Meandering

Following your nose is a fairly common phrase – if not thought about a lot. I’m not sure if it is the foremost part of my body, but I guess I follow it more than most.

It’s good to walk into unknown parts of woodland, checking out which jays are feeding off which oak’s acorns in their strange jubilant frenzy, not even bothering to scold me. The red of autumn creeps upward in these places with no path; seedling rowans flaming on the floor, maple saplings glowing like any peat fire late at night.
Oaks overhead still green.

Here’s a fine birch – a downy birch, much given to those adventitious clumps of twisted warty growths in its branches – recurving its way up to light – bent at a steep angle by some unknown force before returning to the upright trunk our eyes demand of a forest tree.
There’s broken charcoal burners (the mushroom of that name) along this way; I’m following the path of deer who’ll not bother nibbling the brittle dryness of these – nor will I.

I can hear the geese in the bay – I think (certainly deluding myself) that I can tell from their gabble that they are Canada geese, not the few greylags left. A woodpecker taps an oak in the afternoon filtered light. I wander on, but alerted by something I can’t pin down to move a little to my right. I have no idea where I am in the woods; lost again, my usual state. The canopy is high and blocking any glimpse I might have of the sun. There’s no shadows so I can’t even tell whether I’m going north or east.

But, and here’s the point: here’s a wee clearing. On an old stump I smell, then see: chicken of the woods. Laetiporus sulphureus, a strong smelling, sulphur-coloured polypore that puts many folk – mushroom folk, I mean – off. It is of course just delicious. The smell is purest autumn woods and lingers on the fingers and the carefully wielded knife I use to gently slice it from the stump. No druid was ever more careful with a (almost certainly apocryphal) golden sickle. It goes into the yellow cloth bag that travels in my back pocket for just such an occasion.

With a bouncing step, and with the notion that I’m now travelling (no longer following my nose) east; I walk straight to the wood’s edge and find the dirt road home. Occasionally I stop and put my nose to the bag, like an eager glue-sniffing lad.

Fried in butter, with garlic, lemon flavoured; both supper and breakfast assured.