Two Mushrooms

Wake-up feel: 7.

One night past the full moon.

The exercises before the light. Screen time, coffee in hand.

Then the day comes. Later now each morning, and gone sooner each evening. The land seems to know it. Everything settled.

I went for mushrooms.

The slopes here are steep. Every step weighed before it is taken — and the eyes at the same time on the ground ahead, looking. No room for the mind to wander.

One. Then a second. On the dead wood, brackets — not for the basket.

I had expected more.

What place did the mushroom have here, in the old days?

I found two. The rest the elders tell.

The elders here say the mushrooms come after the full moon. Those who pick know their places — the same slope, the same fallen tree, year after year — and keep them in the family.

The new count raised the Cross two weeks ago; the old count raises it today, and keeps it with a fast. In the fasts the mushroom stood where the meat had been. Dried on a thread above the stove, it carried the fasts through the winter.

Of the brackets on the dead wood, the old ones knew the one that takes the spark. Dried, it went into the pouch with flint and steel — and on a cut, it stopped the blood.

And they tell how the Lord and Peter once walked the earth together. Peter had bread in his mouth when the Lord turned to speak to him, and he spat it out behind him on the path. Where the crumbs fell, the mushrooms came up.

Tomorrow, the slope again.

Day 99
Verkhovyna, Carpathian Mountains, Ukraine
© 2026 Michel Garand | A Pilgrim's Journey | CC BY-SA 4.0
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