Last weekend I attended the Mendocino mushroom festival with my father
We had a good time! There were lots of very knowledgable people and information-dense displays, as well as a lot of creative booths selling their wares. A lot of the information kinda went over our heads since they would pull out all the Latin taxonomical names. Me and my dad agreed, we much prefer the common names. However I gained the understanding that the genus is useful for understanding the relatedness and characteristics of the different species.
I wish I snapped a photo of the table they had from the morning's foray, they had such a variety and little post-it notes with each of their names. They even found a amanita muscaria, one of those kinds of mushrooms. One of the booths was selling some tea made from it, and I kinda wanted to get some, but seeing as my dad was right there with me, decided not to in case he would not be happy about that. I wonder what the effects would be like, seeing as the psychoactive element is muscimol and not psilocybin, the latter of which I have experience with.
We attended a really interesting hands-on demonstration of using mushrooms as a dye. It was a spur of the moment decision, but both me and my dad thoroughly enjoyed it, seeing how they made really beautiful earth-tone colors. We decided that we wanted to give it a try, and it turns out a few of the mushrooms that grow at my parents' house are used for dying.
At the festival we found out they were going to be doing another foray the next morning at the Caspar Scales, and we decided to attend. We are not very familiar with the area so we decided to drive around and see if we could find the location, as to not need to find it in a rush in the morning. One of the hosts gave us some vague directions and we roughly followed them, when we found a parking area for a set of trails. We didn't think we were in the right location, but we decided just to walk around for a bit and explore. This was some really beautiful forest, redwoods surrounding us, their fallen needles coating the floors, small creeks lined with dense ferns on nearly every hillside. It was so fresh and quiet, in that moment I was truly at peace.
On our way out we ran into someone who was also leaving. We asked him if he knew where the Caspar Scales were and it turned out we were there! It would be useful if they had some signage saying as such. The guy was friendly and it turned out he was also a mushroomer. He showed us his haul of chanterelles and various other mushrooms before we said our goodbyes and got dinner. We went to a nice little Mayan fusion restaurant that had live music from a guitarist/singer playing some 60s classics. After stopping by a brewery on our way back, we saw an illuminated cross section of an old-growth redwood log.
On it were little markers on the tree's rings of important years. To think of all the history one being lived through. The tree was about 1800 years old before it was cut down. I wish my photo captured the true scale of it, absolutely massive. I can't imagine a tree that large, and I'm disappointed I likely never will get the chance to see one in person.
The next morning we went back to the Caspar Scales for the foray. There were about 25 people in attendance and we were led by a CalFire ranger and part-time mycologist. He took us to a spot from where we all split up and hunted for about an hour. Most people were looking for edibles, but not knowing what was edible or not, I just went around collecting, hoping to get them identified after we finished.
These were a few notable ones that I found really beautiful. The second one looked like the button mushrooms that you could get at the supermarket, and so I thought maybe could be edible, but was mistaken. I showed my collection to the leader, but his explanations used all the scientific terminology that I was not familiar with and it all went over my head, but the message was clear: none of these are edible or all that interesting.
It was nice to be able to go on it, but I would like to be a bit more educated on the terminology and species in order to properly be able to participate.
I'm sure it will all come with time
I went on a lovely walk on Monday
There was a light rain earlier in the day and the air was filled with crisp Autumn air and the smell of wet leaves. I love walking in the rain and feeling the cold raindrops crash upon my warm face, soaking into my hair and clothes, and coming home to a nice, warm supper. Unfortunately I was a bit late and didn't get to actually be rained on, but I got to better enjoy the world of vibrant color that was around me, which is a worthy trade-off.
There was a little red-tailed hawk that was sitting on a powerline, with a shaken expression on his face. Perhaps this was one of his first storms and was left tired from the gusty breeze.
There was a beautiful sycamore (I think) tree that had leaves like honey, radiating a warm, amber glow beneath them.
There was a collage of color in this one's branches, with a beautiful medley of red, orange, yellow, and green, all from one trunk.
Walks like these remind me of all the wonder that is still in this world. All the color and sensation has not left us and can be found in even the mundanity of the suburban sprawl of Sacramento.
You just have to look for it
We're having the first good Autumn rain tonight
I'm sitting at my desk at work, haven't received a single ticket since I got in. Despite what I said a few posts ago, work really isn't all that bad. A third of the time I'm left to my own devices. My relationship with my coworker has improved, turns out he was broken up with out of the blue after five years of a relationship and it really kicked him. He just had a lot of pent of frustration and I don't think he truly dislikes me. Chatting with him has been pretty fun.
We switched over to Macs for our work computers over the Summer. As much as I hate Windows, I can't understand how people genuinely enjoy MacOS. I'm constantly losing where I put windows, the dock never behaves how I would expect it to, and it seems to be totally adverse to just letting you interact with files. Since almost everything for work is web-based I pretty much live in Chrome while I'm at work.
Unfortunately all the classroom PCs are still running Windows. Every patch Tuesday I have to go around and manually update each one. How is it that the start menu takes seconds to open? I'm not even running a search, simply pressing on the Windows icon in the bottom left requires 3-5 seconds for the menu to appear, if it appears at all. I've found that if you right click it to get the abbreviated menu, it loads slightly faster, but still, what could possibly be so resource intensive that basic UI features lag.
Being on Linux for eight years now, I didn't realize how spoiled we are. Sure, software sometimes is a bit more buggy, but you can at least find solutions to fix it or work around it. We don't have to deal with desktop environments lagging when doing basic tasks. We don't have to deal with ads being baked into the operating system. We don't have to deal with Apple's obtuse design decisions (just Gnome's hehehe). I didn't realize how little basic documentation there is on Windows and MacOS targeted software. Everything requires you to contact the software vendor, or if there is documentation, it's because it's an open source project. It's made me realize that I'm not actually that good at troubleshooting software issues on other platforms, I'm just so used to things being open and transparent.
School has had me swamped, it was midterms this week and it felt like each night I was going to bed dreading the next day. I still have one major assignment looming over my head due next week, but I'm taking tonight for myself. I just need to recharge. I'm only really engaged with one class this semester and it kinda aches. Normally I get really interested in the subjects I'm learning, but none of my professors are all that engaging. I've learned I really do not enjoy relational databases. I'll be signing up for next semester's classes soon and I hope it's going to be more interesting for me.
I've been binging through my second watching of Better Call Saul. I can't put into words the pure beauty of that show, the story-telling is second to none and the cinematography has me drooling. At least once every episode I have to pause and just stare in amazement at the beauty of a shot. Something about the overall tone of the show is really resonating with me, that sort of passive discomfort and tension as I come to find a new balance in my life. Some days are easier than others, but I just find myself stressed more than I was before.
I hope the rain will wash it away
The Death card signals that one major phase in your life is ending, and a new one is going to start. You just need to close one door, so the new one will open. The past needs to be placed behind you, so you can focus your energy on what is ahead of you.
My dog died and I broke up with Maria
Theo was a good dog. Although he was not my first dog, he spent much of the most formative years of my life with me. He accompanied me on so many adventures, sat by my side during some of the hardest moments, and was always put a smile on my face. He will always hold a special place in my heart.
My parents and I got together the night he had to be put down and we buried him the next day. There wasn't a dry eye and even typing it out now I feel the water well up behind mine. It was all so sudden, he was acting like always had, until he stopped eating for a few days, and then on the last day vomited up blood and we knew something was serious. It turns out he had a massive tumor on his spleen. Even if it was operated on, it would only give him a few more weeks at most. He was about twelve years old, and we did our best to give him the best life we could. I just wish I had the chance to say goodbye to him.
When Maria's friend was in town, then next weekend, we did a tarot reading. Tarot readings have always rung true for me. I try not to do a reading unless I have something major on my mind, not liking to play with powers I don't understand unless I have a very good reason. In my spread I got the card of death, a card which implies there is a major change will occur. I do not remember the other cards I got, but I remember one including the phrase "buyer's remorse". Maria and I had been broken up for one night the previous week, I was so sure that that was finally going to be the end, but she promised she would change and we would work through everything. I took her back and it felt like things were going to be ok, but in the back of my mind there was a voice that said I was making a mistake. When I read the two cards I knew exactly what it was telling me: Maria and I's relationship was as good as dead.
Still, I held out hope. Maria is a great girl, and I don't want to drag her (pseudonymous) name through the mud, but there were problems with us. I was scared to make her mad, and she was quick to anger. I held back so much instead of being honest because it felt like it was the right thing to do for her. I should have learned that lesson with my first relationship, but I guess not, as it came to the same fate. As much as I could go on and dissect everything, I just want to focus on the future.
I do feel like there's something I've found again inside me, that sort of spark of inspiration. I feel more motivated to do things, to make plans, to start back up on projects. I finally the made the panel for my window manager update at a reasonable refresh rate, instead of once every 0.1 seconds, after who knows how many years. Still there are times where something feels wrong, or reminds me of the past and that bit of pain creeps in. It doesn't help that we've seen each other a few times since it happened. I have told her I need distance, but she ends up convincing me to talk to her, and I feel bad saying no. It feels weird, the paradigm of our relationship has totally changed but we still interact. I wasn't responding for a few days to create some distance. I also got out of town for a couple days.
My parents had rented an AirBNB in Fort Bragg for a weekend. We really liked the town, very homey but had a lot of things to do. I think they'll be moving up their sometime in the next few years unless something at their current house really changes. They've just had so many issues there and I think they want something a bit more coastal, in terms of weather and sensibilities.
I'm stepping into a new chapter
For the past few months I've been driving a 2015 Toyota Pius V
gate.io france, I took my mom's car. My old Saab 9-5 probably would have made the trip, but it would have easily been $100 more in gas. Plus, frankly, the 9-5 scared me every time I drove it. The now nearly twenty year-old plastic had been slowly breaking off piece by piece, the serpentine belt was due for a change, the front passenger-side tire was slowly leaking air. Every time I got in the thing I wondered if it was going to be the last. So taking the Prius just made me feel a lot safer. During the trip I ended up falling in love with it.
Something about it just clicked after the first hundred miles or so. I used to hate driving it, panged by the poor visibility, slow acceleration, and the general alien feel compared to all the other cars I had driven. It turns out when you properly adjust the seat the visibility issue mostly goes away in the V model. I test drove a traditional hatchback design and the rear-view mirror was as good as useless. The slow acceleration is not present at low speeds, due to the high torque on the electric motors, and it's pretty zippy when you put it into power mode. Once I got used to it, the alien feeling disappeared. I realized it wasn't a traditional car, and I shouldn't think of it as such. It was an efficiency powerhouse and should be treated as such.
Hybrids just make sense. Internal combustion engines are bad at being efficient at low speeds, electric motors are bad at being efficient at high speeds, why not get the best of both worlds and have both and use them when it makes sense. I regularly get 40+ MPG on most trips I take and it only takes ~$35 to fill it up when I do need to refuel.
The real game changer was when I mastered the regenerative braking.
When you "shift" to the B option, you no longer coast, you slowly decelerate and charge the electric battery. This is perfect for going down moderate hills, getting on the off-ramp, or going through moderate to heavy traffic. It feels just like shifting to a lower gear with a traditional gearbox, except for the lack of increased acceleration. Once you get used to it, it becomes second nature to tap down on the shifter whenever it's needed and shift back to the normal drive mode whenever it's not.
Not to mention that these things are bulletproof. You see them going for hundreds of thousands of miles without a lick of maintenance. It's an entirely belt-less system so on the off chance something does go wrong on them, you just have to undo a few bolts and unplug a couple of connectors.
My only gripe is that I wish it was a bit dumber. I don't like it constantly nagging me about leaving the door open if it's in drive, or honking the horn whenever it thinks you locked the key inside it, even though the key is in your pocket and you just used the button on the door instead of the fob. Generally I wish it just had a traditional, twist key ignition instead of a push to start, but it is nice not having to fumble with anything when you get in and out.
It's a hell of a lot nicer than my dad's new Ford Maverick hybrid. That thing feels like a confused, puebescent teenager. It tells you it's a truck but it drives like a horribly lifted SUV, probably because it is sharing a body with a Ford Escape. Every corner feels like you're about to tip over, and it lulls you into thinking it's a lot lighter than it is, which you only realize when you need to come to a stop. Plus all the nannies suck, the pre-collision assist often mistakes slight hills as cars and ignores actual cars that you might hit. I do not care for carplay, but I failed to get their built in bluetooth to actually work so was stuck using it.
I can just imagine my dream car having a slightly beefier electric motor to get up to 25 MPH and then a 1.8 Turbo charged 4-banger for anything above that.And put it in a wagon, the boxier the better
After Working at the store I got a help desk support job at a local community college.
Most of my time there has been pretty confusing. I thought I would be met with some form of training as to how everything was generally structured, but have had to piece that together bit by bit. Expectations are never set out and after the semi-recent buyout of the colllege by a company that's attempting to build an online college platform (and frankly failing), the leadership, or lack their of, is flailing. Most nights I have a set of tasks to accomplish involving running updates or moving staff PCs and furniture around, but then am simultaneously supposed to be monitoring submitted tickets, as well as the various tech support chats in their proprietary learning platform, which is little more than a chat app than anything, and a bad one at that. I have notifications enabled on my phone, which works decently well with the submitted support tickets, but awful on their platform. When I am able to more actively respond to support requests, there's little more that I can do besides notifying someone higher up and pray they actually respond. The worst offender of this is Tom, who is the person I'm told to directly address with issues like these, but then rarely does, or finds issues with whatever attempts I made. Additionally since he's in Texas, he's long been asleep by the time I do send in requests. My main coworker Kai, is friendly but doesn't really like me. He puts on a friendly face, but I see the way he does the same with the students. Little comments here and there lets the mask slip.
The worst thing we have to deal with are these mobile hotspots with students with poor internet. Somehow these things fail at an alarming rate and there's little more we can do than ship out a replacement, which I can't controll. In fact I have no clue who manages them and whenever I bring it to Kai he just gets frustrated. Most of the time after I run through the procedural reboots and checking of updates, they stop responding to my messages and the ticket magically gets dealt with in the morning by Alex. I've only met him a couple of times, but he seems to take this job so seriously to the detrement to his mental well being. I don't want to throw it all on him, but he's the only one that gets things done when it comes to hotspots.
It doesn't help that our students, or at least the ones that send in requests, are frankly severly unskilled. I don't want to be mean, but when they fail to be able to send a coherent message in a support request, it seriously makes me question their ability to succeed to any amount of academic rigor. Some of them do seem to have some ability, but would be much better off at a traditional community college. The way the company is set up seems to be predatory, targeting low income students with the promise of a future career, while maintaining a tuition just below what would be covered by a Pell grant, so that there's little actual cost to the student. And at the end of it all, being only an associates degree, from a no-name, for-profit, online school, I doubt will carry much actual return on investment, something that they could have gotten from a local community college.
I guess I just gotta scroll indeed again and tough it out through it all.
Do you know what grinds my gears? When shows with a large fan-base start their seasons off with a whole episode of "remember these characters"?
I've started watching the show "The Boys", which started its second season with a solid chunk of the first episode just with reminding the audience how the main characters of the show were a tight-nit bunch that bumped heads but at the end of the day would have each other's backs. It certainly got the story started off quickly enough but it was noticeable as someone who is watching it without the gap in time between seasons. With "Stranger Things" season four it felt like the story didn't start until the third episode, which I watched with the gap, and even then it felt unwarranted. Now that seasons of big shows are getting shorter and shorter it is frustrating that anything would be cut in order to stuff in more "memberberries".
It just feels cheap and lazy
I went on a trip this weekend.
Since I was a young boy I wanted to go out, build shelters, and survive off only my own hands. I have a vivid memory of begging my parents to let me camp out overnight in the woods near my school when I was six. As I've grown older it's stuck with me, strengthened by all those years at summer camp, hiking, backpacking, learning valuable skills for being self reliant.
Some time around when I got my first job, I looked up "land" on ebay to find that there were a number of affordable listings, still out of my budget, but only just nearly out of reach. Later on when I was working for my parents, I got to experience the joy of working with my hands and improving land. The eudaimonic rush of sitting down after a hard day of work and seeing all of what I had accomplished.
This summer I've discovered the wonders of reclaimed wood. Being able to take what was once mere trash and repurposing it into something useful once again. Sawing through pallets and scavenging the piles of trash that line the streets for sections of plywood or half-rotted 2x4s fills me with joy and lights that spark of creativity within me. I've built a couple planter boxes and used parts for my new desk, but it has made me ache to build something larger, a structure of some sort.
A few weeks ago on a whim, I looked up "land" once again on ebay and was met with the realization that I was fully capable of affording a small acre plot in a beautiful remote part of north-eastern California. I impulsively bid on one of the numerous auctions and won. Within a few days this distant dream suddenly was tangible.
Yesterday was my first time driving up to finally see it and get started. I packed just about every tool I could possibly need and six deconstructed pallets, along with camping supplies and headed off on my grand journey. The five and a half hour drive took me through the beautiful landscape of northern California, through winding mountain passes, over roaring rivers, past towns whose population size would drop from the triple, to the double, to the single digits. Periodically I'd put on a Marty Robbins' cowboy ballad as I rode into my new west.
Finally I had arrived down the gravel road to the coordinates and bore witness to the beauty of my humble lot that I had dreamed of. A neighbor spotted me from his porch and helped me to find it, as the lot markers had long rusted away or been damaged by the snow. Over the course of our conversation he mentioned how a lot of people had done as I did, only to turn back when they made the realization that they couldn't start anything without the required septic and well systems installed. This sounded odd to me as my reading through of the bylaws made no mention of such a requirement. Once he returned to his home I pulled up the property owners association website once again and realized that I had made a mistake. The "Unit 3" marker was not the same as "Lot 3" label, and that lot 3 was part of the subdivided unit 3 of the property owners association, which came with a long list of required permits and rules I would be subject to in order to build anything as simple as a fence. As I read each line, my plans were smashed one by one through my head. I found myself once again surrounded by the system I had traveled so far in order to escape.
I cried in my car for a while, before accepting my fate and deciding to make the most of what I could with the night. I sat around the small fire I had built, the tendrils of impermanence tearing deep to my soul. I found myself scrolling through listings once again, waiting for each page to load over the single bar of signal, that fire within me still smoldering through the bucket of water that was poured upon it.
This was a setback, but not one I can't recover from. I'm able to back out of the deal and will only be out $200, not my most costly mistake. I'll keep looking and saving, but I'm not giving up on this dream, and not wasting my youth to live a slave to a system I so despise.
I will have my dream, and it will be beautiful.
Let me start off with the, unfortunately mandatory, throat clearing.
I am not nor have I ever been a fan of Donald Trump. I am not conservative nor a member of any Republican organizations. I got my political origins as a left-Democrat, became a hardcore communist through much of my teenage years, and now am now largely politically homeless, with no firm ideology. Though, I am very critical of both parties, I am often more critical of the left, because I want it to be better.
That being said, When I heard the guilty verdict on Donald Trump's first trial, my stomach dropped, and when I saw the celebrations by Liberals, it sank further. This is a clear political prosecution, why else would would they have waited three whole years until the next election for them to hold this trial? Why else would a misdemeanor be escalated to a felony using a roundabout interpretation of the law, counting the same crime as two separate ones? Now the Democrats, and the media outlets loyal to them, revel in their adding the "convicted felon" moniker whenever possible following the conviction. With the divisive times we are living in, Donald Trump could never get a fair jury trial, from either side.
It's evident this did not have a major impact on the popularity of Trump, it's still the case that, as of June 18th Biden and Trump are neck and neck, with Trump leading in key swing states. Trump's constituents have a distrust in the system and this only strengthens their prior opinion. What worries me is what comes next, of which I can only see a few outcomes:
#1, Biden wins
If Biden wins, a major section of the Republican party will say the election was fraudulent or rigged in some manner, as it did with the 2020 election. The flames of deep political divisiveness will be stoked yet again and the can of discontent will be kicked down the road, to hopefully another Trump campaign in 2028. I say hopefully because I worry of what figure will fill the void of Trump's exit from politics. While there are moderate conservatives who are a part of the Trump movement, a major faction of the MAGA movement is what was referred to until recently as the alt-right, who have already adopted a by-any-means-necessary mindset. It wouldn't take much for another charismatic leader to rise, one that may not be as moderate as Trump. At the end of the day Trump's first term didn't differ much from the conservative status quo, with the exception of the lack of starting any new wars. A new representative of this ever-growing political cleavage could lean into the xenophobia, as did Trump in 2016. This likely would spark heightened targeting of "domestic terrorism", the needs of Americans will continue to not be met, tensions will build, and the stop-watch towards the beginning of the second American civil war will creep ever-closer.
#2, Trump wins and is back for blood.
Trump never prosecuted Clinton, as he had promised in his campaign, which is probably a good thing. This time however, he has precedent of prosecuting political rivals on his side, he too will be able to dig up dirt on either Biden or other DNC operatives, and prosecute them. This will throw gas on the flames, the wolf-calling of the Democrats will cause this to fall on deaf ears, and when it is listened to, people will point to Trumps trial. Politics will cease to hold up the veil of trying to represent people, merely trying to beat out the opposition through law-fare, things will continue to get worse, people will be jailed and pardoned from one administration to the next, particular political allegiances will be de-facto criminalized, and we will live in a increasingly authoritarian society.
#3, Trump wins, and does the same thing he did in his first term.
He will continue to make outlandish statements, he might make a few executive orders that makes life harder in America for a handful of marginalized identities, but nothing will fundamentally change. The bad actors that stick around from administration to administration will continue to push the agenda of the wealthy elite. We will fund coups overseas, further gut the middle class, push opiates onto the poor, and allow for controlled opposition. People will continue in their radicalization or apathy until there is a revolution, either political or bloody.
There are no good outcomes.
The weaponization of the courts will further put into question the justice of our legal system. "Is the conviction fair, or was it because of the political leanings of the judge?" will become a question that will continue to be raised again and again. While I am not one to aggrandize the perfection of the American system of government, separating the judicial branch was done for a reason. Elections ought to be decided by the populace, not by lawsuits and electioneering.
And before anyone says "But Hunter Biden was also found guilty"
This was also a political plot, being able to point to Hunter's conviction does nothing but serve as a justification of Trumps. Let's not forget that he was going to get a "sweetheart" deal from the Department of Justice until the judge said anything. I'll be surprised if Hunter ever sees more than a few days behind bars in a cushy jail, if he even gets that.
I am deeply worried for the future of this country and the conviction of Donald Trump sets a sickening precedent of political prosecution.
I've tried just about every alternative browser under the sun
The options for viable web-browsers seems to shrink more and more every year, that is if you don't count chromium spin-offs. Time after time I find myself itching for something a bit more lean, something with a different vision for how one should interact with the web. However, each time I would find myself making my way back to firefox, because nothing rivaled it's mix of speed and feature-set, occasionally running chromium for those one-off problematic sites.
I've come to accept that I am going to have to run something relatively mainstream for my primary web-browser, but have found a gap that these alternatives can occupy: surfing small websites. I'm subscribed to indieseek.xyz's new listing feed and normally start from there in my rss feed reader. Then I have it set to open up pages in one of these alternative browsers, and surf away from there, being linked from page to page all over the independent web. Before I would use qutebrowser, but have found that I'm too trained to traditional, single-modal web-browsers and would forget to enter insert mode whenever typing in a text field. Though their type-to-follow link feature is really cool and wish other browsers had it. I've found that badwolf has been perfect for my use-case.
Saying it is lightweight is putting it too mildly, it doesn't even have search by default, but since I merely follow links, that isn't a feature I need. It has javascript disabled by default, which hasn't been an issue for small sites, and if it ever does, there is an easy toggle-button right at the top. In fact it's made the occasional link to the mainstream web quite nice, due to ads not being able to load. Also due to its small feature-set it loads nearly instantly, even on my moto g4 play running postmarket OS. It's no replacement for a full-featured browser, but it's the perfect blog reader.
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Last weekend me and my father went morel hunting!
It being our first time we went with a group, led by a charismatic 30-something wielding a wooden staff with a carved morel at the top. We all met up at a trailhead in the Sly Park area, and then continued up the road to one of the spots our fearless leader had picked out.
He told us to look for a few things
- Look in areas ~1000 ft under the snow melt line
- Look in areas that had some recent burn, within the past few years
- Look under conifers, except cedars
- Look around saplings that are less than 2 ft tall
- Look in places with a layer of old needles covering the ground
- Look in places with damp soil
- Look for other fungi growing in the area, specifically violet cups because they like similar areas
When we arrived at our first location, he pointed out a few areas of interest, and then had us scatter and begin looking. It took about 20 minutes until they found the first one, and everyone was called up to see it. The leader was sure to stand next to it, but not point directly to it, in order for us to see how difficult it is to spot them. Sure enough it was just a little bump in the ground that took a few seconds to find, even when you were staring right at it. We searched for another 45 minutes in the area and were on our way back to the cars when someone in the group found another couple, though they were the only ones.
We took a little break for lunch, which I regretfully didn't bring, but it gave the leader a chance to show off the fungi to look out for.
This is the violet cup that he said often grow right next to morels.
I forget the name he called this one, but he said they are an indicator that you are in the right general area, but to look under a different tree.
Then we set off for our second location. Almost immediately someone found a small grouping as we made our way down the steep hillside. For the first hour or so me and my father didn't find anything, just zig-zagging back and forth. This area was a lot more in line with what he described than the first. As we made our way down we could hear little excited yelps of "Found one", which kept us motivated. Eventually we came across a little section that looked ripe and away from the other spots the rest of the group had already trodden through. I saw a little bundle of young firs, and just had a strong feeling deep in my gut I'd find something there. Sure enough as I pushed away a small branch I looked down and right there before me was my first find of the day.
It was a small grouping of two, but it threw gas on the fire that was our hunt. We combed through the area, finding one every five minutes or so. Eventually we reached the end of the little section of woods and decided we were happy with our little haul of five beautiful morels. We made the trek back up the hill, back through the little patch hoping we missed one, though to no avail. We were both pretty tired and hungry, and decided to call it a day, though the rest of the group headed to another final location.
This was really a wonderful experience and I'm excited to do it more often, though it is almost the end of the season this year. I love being outdoors, but having a purpose behind it makes it all the better. I remember in a talk or podcast episode, the bigfooter Cliff Barackman saying something along the lines of, "Even if you don't find anything, bigfooting gives you a purpose for being outside". While morels are a lot easier to find than elusive apes, it's a similar rush, an eagerness to explore with purpose.