Thursday, 16 October 2008

A walk in the woods


Thursday is quite a good day for fungi hunting, enough time for new fruits to replace the ravages of the weekend before but early enough to avoid the weekend pickers to come. In a very brief gap in the rain I went into the woods.


It was really colourful and calm under the trees. Every so often a shiver in the skies would send another shower of bronze and golden leaves swirling to the ground which was already thickly covered. For someone who navigates like a insect, using tiny but persistent landmarks to identify and confirm my direction it was disorienting, I lacked my usual confidence to pick out known locations for finding ceps or other fungi I'd hoped to photograph.


I didn't find anything very exciting but then I caught a scent on the air. Cigarette smoke. I'd hoped the hunters were all at lunch but it seems that someone was out and about. Shortly afterwards there were shots, not very close perhaps but enough to make me nervous, so I decided to head home.


It made me really cross for so many reasons. I'm quite sensitive to smoke and just being able to smell it was annoying but what I can't understand is why the wretched hunters do it while they're hunting. If my inadequate human nose can catch the odour the animals must have a much greater sense of the presence of danger and would surely get to cover. Well, perhaps it's no bad thing then, but it made me so angry. They don't even have wood craft, just shiny metal tubes to blast away with. And of course, I don't like having to watch my back in case I'm mistaken for a wild boar.

On the way back to the house I disturbed a deer lying up behind the tractor shed, just about where we plan to build the new kitchen. She took off into the woods, I hope she avoided the hunters.

pholiota squarrosa


Joker The Lurcher said...

these woods look lovely. we had some beech woods near where we used to live and they were so peaceful.

Catofstripes said...

It's great just to be able to step out into them, although we do have the joy offset by tourists peeking in through our windows from time to time.