Often when I’m out foraging, I find myself more concerned with enjoying my surroundings than collecting edibles. I often will only take a small amount of something (which is great practice for sustainable foraging btw), and leave the rest behind. As much as I am a foody, and love to cook and eat my fresh foragings, I am also a photographer.
There are some outings, where I end up taking way more photos of edibles (and not edibles) then what I actually collect. Here’s an example: See these awesome honey mushrooms in the photo below? Mmmm, fresh, young and tender honeys. So young tho, that they have not even gotten a chance to spread any of their spores. Is it worth it to harvest these mushrooms for a delicious honey mushroom soup at the cost of their own propagation through the forest? I have no idea.
I don’t know if there is a right answer to that question. It really just depends on you, the individual. In this case, I was perfectly happy taking a photo.
Here is another example of the joy of the forage not coming from the quantity of things taken, but from the experience of foraging in itself. On the same recent walk through the Stowe,VT wilderness, I came upon a log in full bloom. At first glance, I definitely thought I was looking at oyster mushrooms. But the more carefully I scrutinized the fungus, the less certain I became (never a good sign when it comes to poison). I plucked an oyster off the log, and looked it its gills. They looked just like oyster mushroom gills, only they were bright, almost neon, orange (oyster’s have white gills). I decided to take my specimen home and look at the spore print.
I believe it was an oyster, they seem to come in a 1000 different varieties just in the Green Mountains of Vermont alone. This one I found to be absolutely stunning, and think it would be a wonderful treat at the table. And that’s what’s fun about foraging. It is a forage into a moment of time. Be it 10 minutes or 10 hours, a proper foraging only requires one to wander around discovering all the little joys.
