Mushrooms
More than free food
Visiting the forest in summer or autumn always has a shade of consumerism because of mushrooms. Every year since the middle of July more and more people take up such an obsolete hobby as gathering and don’t quit until late October. Russian forests are invaded by hikers iconically depicted in a Soviet comedy-drama ‘Autumn Marathon’.
‘Do you have rubber boots?’ is a good question to start a mushroom hunt. Rubber boots are on the list of three vital things one mustn’t forget to take to the forest. The best time for picking up mushrooms comes after rains, so it’s very humid and the boots are to protect a hunter (gribnik). The other vital things iclude a basket and a knife. The former is sometimes substituted by a plastic bucket, the latter can vary from kitchen knives to Swiss army ones.
Wearing rubber boots, carrying their baskets and knives Russians set off for the woods. A popular joke says, ‘Either I like to collect mushrooms or I only prefer to wander around the forest alone, with a knife in my hand’. However, in many cases this joke doesn’t make sense because mushroom picking is often a common family activity. Family members cooperate to put some free food into their storages.
For Russians the most valuable mushrooms are so-called ‘noble funghi’ (boletes). They are a king bolete (bely grib), a birch bolete (podberyozovik) and a red-cap bolete (podosinovik). Some true mushroom hunters look only for them.
Some hunetrs wait for the period when honey funghi (opyata) start to grow, because it’s the easiest way to gather the biggest amount of mushrooms and preserve it for winter . Unlike boletes, which are usually frozen or dried, honey funghi are mostly marinated and later eaten with vodka.
Many edible mushrooms are totally ignored, as people aren’t 100% sure that they are okay to eat. And among real toadstools the most famous are the Death Cap and Fly Agaric. The Death Cap is ugly and looks like a field mushroom. It causes liver and kidney failure and eventual death. Fly Agaric has been known from children’s stories and pictures and is very attractive but still highly poisonous.
Upon return from the forest families thoroughly sort out and clean the harvest, cook and eat mushrooms for dinner. This feast ends a successful hunt. So mushrooming here is a kind of ritual, a significant part of national culture. Nevertheless, the cultural role of mushrooms as living organisms is broader.
In 1991 many Soviet people’s beliefs collapsed after Communist leader Vladimir Lenin had turned out to be nothing but a mushroom. Since 2013 funghi have also been used in architecture to describe the kiosks, shopping malls, ads and markets that sprang up around Moscow in the 1990s, when urban space could suddenly turn a profit. But the most important part mushrooms play now is that they make people forget about the cars, hypermarkets, social networking and get into the woods at least once a year.
Photo: @oredredred
