A Year in the Forest

As I took my daily walk through the woods today, or should I say my daily mushroom walk, I encountered two good edible mushrooms.  The log from which I harvested the oyster mushrooms earlier has sprouted them again – yum, yum there will be some good eating this week.  I also found a big stump sprouting Sulphur Shelf Mushrooms.  I harvested the Sulphur Shelf mushrooms because the deer like them and often get them before I can.    For the evening meal we had steaks grilled on charcoal and Sulphur Shelf mushrooms sauteed in butter.  I was not expecting to find mushrooms since is it still dry and mushrooms are mostly water.  Oh well, finding them and eating them is too often a harvest of chance.  If you get there the right day, you get em.  The wildlife might get them the next day.  I was hoping ot get some paw-paws but they are not ripe yet.

It is a little cooler today – I am looking forward to cool weather so I can do some real work on the trails.

Not much happened on my walk though the woods today.  I did stop and photograph a small bright orange mushroom a Mycena Leaiana. and I did see the largest animal I have seen in the woods – another human.  I encountered an about 18 year old male walking his dog down the stream bed.  I didn’t run him off but he left quickly after exchanging pleasantries.

Its hot and the bugs a constant annoyance.  I did find out what was causing my ankles to burn, some kind of little bug.  I started putting on bug repellent and fixed the problem.

When I started into the woods this afternoon, I was immediately confronted with a big new mushroom right next to my trail.  It was bright orange and looked just like a big batch of morels.  Since I had just started my hike I left them.  I planned on coming back and picking them when my wife got home from work and having them for dinner.  I was elated looking forward to the good meal.  I looked around a little, tried to find some hickory nuts to harvest but found very little of interest.  Besides my mind was filled with visions of chanterelle mushrooms.

When I had almost finished my hike I found a beautiful Amanita mushroom.  Maybe its because they are poisonous, I don’t know but they are always so perfect and unspoiled.  A beauty to behold.

I went in the house and waited for Karen to get home.  When she did I eagerly took her out to harvest the chanterelle and was in for a big disappointment.  When I picked it I noticed that it had gills and was not chanterelle after all.  It was a Jack O Lantern mushroom.   What a disappointment, there was at least a pound of mushroom.

Trying to redeem the situation, I decided to try an experiment.  Jack O Lantern mushrooms are said to glow green in the dark.  I have seen foxfire many times in the woods and thought I would try this.  My son and I went into the basement, closed the doors and waited.  Sure enough after about ten minutes we could both see the green glow.  It was not near as bright as foxfire though.  There are stories of how early settlers found there way by the light of Jack O Lantern mushrooms – the mushrooms would have to be a lot brighter than these to be of any use.  So at least I got to see the green glow of Jack O Lantern mushrooms.

Took a walk through the woods with my wife today.  It really is dry.  A couple weeks ago, it was dry but you could walk through the woods and see leaves filled with dew and other signs of moisture, but not now.  At least the trees have not started to drop leaves as a result of the dryness.  At least it is relatively cool.  Today for the first time I can remember the wind was blowing hard enough that you could feel breezes down in the stream bed.  It did make the walk much more pleasant.

The only new thing I noticed was that the deer appear to like the trails a lot.  It is hard to walk very far at all now without seeing deer scat.  Even on the new segment, I just completed a couple of days ago, deer scat is already starting to appear.  Its nice to know I am making it easier on the wildlife.  I will admit that my trail layout took advantage of existing deer trails, but they have become much more heavily used since I cleared them.

After completing the layout and clearing of the last trail segment this past weekend, I walked the complete main trail loop today.  The trail starts out on the top of the ridge in a nice open area.    This picture is pretty typical of the upland areas.  Just as I was starting to go down into the stream area I encountered the biggest two-color bolete I have ever seen.  It was about 4 1/2 inches across the top of the cap and a full 3/4 inch thick.  I, of course, harvested it and took it back to the house and cooked it for a pre-dinner snack.  But before I did that I continued on down into the stream bed.  Here is a picture of the stream bed.    You will notice how much darker the stream area is even during bright sun.  I have often gotten down there and began to wonder if night was falling.  The reason for the darkness is that the under story of paw paw trees is so thick here that little light gets down to ground level.  Continuing on down the stream I took a detour to snap a picture of some deer bones.  This deer died and was scavenged by the local animals, probably mainly fox and coyote.  The bones are spread over quite an area but here is the backbone, ribs and skull.    The deer carcass started out further up the hill and I have found hind quarters bones up there.  The main carcass was dragged down into the bottoms and leg and pelvic bones are spread out in the area.  The bones are spread out through rugged terrain for over 1500 feet.

On the way back to the house I picked up a couple dozen black walnuts and laid them on the driveway to dry in the sun.  In the past, I have never thought black walnuts were worth the trouble, but hope springs eternal.