Nature bites back.

     This afternoon, among the red firs, I was breaking a dead branch that was in my way. Tougher than I expected, it kinda blew up in my face, dealing me a good whack across the bridge of my nose. After the pain subsided, I noticed red in my peripheral vision, where I'd been struck. Touche', Madame Nature, touche'. That little fucker did not want to stop bleeding.

     I have mastered the art of washing my hands with a cup of water, doing what bears are known for doing...in the woods, and have found just the right position for sleeping in my tent so that I don't wake up feeling like Joe Fraser had his way with my kidneys.
     Among the phrases I have learned in Lao are:
   "Hello", "Thank you very much", and "Go pick mushrooms, asshole."
  A few nights ago, lamenting the absence of a blackjack game at the noodle house, my picking partner, Ross(one of the best poker players west of the Rockies), talked me into an evening at the Kla-Mo-Ya Casino, an hour south. Cooperatively owned by the Klamath, Modoc and Yahooskin Tribes, it's slots and blackjack. "We'll kill a couple hours and be home around  midnight." We got there around 9 and I foresaw the next couple hours moving like molasses in January. I moseyed over to the six deck 21 table, cuz it's such a natural, everyday thing for me. Know what I mean? Do it all the time. Planed myself in a stool, planned to blow $100, and bought $50 in chips to start. I got about $40 ahead, lost it, and then lost that original $50, as my head and my head and I discussed how we'd just cut our losses, be wise and stop after the $100 was gone. So I bought a second $50 in chips, and proceeded to watch it dissipate. At midnight, I was not at all ready to leave, had to get back the money the casino stole from my. And then I started to come back. Well now I might as well stick around and see if I work my way back up to even. And then stop, just break even. At this point, I am well aware of the hepatitis-like infection draping itself across my brain - managable, with the potential for becoming devastating, and, either way, there for life. I can taste it, each winning hand putting my dopamine receptors on cruise-control. But breaking even just won't be fun, nothing to talk about, no story to tell. Maybe just get like 10 or 15 ahead. Here we are, 15 ahead, now 30, oops back down to 20 ahead. I got $47 ahead, asked the casino if I could borrow their crow-bar, and had a trucker from Coachella help pry me from the table. I sweartagod, it was effing hard to walk away from that damn table and call it a night. I will forever be more understanding of all addiction. Judge not.
   Here're some Red King Boletes a found today. Grilled 'em up Italian style-O.oil, salt and pepper. Probably would've been better with some Hoisin. They were a lot prettier before a day of bouncing around with dirt-covered Matsutake.

Bleeding Hydnellum:

Other treats:

Too hot for mushroom

In my first week, I saw a chipmunk poached at our camp and was later served it's liver later, eaten roasted grubs and a variety of condiments containing untold amounts of MSG. I was also instructed by some local fellas that if you're ever in trouble, fire three evenly spaced shots, like BOOM one thousand BOOM one thousand, etc. Then wait, and do it again til you here some single shots, cuz that's someone trying to mark your position, and when you hear single shots, fire a single shot in response to help them zero in on your location. That's why you ALWAYS carry at LEAST 50 rounds...assuming you don't have a bad run-in with Ol'Fuckis.
     "Ol'Fuckis. You don't know 'bout Ol'Fuckis? He don't know bout Ol'Fuckis. Well, you know, when it's about the middle of January and the snow's about waist deep and you're out checking your trap-line. And then you fall on your face and drop your rifle, you get up to your hands and knees and look in ahead of you to see a big 'ol mountain lion sittin' on that boulder about 50' away, what do you say?? OH FUCK!"
     I haven't run into Ol'Fuckis yet, not in OR anyway but the damn temp is up to the mid 80s and the mushrooms like nights below freezing and days in the 60s. So lots of wormy mushrooms out there.
     Below is a picture of my new lover.

These photos take too damn long to upload.
I'm not wild about the name of my blog and am taking submissions for possible alternatives, such as The Fungal West, Fungal Infection, My Life is Better than Yours, etc.

In Bend for yoga(pun intended), chit-chat, comfy internet

There we go, finally fumbling through this process of publicizing my life on the ether. I've been in Oregon for 23 days now, have trekked all over the high desert forests of the Deschutes region, made about $800 bucks picking and selling wild Matsutake mushrooms and am experiencing firsthand the ugly vagaries of the international mushroom market. In my time here, the price for which we've been able to sell our premium quality mushrooms(#1's) has plunged from $22/lb. to $2/lb. Is it supply and demand from the Japanese end of things? Are the middleman buying companies waiting to see just how little money people are willing to be paid for hard work? I suspect both and more.

     It's been one hell of an experience from the jump. The evening that Ross, my partner and sensei, and I rolled into Chemult(Labor Day), he introduced me to his friends Bieng, Woong and Kong. He slept in his friends' hut/noodle house and I pitched my beloved, new tent outside. The campground is on private land and is only used as such for these two months of Matsutake season. Pumice makes up a large portion of the local soil composition and the camp's owner has a pumice mine right next to the camp. The driveway through the camp is covered with pumice gravel which is great because it's not just dirt dust being kicked up by every breeze and vehicle but...it's pumice, so it's constantly being ground down by shoes and car tires and it's dry as hell around here, so it gets reeeeeal dusty, all over again.

   Before bed, I went for a walk uphill from the camp, toward the mine, where it's logged and the view of the sky is wide. The sky was clear and moonless, in starry ecstasy. With a side of meteors.

     I'd read and heard about occasional, small outbursts of violence among the pickers and how there are plenty of guns around. On the first or second day of legal picking(opening day was the day after Labor Day, and yes, illegal, pre-season picking and buying does take place. Judge not.) I was chatting with Kong at his buying station and suddenly POP. Conversations paused, eyes looked sideways, minds saying "I don't even want to know." Then POP again. Quiet, and chats resumed. Moment later, I walked back to my campsite and passed where the shots came from. One man was walking away from a pickup truck, while on the other side of the truck, two men were holding a third man back, as the third yelled "You don't know who you fuckin' wit'!"  At my site, I sat by the fire and, dying to know what happened, asked my friend Da what happened. He said "Cambodian people. None of my business." Our neighbor, young Mu,  said "argument." I'll say. I'd be lying if I said I was anything less than thrilled by the presence of gun-play.

    Another night, I was making dinner around our fire, and Dana the camp owner was hangin' with us for a moment and said to me "Don't forget to feed Sal. Y'all tell him about Sal."  Turns out a few years back a guy named Sal was staying right about where we are. He had a girlfriend in the mushroom picker camp and when his wife found out, she drove up here and stabbed him to death. "She cut'im up," they told me. Damn. So, apparently, I've got horny ghosts to consider when preparing dinner.

My first legal kill. About 3" long, this solid #1 was tucked between the moss in the picture and a dead branch. Picked my second day, 9/9, I don't even remember where we were. It's probably made it's way into and out of a few Japanese digestive tracts at this point. Since then, I've found bigger, better #1s.