Life as a hunter-gatherer must be hard

After many years of thinking that I ought to gather mushrooms one day and learn to identify those sought-after chanterelles, I finally wound up doing it. It was an ordinary morning. Margareta thought she's take a walk, I tagged along. And she brought a basket — just in case.

I hadn't thought of bringing the camera, since it wasn't sure that we would find anything. Even though we would walk to the known mushroom spots around their neighborhood where there were good chances of spotting chanterelles, mushrooms are unpredictable that way: sometimes, there aren't many of them, and sometimes, they just sprout like, well — mushrooms. We were thinking of maybe finding one or two, but we came back with about a kilo of chanterelles.

As Micheal Pollan writes in the Omnivore's Dilemma (a very good, recommendable book), there is actually little humans know about why mushrooms grow, and why they grow when they do. In the case of chanterelles that grow year after year, they seem to grow under the same oaks, even though the oaks beside them might be bare from chanterelles. The mushrooms will remain a mystery that way, which is also why chanterelle gatherers are said to be protective about their gathering spots.

Another mystery is how to spot chanterelles at all, under all the leaf litter, among twigs and other inedible mushrooms. At first you see nothing but the forest floor. But as in a 3D puzzle, once you've seen one chanterelle in one spot, the others also "pop out" of their cover. Swedes refer to it as having your "mushroom specacles" on. Pollan describes it as having one's eyes on, which quite accurately describes how it felt like to me:

"But before the morning was out I'd begun to find a few chanterelles on my own. I began to understand what it meant to have my eyes on, and the chanterelles started to pop out of the landscape, one and then another, almost as though they were beckoning to me. So had I stumbled on a particularly good spot or had I learned at last how to see them? Nature or nurture? There was no way of telling, though I did have an eerie experience of resurveying the very same path of ground and finding a Siamese pair of chanterelles, bright as double egg yolks, in a spot where a moment before I could swear there had been nothing but the tan carpet of leaves."

True enough, after spotting some chanterelles during out walk, we found a load of mushrooms under the first tree which we thought we'd alraedy inspected!

Once you've spotted them, of course, there's also the nescessary step of identifying if they really are what you think they are, and not a chanterelle copycat. In Sweden, at least, chanterelles are the most common mushrooms to gather for the simple fact that it has very distinguishing characteristics, which make for a good beginner's mushroom. Nevertheless, I think it's best to start plucking them with someone with experience, who can guide you through the distinguishing features and point out look-alikes. I took pictures of our loot though, so I can review these features for myself and also show them here.

The big ones are funnel-shaped, although not the small ones, which are a bit button-like (second picture). But the distinguishing features are that (1) the grooves on the underside go down to the stem; in fact, there is no distinguishable mushroom "cap" (2) they are never slimy, but have a firm, leathery feel to them, and they are seldom damaged by insects. I also read a third tip on the internet: (3) That the grooves "fork" at the top.



That is all well, but you seldom see a mushroom on the ground from it's side, which is why I made a point to take pictures from the top view. The picture below shows how they could look like in their different sizes, from the button-like small ones, to the big funnel-shaped ones. From the top view, the distinguishing features are: (1) they don't have a dark halo on top and (2) they are not cone-shaped when viewed from above. To this I add to my own mental note when I was comparing it to a look-alike: (3) They are not "furry" on the edges when you look at from an angle.


If they grow under oaks, chanterelles will be an eggy shade of yellow — but apparently, there are paler variants that grow in mixed forests with pine (at bottom left). They can grow in clusters, but also as "littered" on the forest floor, as this picture taken by Mats on his mushroom-gathering excursion. Since I don't have my own pictures from mushroom gathering, I will post his:


I commented on the title of the blog that life must be hard for a hunter-gatherer. Imagine all the species of plants and mushrooms you have to remember (and find!), not to mention tracking and combating animals for food. We certainly have made life easier for us, and we neither need to do these things or even remember half of the edible species our ancestors used to know. Yet, I think it's interesting how people still pursue these activities — gathering, as well as hunting — as worthwhile hobbies, instead of activities of pure need. Maybe there's something very rewarding about going to our basic human activities. Maybe, for all our civilization, the human body needs to be in contact with his natural, vulnerable self (I can imagine that hunting makes you vulnerable in as much as it appears to be brutal). Or maybe hunting and gathering is somewhat exotified in our technological world, so we turn to them just to do "something different". Anyhow, to me, it's a bit like what they say about medieval cosplaying: what people used to do as real hard work, we now do for fun and liesure. Now, isn't that an interesting thing to think about?

P.S. Added 19 September. Liz was asking me about weather poking the leaf litter with a stick in the search for chantarelles (as she's seen done in Germany), damages the mushroom growth in some way. I don't have a definite answer to this question, but in The Omnivore's Dilemma, at least, the mushroom gatherer did this for the opposite reason: to hopefully spread the mushroom spores from tree to tree. I guess each mushroom gatherer has his or her bag of tricks. As to weather they work or not is something else altogether. As said, there is actually little man knows about the mushroom.

Really random thoughts from Lancaster

Thanks, everyone who sent their well wishes by comment, mail, SMS or phone! Marcus is doing a bit better now. The worst days of the conditioning treatment seem to be over and he got his stem cells a week ago. Now it's a long wait until the stem cells settle in his bone marrow, and a long, long recovery period. Marcus is still not out of his reverse quarantine, which means that they will still be regularly checking his blood values and looking for signs of infection and side-effects. His intestinal track is a bit irritated, but he's on antibiotics and other medication. He's also on the process of changing his blood group as the new stem cells take over. But today, at least, all seems well. I visited him over the weekend and we talked by phone today. Unfortunately, I developed a sore throat yesterday, so I can't visit until I feel well again.

So, I'm at just at home and I thought I'd write an update about my previous week, when I was in Lancaster for a conference. I realized that it was ages since I travelled alone – four years ago to be exact, when I travelled back to Sweden! Managing solo travel gave me a confidence that I could still handle unexpected events by myself (I arrived in Copenhagen to find out that my original flight to the UK was cancelled; I got re-routed to Brussels), but I must admit, travelling with a partner is much more rewarding, and less mentally taxing, in that you split the thinking between yourselves.

Besides, travelling alone, there's no one to talk to! Instead, I had a soliloqy by computer. Here's what I wrote in my room in Lancaster the morning after I arrived. One of the joys of travelling? You can write about the small things:

---

Got up at 3:50 AM yesterday to catch my 5:15 taxi to the airport in Norrköping. Flight from Copenhagen to Manchester got cancelled. Got rerouted to Brussels airport where there was a three hour wait for the connecting flight. I had brunch there, bacon and eggs and bread and coffee. For paying 10 Euros for that, it was really sloppily made. The chef looked like Manuel from Fawlty Towers, and cooked like him too. When he was struggling to crack the eggs open, I was a bit suspicious. Even more so when he poured a load of oil into the egg form on the grill skillet – Gordon Ramsey would be horrified that they cooked the eggs there instead of on a pan! – and the oil was enough to deep-fry the eggs. The bacon was as brown and crisp as crispbread and there was some raw egg on the corner of the plate, which I reminded myself not to touch with the fork. Unlike other airports, they had no McDonald’s or Sbarro’s or that kind of thing, so, I was hostage. After brunch, Herman Lindkvist’s book on Japan made time fly. Thank goodness.

Three take-offs in one day really takes its toll. I wonder how the flight attendants take it? My veins were running on coffee, but I never drink more than 4 cups (the Swedish average!). Thankfully the train company extends the tickets when the flights are delayed, so I didn’t have to buy a new train ticket for the one that I missed. (Funny details was that it was that a man drank strong beer in the train – not taboo! – and that the doors said “smile, you’re on CCTV!”. The English to me, seem very safety conscious! But these little things remind me that I'm abroad).

At Lancaster, I met Ayeray at 3pm for fika instead of at 12ish for lunch (it was Starbuck’s). The city center looks nice, like a big shopping district. Went to university at about 6pm by bus. The streets of Lancaster are curvy and narrow – so narrow that, when cars are parked on one side, only half the lane becomes available for the bus. Combined with left-hand traffic ("driving on the wrong lane"), I always had the illusion that the other cars were going straight for us! I had to struggle not to jump off my bus seat! I walked around campus looking for the Conference Center. The campus is huge and the buildings don’t have big signs, so it's good to have a map. I think I’m getting better at directions.

Was at my booked student room, finally, by around 7PM (8 Swedish time), which means I’ve been up for 16 hours and on the go for 14. Bought mineral water at the nearby cafeteria (water is not potable, they say). The student room is about as big as a room in a cruise ship to Finland, except there is a desk on the other side instead of another bunk bed. I did some short emails, and then washed up.

The sink is strange (or just typically English, I've heard). It has two taps, one has ice cold water and the other one has scalding hot water, but they don’t mix in any way and there are a few inches’ gap between the two sprays. So, I can’t wash my face with lukewarm water. Either one hand gets burnt and the other one gets icy, or I scoop cold water in my cupped hands, and then hot water, in a matter of half a second. Of course, the idea is you'd have to mix water in the plugged sink, but I'm reluctant to do this where I just brushed my teeth. Thank goodness that the shower has a blender though! Otherwise, I would have to shower turning around, like in a rotisserie :-)

Nice touches: they had free soap and shampoo for conference guests, and a towel. Which is good, because I didn’t occur to me to bring a towel, and who knows what would have happened if they didn’t provide one! Yikes! The scenery from out my window is also nice: green rolling hills with properties divided by low hedges.

I was dead tired after my shower, so I decided to plop into bed. After all, I was awake the whole day! The sheets look nice and thick and … Oww! The bed turned out to be so hard it actually hurted to plop on it! I could feel the fat, sturdy springs with my fingers. There was no mattress; just the bed spring bottom covered with a flat sheet. As long as I didn’t move so much, it was alright. Then I slept from 9pm to 6:30am. It’s 7:35 now. I don’t know what time breakfast is served at the cafeteria, so I might as well go there now.

---

So much for those random thoughts. Next time, I will really get back to blogging about Sweden more, and those mushrooms I've been talking about!