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.
