Saturday, November 03, 2012

Beauty and Bounty

I had a hard time deciding what to call this post. Although it's mostly about the bounty we always seem to discover in the forest, I can't ever manage to ignore its beauty.

We lucked into a gorgeous afternoon -- the first without rain in several days and drove out to one of our favourite forest spots. I'd packed a lunch, so it felt very festive, a celebration of the beauty in this lingering autumn we've had.

September and October (at least the first half) were too dry for mushrooms. Then, the second half of the month had seemed too harshly wet to go out. So today, the 'Goldilocks' day seemed just right.

We didn't find a big batch, but succeeded in finding enough chanterelles to have a beautiful meal and still have a few for drying, so no complaints on that front.

The best treat of the day was seeing the salmon still heading upstream to spawn. The video is short, but indicates how feisty these fish are, despite all the miles they've already had to travel.



2 comments:

theresa said...

Agree -- fish and mushrooms are the autumn's bounty and beauty! I've been watching the pink salmon in local streams (coho are a bit later) and also picking chanterelles, their apricot funnels in the duff a kind of generous light in the damp woods. Let them both continue!
tk

hg said...

I love your description of the chanterelles! There's a poem in there, one I think you should continue...