Chanterelles in the pot. A rain forest needs rain to grow and thrive. Fine rain sprayed like a heavy mist to coat everything it touched in myriad sparkling droplets. When it wasn t raining, rainbows sprang up across the misty mountains and everything remained damp. After a week of travelling everything felt damp even after we d hung it out in the sun to dry, and molds began to speckle the surface of my gear.
Molds are fungi.
We looked for fungi, or at least I did. Every morning I returned with apricot colored chantarelles in my collecting pan. I cooked and ate these alone, not out of greed, but because the others regarded my finds with more than a little suspicion. I m sure Martin and Sue, both doctors back in England, were simply biding their time in the expectation that they d be called upon to rustle up some little professional sympathy at the onset of the symptoms of some untreatable Amanita phallotoxin or other. Part of me wanted to educate these ignorant Brits, but another part of me felt a little smug.