forest

This is the deep woods…

by Kristen James

This is the deep woods, where you won’t ever hear a train in the distance, a far off truck engine or a dog bark as it walks with its owner. Instead a light breeze talks through the ancient tree tops, a hundred feet above. As the needles and branches shiver, the sun spots on the forest floor quiver and slide about. This is the only sunlight the ferns receive, but it’s all they want. The knee high ferns make another small forest on top of the thick, carpet moss. Their arms look years and years to grow. They grow like cacti.

When you’re here, you don’t listen to the nightly news or read internet headlines. The stories are in this deer trail cutting diagonally uphill through the ferns. The deer travel it to the creek at the bottom of this gully and then up to the top of the ridge. The giant trunk lying on its side here shows how many thousands of years this forest has been growing. The overripe huckleberries growing on a bush on top of the trunk tell a mystery. Why did the animals leave this bush? Was it too high and they felt lazy? Both cougars and coyotes left sign along the trail. Deer aren’t the only ones that use them.

The day isn’t 24 hours here. It’s timeless… until the sun begins to set.

Treasure Hunting in The Woods

by Kristen James

What’s more fun than an Easter Egg Hunt? Foraging Chanterelle mushrooms in the woods in the mossy forest floor. My husband and I went sighted in our hunting rifles (and I put a hole right in the middle of my target several times!) and then went mushroom hunting under the tall timber, where thick moss grows over the stumps and logs. We’d find one sticking up here and there and discovered, if we poked around the surrounding moss, we could find several more. They were hiding this time.

We came home with over 9 pounds of mushrooms in our pillow cases, which made it fun because it looked like Santa’s bags. And when you pick mushrooms, you can’t resist making mushroom soup. I started that and broccoli soup for the kids. I’d promised them broccoli soup before finding all the mushrooms, and cheddar broccoli soup is pretty irresistible too. So I ended up with two big pots of yummy homemade soup.

Of course you have to really, really know what you’re doing if you forage wild mushrooms. We’ve learned from books (What the Rain Brings, our favorite) and my husband’s brother who is a biologist. Chanterelles are one fairly easy to identify. There are some that we can almost identify, but we won’t eat them! Almost isn’t good enough. If you take the time to learn about edible mushrooms, it can be very rewarding.