Harvesting mushrooms
Vivid and slightly strange dreams lately. In a recent one I’m climbing along side of a mountain, right by the tree line and come across a large angled clearing with several enormous tree stumps. For the moment I realize that they are giant oak trees that had grown in the side of the mountain. The oak trees are so huge that they could easily fit 2 people lying down across the truck width. Everywhere among the stumps are giant mushrooms growing, in various varieties, some that look like edible types, like shitake, matsutake, and others that I could not recognize. I remember being amazed at the size of the trees, and the sheer number of cut trees and mushrooms everywhere.
Almost out of no where a middle aged woman in professional attire comes walking briskly down side of the mountain, passing by me with a sense of urgency, and says in passing something about eating a mushroom thinking it was a exotic red lobster mushroom, and now needing to seek medical attention in the village down the mountain. She was coming from a higher part of the mushroom grove from where I was standing. Somewhat startled by running into another human being in the wilderness, especially in a business suit and heels, I think to myself that what the woman did by eating a wild mushroom was pretty stupid and downright dangerous and that the thought hadn’t even crossed my mind, realizing that while I know a little about the appearance of mushrooms from the grocery store or from biology classes, I’m nothing close to an expert yet on foraging them in the wild yet.
In the dream I remember thinking to myself that if I was intent on picking mushrooms here, I would be much more likely to gather a few mushrooms to take with me, consult a scientific expert before eating them myself, or even better yet, find an experienced mushroom merchant who would be willing to buy them from me. I’m not sure exactly how this dream ended, but I think it after enjoying the scenery I made my way back down the mountain along the path that I came.