The Wild Dance
A bit about our fall mushroom bonanza; Finding nature regardless of context; My take on Hungarian Goulash - a recipe share
(And the flowers say to me: we are in this together)
Oh ancient powers of the Earth,
of the Unknown
Totality of cosmos
Stardust lamp-light.
May I come to know you.
May I come to know myself.
Having arrived at the threshold of my being,
Your Being,
May I release all grasping to the wisdom display,
The elemental dance of Life.
May I observe quantumly
the perfection inherent.
Ancient powers, primordial awakenings,
Remind me who you are.
Who we are.
-EC Liles
We’ve come back from Lost Lake with jars full of dried mushrooms, handfuls of cedar sprays, a few trout already in our bellies, and a deep sense of renewal. It rained quite heavily the weekend after the fall equinox, and within a matter of days all the mushrooms we were hoping to find popped up abundantly, including boletes that grew so large I kept exclaiming out loud, “Oh my! Look at you!” The honey mushroom fruiting (Armillaria mellea) was, to date, the largest I have ever been present for in any woods. The Amanitas did not disappoint - the yellow-orange variety of Amanita muscaria is what comes up at Lost Lake, and overnight the entire area was populated; alongside other Amanitas such as the exquisite and deadly Destroying Angel. We had fun collecting mushrooms we didn’t know and taking spore print samples so we could more easily identify them. A few of the new mushrooms we met were Lactarius deliciosa - a bright orange milk-cap that exudes an orange latex when cut or broken; the jewel-like Scarlet Waxy Cap; the Bearded Milk-Cap (another Lactarius species that exudes a white latex); and a handful of different boletes. One of the reasons we like to take spore prints is that just like with plants, to the untrained or unfamiliar eye certain mushrooms can look similar. As an herbalist, even in the dark I can easily tell Yarrow apart from Queen Anne’s Lace, apart from Water Hemlock (considered one of these most poisonous plants on earth) - but I have received photos from friends asking me if one was the other; not a mix-up I would recommend making, especially if you’re hoping for some yarrow you can chew up to staunch a bleeding wound. Or in the case of Queen Anne’s Lace and Water Hemlock, consuming the root - which for the former is a tiny little carrot, and the latter is a root full of chemicals powerful enough to usher in your transition.
It’s a matter of sensory sensitization - once you meet and know a plant, it’s easy to recognize them even when they are growing in different environments and expressing slightly different characteristics. This is true for mushrooms as well - something I noted David Arora emphasized about honey mushrooms in his comprehensive field-guide “Mushrooms Demystified.” He made the point that honey mushrooms in one location can, superficially, appear differently than ones in another - and listed the outstanding characteristics, including the light, yellow-white spores, the pithy stem, their growing in clusters on wood, and specific features of the cap and veil, that a beginning mushroom hunter should be well aware of before consuming any. As many mushroom hunters I’m sure can attest, there is nothing worse than eating something you felt quite sure about, only to decide to research “lookalikes” and see pictures that get your heart thumping in worry. When it comes to mushrooms, “quite sure” is just not as good as unequivocally certain. There’s only a handful of truly deadly mushrooms in the world, just like plants - and knowing who they are is, I think, an excellent priority for anyone wanting to eat of the wild.
Taking a spore print is one of the ways to more clearly define the mushroom in question, and we saw for ourselves the importance of this. At the end of the mushroom bloom, Victor and I took our favorite four-mile hike circling from Lost Lake proper, down to the Pine River, and up along a high and lengthy ridge wending through birch, cedar, and hemlock groves. As usual I wore my basket backpack, and we collected a handful of species we didn’t know. One of the mushrooms we picked was a beautiful purple-tinged variety with light colored gills. We were both “quite sure” it was a bluewit, a lovely fall edible we had gathered and eaten once before (after taking a spore print and confirming all the features). We didn’t find any other assumed bluewits in the area, which I thought was a little odd - however we didn’t go that far off trail. That evening I cut off the stem and placed the cap face-down on paper with a bowl over it. By the morning, the mushroom had dropped its brown spores, revealing itself as definitely not a bluewit, which has light pinkish spores. It is a bit sobering to realize that a mushroom I am leaning towards eating is, by all accounts, not the mushroom I think it is - and it affirms our practice of taking spore prints, alongside verifying all the other distinctive characteristics. If a mushroom does not have any poisonous lookalikes, it is of course a lot easier to feel comfortable in sampling - but when there is gastrointestinal distress or worse as a potential in a fungal mix-up, I want to be completely sure. I appreciate that Arora makes the difference between an “experienced” and a “knowledgeable” mushroom hunter - pointing out that just because someone is experienced, does not mean they are knowledgable. He encourages the beginner to learn from a knowledgeable mycophile, someone who not only can recognize edible mushrooms, but is able to identify the toxic lookalikes as well.
For us, there is hardly anything as satisfying as walking out into the woods and gathering something we can eat - and not only something that nourishes, but in the case of many mushrooms including honey mushrooms, offers neuro-protective and neuro-regenerative compounds, enhances the body’s immune response, and positively influences cellular processes. While it can be a bit tedious to take spore prints and use identification keys, the result is greater knowledge and confidence - two things alone that enhance our experience. Add to that, the end result of an incredible meal (for us it was a dutch oven whole chicken, served over hand-harvested, hard parched wild rice, with a slew of sautéed honey and oyster mushrooms), and the feeling of health, wealth, and connection with the non-human world grows exponentially.
Even just two and half weeks after the equinox, loss of daylight is pretty noticeable. Are you feeling it too? The yang energy is truly ebbing now, giving way to the growing darkness. The star-time.
The transition between the woods and the civilized world often seems to necessitate an adjustment to how I access inspiration. It’s not that there isn’t any to be found within four walls, but that out in the wildness my apertures are just so open. In the wild places, it seems that everything I look at is offering me a teaching of some sort. Sitting here on a bed, in a room lit with ample electricity, the detritus of life lived on the move is spread around me. Books (books and more books), instruments, computers, headphones, papers, drums, yoga mats, laundry, jars of herbs, mushrooms, mail, feathers, a backpack, a jar of wild spring water, my box of essences, and the other warm body I share my life with (Victor). All of these things (and person) are precious to me (the person infinitely so). All of these things (and person) are full of their own teachings and wisdom. Yet, as I sat down to begin this week’s issue, the quality of inspiration I felt to stream a flow of words worthy of sharing seemed dimmed, as compared to how it was while in our canvas walled tent with the forest all around.
Sitting and looking at a blank screen, I was reminded of the wisdom shared by my friend and seasoned writer
. In reference to writer’s block, she said that it is us blocking what wants to come through. An extremely helpful reminder to not try to force the words, but instead find the focus that allows the effortless stream to return. I tuned in with myself to see how I was feeling, as a feeling of overwhelm or frustration (or something worse) would let me know that it was time to put the writing aside and go do something else, shift my focus to another subject entirely. Yet, when I looked inward, all I saw was a clear present sense of: Ready to go. Open to inspiration. No concern it wouldn’t come. No worry that I wouldn’t have something to write about. Just a present, open focus and feeling of contentment. Seeing that, I knew I was on track and just needed to get the juices flowing. Thinking back into our experience at Lost Lake wasn’t giving me the boost that I wanted.(Though remembering the skunk that had visited our camp nightly, sniffing around, rustling the leaves, did bring a smile to my face and a slight whiff of inspiration. A fleeting spark. Leaving in its afterimage my open focus. Ready, spacious, waiting for something else.)
I decided to do some tuning, so I put on my headphones and listened to the Connection Thought Bath from last week. I felt really good after that, and got excited thinking I was now “ready” to write. I looked at my list of subjects I thought I wanted to write about, but still nothing jumped out at me. So I started to write about my present moment experience.
And here we are.
The more I described what was happening to me, the clearer it dawned. The reason I wasn’t feeling the same kind of inspiration as I did while at Lost Lake, was because I was reacquainting myself with the civilized world, and tapping into an entirely different elemental configuration. Getting used to sleeping on a regular mattress, keeping warm thanks to central heating rather than a wood stove, and taking hot showers rather than icy dips in the lake. I was waking to the muffled quiet of living within insulated walls, and coming back into harmony and balance with an internet connection available 24/7. I was going in and out of stores, eating at restaurants, walking on carpet, and doing my laundry. The entire focus of my daily life experience had shifted tremendously, and I was in the process of reorientation. Even though I had gone on a walk and found a feeling of reconnection; even though Victor and I went for a short hike yesterday afternoon, still I was adjusting. My scenario had shifted from me being a part of the forest, to now just peering into it from the edge. Or getting into a car and driving to it. Even now as I write these words, I am adjusting.
A lot of my recent contemplations with Nature have centered around seeing wildness as an ever-present condition of everything - all phenomena. Not just the non-human world that we normally think of as “nature,” but the whole panoply of human civilization and its creations too. And not just planet earth, but every particle, planet, and celestial body throughout all of space. When I look closely at everything, I simply cannot find a place to draw a line that says, over here is nature and over here is something else. I still often feel there is a difference, because of how I am accustomed to thinking - but on a deep level I know that everything is nature. The stuff of our human lives may be cut, dried, shaped, woven, modified, catalyzed, cooked, cauterized, melted, melded, blended - and every other way we can work with matter - but there is no getting around the fact that all of what we see can be deduced to the atomic level. And every atom has a host of minuscule collaborators both known and unknown - including its spinning electron field.
Intelligence in the system.
Every form radiates an electromagnetic signature.
Information; evolutionary wisdom.
At this level, even a cell in the human body looks like a galaxy with spinning bodies, orbits, and energy with lots and lots and lots of space in between.
The alchemical ether.
On the micro level, there is no need to make distinctions such as animate or inanimate - everything is dancing particles and waves in space. Energy changing forms, ad infinitum.
I like to think about this general sameness of everything. I like to see it, or at least consider it actively. When I’m in the forest, this contemplation looks one way - filtered through the lens that looks like hemlock, birch, amanita, bolete, wolf; or river, osprey, otter, self-heal, blackberry; or prickly pear, cholla, spiney star, raven, ocotillo. When I step back into these halls with walls, and then look to access the ever-present wild wisdom - the teaching is the same:
Connection. Intelligence. Consciousness. Cocreation.
But the lens is different. Instead of flowing my awareness outward into the forest, or desert, or mountains around me, I flip on my imaginary micro-vision goggles, and intend to see what is happening on an elemental level.
Carbon, Oxygen, Hydrogen, Nitrogen, Iron, Copper, Zinc, Selenium, Silicon, Sulfur…
In my body. Around my body. In this house. Outside this house. This is when the walls dissolve and the livingness of all things appears. Not through a fabricated personification, but a pure regarding of the living, co-arising assembly. Sure, human hands made this, or made the machine that made this - but that machine is molecular, these hands are molecular. And the atoms that make up the molecules, that make up the cells, that make up these bodies - every form we see with our eyes, the eyes we see with…those atoms, abide in a multidimensional state our macro-centric perspectives are only just beginning to understand.
The quantum.
I think the fact that there is a quantum dimension to everything, gives us a clue to the inherent sameness, the shared origin, to all phenomenal experience. Just because it doesn’t grow leaves or howl, doesn’t mean it isn’t an intrinsic and fully fledged part of the entire wild scenario.
An ever-expanding universe.
I think that coming home to our wholeness is as much about embracing wild nature as who we are, as embracing who we are as wild nature. In all of our facets. In all of its facets. This perspective gives me an entirely new way of relating to cities - they’re just another kind of jungle after all.
For me and my quality of living, these contemplations are highly practical. While I can always go out my door into the wildness beyond, I want to find my center, my stability, my well-being, and my inspiration from wherever I stand. Carpet or moss. It feels good to embrace the elemental nature of all phenomena - in that way, no matter where I am, I can find the cosmic core and dance among the electromagnetic fields. The truth is, as much as I love the wild and living in a tent - I adore a cozy home with hot running water and a refrigerator too. I love foraging, but I also really love my coconut milk, crispy taco shells, avocado oil, and coffee. If I tie my relief, happiness, inspiration, or success to one form or another - then effectively I have tethered how I feel, to the external world full of changing conditions.
The wild dance of electrons.
As the Buddha pointed out some twenty-five hundred years ago, the not knowing how to handle the experience of impermanence is at the core of human suffering.
I know that I will not always be in the woods, and as much as I feel at home there - I don’t always want to be in the woods. I like the variety that exists here on earth, and have grown to love certain parts of human civilization that are just not accessible way out in the wilds. If I think I can only access my center away from other humans (and I have thought this in the past), my alignment becomes conditional. Then I end up resenting the human world as an obstacle to my ability to connect with myself. And I place limits on what is the good or right way to live, which means a lot of other people must be wrong. Not a very happy place to be.
A couple weeks ago, a reader of True Nature wrote to me to let me know how much they liked the Thought Bath of Ease, and how helpful they found it. They asked me if I might be interested in writing more about how I stay centered and access higher frequency feelings while in the midst of daily life - when family or close friends are going through hardship - or how to deal with general negativity in the world at large. (Yes! I would love to!) They commented how easy it was for them to find these positive feelings out in nature, but that at home in their regular life it was more challenging. I imagine that there are many of us who can relate to this experience - we enter the wild world of nature and suddenly find access to all sorts of relief. Whether by wind, water, fire, or earth - being in nature and communing with the wild elements offers us a different context within which to see ourselves, our relationships, and our world. In this sense, nature seems to offer us a world distinct from the one we usually inhabit. It is no mystery why the great mystics and saints worldwide have gone out into the wilderness - clearly, there is experience and perspective that the non-human world offers, that has the capacity to change how we understand ourselves and the whole of reality.
Going out in to the wild offers us the possibility to entrain to extremely coherent patterns of energy. I think this is why we predictably find relief from taking a walk outside. Discursive beta brain waves, especially high-beta, commonly indicate incoherence within the mind-body system; our cells, tissues, and organs are not optimally communicating; diminished communication means diminished health. The natural world is not in beta. When we take the time to bring our focus into the present with nature, we have the opportunity to shift our vibration from whatever was on our mind, to what is on Nature’s Mind. Invariably, that means shifting from limited logic to limitless logic. Moving from the finite to the infinite, from problem to solution.
When Victor and I first got into longer distance mountain hiking, we were introduced to the phrase “leave it all on the mountain.” I found this to be an easy to thing to do - especially during particularly long, arduous hikes. Being ten walking miles from anything remotely close to humankind, would consistently bring a strong sense of ease - effectively displacing any stress or tension I had initially been carrying. I was physically apart from my problems, and surrounded by a collective field of wild wisdom. I like knowing that if I’m feeling out of wack, going out into the nature is a viable solution. These days however, my interest is in cultivating an inner state that has enough steadiness to it, where I am not in an extreme need for realignment through leaving one environment for another. I used to operate this way, and it was helpful only up to a point. The conversation of how we find our center and maintain our alignment no matter what is going on, is at the top of my list of things I am passionate about. I have found that Nature has a lot to say on this subject, and offers us palpable teachings we can use in the midst of our every-day life. I look forward to the evolution of this discussion in a future issue.
Emma’s Take on Hungarian Goulash
Ingredients:
Bacon fat/lard/butter/ghee
Chuck roast, at least 2.5 lbs - slow cooked in 1-2 qts water with sea salt and black pepper till fall apart ready (7-8hrs on low usually)
2 med Onions, chopped
5-8 cloves garlic, minced or pressed
4-6 Carrots, sliced thick
3-6 Potatoes (red or yellow are nice), cubed
1-2 cups of strained tomatoes, tomato purée, or even diced tomatoes blended a bit will work
Handful celery leaves, diced
Additional broth
Herbs/spices:
1/4 c Hungarian paprika
Lots of fresh ground black pepper
1/4-3/4 tsp white pepper (start small and adjust up)
Sea salt to taste
1-2 Tbs Garlic powder
1-2 Tbs Onion powder
2-3 Tbs caraway seeds
Top with a dollop of sour cream if desired
Special non-traditional optional additions:
1/8 c powdered lions mane mushroom
Or
1-2 c wild foraged mushrooms like chanterelles or maitake
Fistfuls of chopped kale 10 min prior to taking off heat
Approaching this dish:
The first time I ever had goulash it was served to me out of a huge cast iron dutch oven suspended over a fire in an Alaskan campground. It felt like/tasted like an enormous warm nourishing hug that emanated from the inside out - and I’ve been tweaking my recipe to attain this experience. A lot of goulash recipes call for browning and cooking stew meat in the cook pot for only about 30 min with the broth. In my experience this leads to chewy beef, and is far surpassed by a slow-cooked chuck roast that melts in your mouth, lending all the nutritious and nourishing fats and marrow to the broth itself. I usually thaw the chuck roast overnight, putting it in the slow cooker in the morning by 10am. By 6pm it’s fork tender - and in preparation for the main event I take the meat out and cut it into nice large stew size pieces - knowing that they will somewhat fall apart on their own as I’m finishing the goulash.
The other conversation is about using both fresh and powdered onions/garlic - for a full-bodied flavor, it is important to use both. The dried powders fill out a portion of the flavor spectrum that is all their own, and in combination with the fresh components, the result is a completely umami - savory experience lacking nothing. The measurements given are starting points - after the goulash has been simmering for 20-30 min, taste the broth to see what’s needed.
Lastly, it is crucial to use the highest possible quality Hungarian paprika - and no, plain paprika is not Hungarian paprika, neither is smoked or Spanish paprika. Authentic Hungarian paprika comes from specific Hungarian peppers grown in specific regions for their specific flavor - and you will be able to tell the difference once you see/smell/taste the regional-specific flavor. In the recipe, the paprika is added after the onions have just started to brown, and it’s important to take the entire pot off the heat while adding and stirring in the paprika - this is because paprika can turn bitter if too much heat is applied at this stage.
My absolute favorite organic Hungarian paprika is available here: Hungarian Paprika
Directions:
In an adequate size cook pot or dutch oven, melt 3-4 tbs lard/butter/ghee on medium heat.
Sauté the onions till they are starting to brown (7-10 min); while the onions are cooking, ready the slow-cooked chuck roast by straining and reserving the liquid, and cutting the meat into large chunks that will break down as the goulash cooks.
Add garlic, stir for a few seconds until fragrant, take the pot off the flame and add the paprika, stirring until well-incorporated.
Add reserved beef broth, stir well and return to heat.
Add beef, carrots, potatoes, tomatoes, all herbs and spices, and additional broth or liquid if desired. Cover and bring to a simmer.
The goulash is finished when the vegetables are cooked to your liking, and the broth has the flavor you desire. Typically 30-45 mins of simmering will render a delicious goulash, that will increase in depth of flavor as it cools and rests.
