Gone to Carolina

Life is good here in the Carolinas... I have been meaning to write about it, but I have been busy:

There is a small(ish) park with a couple miles of trails right up the street from me. I run there often, and have been noticing big, squishy mushrooms, as well as some smaller varieties, hiding out near the roots of many of the trees. Within my first 48 hours here, they had inspired me to start talking about foraging and researching mycology. Why? A fair question. And the answer: I'm not really sure. There is just something so beautiful and satisfying to me about the encounter of anything in its natural element. Why is a jungle safari neater than the zoo?

I have loved the idea of growing my own food since I was small, but foraging takes it one step further. A couple of Google searches and a few visits to mycology forums- yes, they exist- later, I learned that it just so happened that North Carolina had a bumper crop- is it still a crop if it isn't cultivated?- of wild mushrooms this year. Blame it on the rain. After the rain must come...mushrooms. Unfortunately, I also found that mushroom hunting is kind of risky business. To clarify: not the hunting itself- mushrooms are not real aggressive creatures, being plants and all, but rather, the consumption of said bounty. As I do not wish to either hallucinate, become seriously ill, or die, my dreams of gathering baskets of mushrooms and creating some delicious wild ragout have been put on hold. Every time I run in RW (the park), I still see visions of ragout, or maybe some nice pasta dish with a little rosemary...but, at least until I know what I'm getting into, I've resigned myself to heading back down the hill toward town sans dinner from the woods.

Town...the town I live in is is like a giant Central Park, only with a village- where I get to live!- embedded within. I go up every afternoon (ish) to get my mail from Pam at the post office. I like to stop by Poppy's and get some coffee from Linda when I can too. Last weekend we went up there Saturday, and I spent three hours doing the crossword in the NY Times magazine...and that was fine! Just meant our bike ride happened at 5:30 p.m. instead of 9:30 a.m., and it happened to be a beautiful evening anyway.

The day after, we woke up to head out to my favorite place yet here, Uwharrie National Forest. The place is like FernGully, but in real life. No matter what the people close to me will tell you, I am in fact a simple person. It is hard for me to feel that I lack much of anything when I have a big FernGully forest to run around in for a morning.

In terms of my business, I have made some really good connections here and will start treating patients in October in a facility and situation I am really excited about. Meanwhile I am getting forms and handouts organized, and catching up on a lot of healing and wellness related reading, remembering how much I love what I am making a career out of.

And the best part of all of this: I am here, sharing it, with my best friend.

I do imagine at some point the current overflow of goodness in my life will have to meet an ebb, but meanwhile, I will bask in feeling blessed, and hope I can share some of it with the world through the way I live. Perhaps when my good ebbs, someone else's good will flow, and they'll return the favor!

Anyway. Yesterday was a great day, capped off by an evening run before dinner. I did a few mile repeats, and then decided to walk a loop, at which point I encountered these.

Now. Lest you think I have become careless, let me elaborate. I brought them home. By the time Cliff walked in the door, home from the gym, I had laid them all out and photographed them each from several angles. Because he is wonderful, and we are still completely enamored

with one another (You're here! YOU'RE here!), a sweaty embrace preceded the wayward look at the mushrooms spread out on paper towels across the counter. Before he could even ask, I assured him I wasn't going to eat them: "I don't even have health insurance! What if I needed to go to the hospital to be... antidote-d?!? I'm not crazy." He seemed relieved. "No," I explained. "I am going to catalog them all, get someone to help me identify them, and spend the winter learning how to forage properly, so that in the spring, I'll be ready! I saw some potentially great berries and greens out there too..." He looked at me kind of quizzically and then said, "Cool! That sounds like a great project."

This response met with my approval, and I grinned back, purely, simply happy. Happy with him, happy with myself, with mushrooms and with life. Suddenly, in this moment, I had one of those funny experiences, where you are yourself, and yet you see yourself from outside yourself all at once. And, yes, funny it was. But then I saw something else, something still sweet, but non-trivial and deeply wonderful: me, in my element. And it was beautiful and satisfying. : )