There he is again, big, bluff and hearty,
plodding down the long hill as we trudge up.
Booming voice greeting us, and we so pleased
to see this genial man whose leisure it is
to cleanse the woods of rude discards,
whose pleasure it is to delve deep and wide.
Mushrooms, we enthuse, are sprouting
everywhere - and a wide, conspiratorial grin
overtakes his generous features. "I know!"
he confides, almost bellowing with delight
though none but us, our little dogs and the
squirrels to note his pointed gesticulations.
So the edible treasures, bright and luscious,
remain his alone. Who else, after all, can
boast sufficient knowledge and boldness
of culinary purpose to unerringly identify
and disqualify those which threaten, after all?
"There's these hedgehog mushrooms I
gathered yesterday", he waxes eloquent, "and
they were fabulous! Got them home, fried
them up with onions, a dab of sour cream
when they were done - food fit for a monarch!"
His knapsack hung loose and empty on
his broad back. A good day for the hunt,
after days of unrelenting rain, and finally
the sun greets us on this cold, autumn day.
It's a fine day to be out in the woods, it is.
"This big old pine", he says, motioning to
the rugged tall sentinel that has greeted us for
decades, "won't last past next spring." And
we are dismayed with his prediction, but he
insists, he has measured the collapsing clay
banks, points to the birch and the oak that
have already succumbed, lying akimbo in
their bare death across the moiling creek.
Not so, we make bold to deny; it has years
yet left to go. He laughs knowingly: "One good
gust of winter wind when it's weighted with
snow..." We've lived longer than he, seen more,
experienced much, and refute his expertise.
He regards us thoughtfully, shrugs with a
resigned air of one whose credibility is
questioned, says he's off! Knows where there's
a new cache of mushrooms, of a type growing
as a shelf fungus, the colour of ripe melon,
needing to be picked right this very moment.
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