pockets. Her Opinel mushroom knife<\/a>, a Christmas present, is gone! We retrace part of our steps but don’t spot it. She remembers cutting some Albatrellus confluens<\/a> \u2014 <\/em>not super-tasty, but they bulk up a soup.<\/p>\n

Yesterday we returned to that area. I thought I remembered \u2014 to within an acre or so \u2014 where that patch of confluens<\/em> might be, marked off by three weathered white-fir <\/a>trunks that had fallen like three sides of a square.<\/p>\n

So we set off in that general direction, and I more or less walked right to the spot. There was the knife. (Thanks, mushroom spirits!)\u00a0 After six days in the weather, the wooden handle had swollen, making it hard to open and close, but some time in the sunshine has fixed that.<\/p>\n

But in the six days that had passed, the woods had changed again. Three hours of looking produced only one shopping bag of mushrooms. Our two favorite species had just vanished (or were too rotten to pick). But we were out there, in the “mushroom field.”<\/p>\n

It is said that gathering wild mushrooms is dangerous<\/em>.<\/strong> If you ask me, dealing with log trucks on narrow Forest Service roads is the real danger.<\/p>\n

There was Asshole Log Truck Driver, who wanted the Jeep as a hood ornament. I “felt” him coming and pulled over until my right wheels were in the ditch before he blasted around the bend (Thanks, mushroom spirits).<\/p>\n

But then there was Considerate Log Truck Driver who not only was driving conservatively downhill with his load, but who pulled over to let us pass.<\/p>\n

Why couldn’t they have been reversed \u2014 meet CLTD head-on and go down the grade behind ALTD? Well, you take what you can get.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

M. and I have been hitting the deep woods one day a week as part of the annual Mushroom Hunt. Yesterday was an odd one. Actually, the previous hunt, six days earlier, was even stranger. First, I had a full-blown hallucination of a nice Boletus edulis (king bolete, steinpilz, etc.) I walked over to the […]<\/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":[23,31],"class_list":["post-7436","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-colorado","tag-mushrooms"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6xQTg-1VW","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":13446,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=13446","url_meta":{"origin":7436,"position":0},"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":490,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=490","url_meta":{"origin":7436,"position":1},"title":"Local Knowledge","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"August 17, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"Three cheers for Vera Stucky Evenson, author of The Mushrooms of Colorado. Those white mushrooms were indeed Agaricus campestris. M. and I ate them on last night's pizza, and we're still here 24 hours later. (Yes, I made spore prints too.) The cat ate some too--he must have liked the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"deep ecology\"","block_context":{"text":"deep ecology","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=deep-ecology"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":7368,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=7368","url_meta":{"origin":7436,"position":2},"title":"Lammas, Wild Harvest, and “the Notch”","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"August 1, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"Many of the Pagan bloggers are putting up their \"Happy Lammas\/Lughnasad\" posts. My archaeoastronomical friends who study mysterious ancient solar alignments point out that \"real\" Lammas is still six days away. But there is \"the notch.\" In 1986, when I moved to this part of Colorado, a friend told me,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Colorado\"","block_context":{"text":"Colorado","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=colorado"},"img":{"alt_text":"nibbled bolete","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/nibbled-bolete.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/nibbled-bolete.jpg?resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/nibbled-bolete.jpg?resize=525%2C300 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":691,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=691","url_meta":{"origin":7436,"position":3},"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":508,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=508","url_meta":{"origin":7436,"position":4},"title":"Love and fungusM. and I\u2026","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"September 11, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"Love and fungusM. and I went mushrooming today in the Wets. The local news had carried the story of yet another lost mushroom hunter, so she kept reminding me that she had no sense of direction and it was my job to get us back to the Jeep.We found a\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":13722,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=13722","url_meta":{"origin":7436,"position":5},"title":"Step Aside, John Barleycorn","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"August 4, 2024","format":false,"excerpt":"See the Shaggy Parasol mushrooms? They were not there two or three days ago. Yet Lammas comes and they burst forth, full of fungal goodness. Here just north of the Colorado-New Mexico line, August is the heart of mushroom season. You can find them at other times too, but your\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Lammas\"","block_context":{"text":"Lammas","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=lammas"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/shaggy-p-ground-level.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/shaggy-p-ground-level.jpg?resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/shaggy-p-ground-level.jpg?resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/shaggy-p-ground-level.jpg?resize=700%2C400 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/shaggy-p-ground-level.jpg?resize=1050%2C600 3x"},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7436","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=7436"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7436\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7444,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7436\/revisions\/7444"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7436"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7436"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7436"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}