124 ~ The world according to morels
May is the curious month when the distance between sunrise and sunset gets longer, but the days feel shorter, because there's so much to do. In addition to the opening of the main tour season at Taliesin (where I work part-time as a guide), and the influx of spring migrants, it’s time to plant the vegetable gardens, and trout season opens on the first Saturday (with pressure on a bit, because fishing is best in May, or at least most pleasant, before tangles of vegetation crowd the stream banks, and before gnats, mosquitoes and the heat take up summer residence). And finally, it's morel season. On nearly a daily basis in May I face decisions of, 'I have some free time of an hour or two before dark - gardens, trout or morels?'.
Morels often get the nod, because they can be found only within a fairly short window in May. Miss that, and you've missed them for the year. In contrast, if need be the peppers and tomatoes can be planted in June, and I’ll still be fishing for trout in August.
Years ago, when I first opened myself to the slender hope of finding a morel, it felt as if embarking on a search for a unicorn, or the Grail. Did morels truly exist, and did this flawed, non-virginal soul have the wherewithal, and/or the Universe's favor, to find them? In sum, was I good enough, in both senses of that query - skill, and worthiness. Each May morels still test my view of myself.
Linking my sense of self-worth to a fungus might seem a pathetic state of affairs. But it simply does justice to the wonder, magic and gift that is a morel.
It took me two years, two years of oscillation between hope followed by disappointments that felt inevitable, before I found my first of the sublime coneheads. I remember well the feelings of relief, gratitude and I-can't-believe-it-ness at that first find.
There's a wonderful, resonant passage in the book Dersu the Trapper by Vladimir Arseniev, a Russian surveyor of the early 20th century. Derus was a Siberian native who for years served as a guide for Arseniev's explorations of the northeastern reaches of the Russian empire. When not guiding surveyors through the wilds of Siberia, Dersu lived a wandering life and supported himself by trapping sables and collecting wild ginseng, two highly valuable resources. Arseniev writes of the day that Dersu, leading the survey team through the forest, suddenly threw himself to the ground in prostration, lowering his forehead to the Earth and muttering prayers. He was prostrate in veneration and gratitude before a ginseng plant.
I think of Dersu every time I find a morel. Each new encounter feels as miraculous as the first. The feelings of gratitude and relief return, as if past successes were just a fluke, or a dream, and that each new find of morels is a necessary reconfirmation of my worthiness, and of the quiet persistence of miracles in this sometimes troubled world.
Einstein proposed a fundamental question for each of us to ask ourselves: Is the universe for me, or against me? In the woods each May, I seek the answer anew.
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