Epic Flail

Sometimes it just doesn’t pay to put on clean clothes when on a farm. Be it Murphy’s Law, or simply an “it figures” moment, freshly laundered clothes and daily chores don’t go together well.

The other day I wanted enough mushrooms to add to the spaghetti I was planning for dinner. I didn’t need a whole bucket full, but would certainly keep picking if conditions showed an abundance in a relatively small area. It has happened before.

This time, I was wearing my rain clothes and Muck boots because it was certainly wet out there. The evening chores needed to be done across the river before I could sneak in a little mushroom time. The main herd was doled out their ration of hay and Mike drove as close as he could to a known mushroom spot just up from the base of the hill.

It was a slippery ride along the base of the hill with the Gator in 4-wheel drive but Mike had gotten pretty close before shutting it off. I grabbed my bucket and trooped up the hill through dense vegetation thus avoiding the steep, slippery skid road. The skid road had been thick with dust just a few weeks ago, but now with the rain has turned the dust into a slick, oozy pathway several inches thick.

Anxious to get mushrooms, I poked around the big Douglas Fir trees. Mike had not made it up the hill as fast as  I did and was calling out directions from his vantage point about 100 feet below me. There were two old roads that ran crossways across the hill, they always had produced in the past but I wasn’t sure if we were far enough into the season for them to show up. While Mike and I were calling back and forth, the dogs were scampering around between us. I had gotten enough mushrooms for a meal about the time that Mike said that it was getting dark and I needed to start down.

Down was a lot slicker than going up, I had to hang onto my bucket with one hand and ferns, vine maple or buck brush to keep from tumbling down the hill. I had to go around a very big Douglas fir, I had two choices, to the right of the tree looked like a bluff of about four feet and off to the right was next to the steep skid road/slime path. I grabbed tight to a branch from a tender large-leaf maple seedling and swung my leg around the tree in an effort to miss the slick road. I miss-judged the distance by a fraction and put my foot down on the edge of the slippery surface.

The next moment was a slow-motion, arm-flailing, legs akimbo, not-so-graceful, slip and slide right to the middle of the skid road. My bucket was dislodged from my hand and while I continued a slow mudslide down the hill, my bucket bounced along doing roll, after roll, after roll, flinging the golden Chanterelles with each revolution. I was able to grab just a couple of the wayward mushrooms as I slide down the hill and stuffed them into a pocket.

Mike grabbed the bucket as it was bouncing by, but it was empty. Shortly after he saw me sliding his way and pronounced an end to the hunting for the day. I emptied my pocket when I peeled off my clothes before going into the house. Of course,  I washed up those beaten up mushrooms and ate them for dinner. It was the least I could do after the journey they had.

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