Porcini hunt

After a detour into Oslo to buy mat a pair of wellies, Kreg took us out to his hut in the forest to hunt for mushrooms. The day started well, I found a porcini just off the path where we were busy picking a stash of black trumpets. Gradually picking our way into the undergrowth, eyes peeled, we picked up boletus, chanterelle, false chanterelle and oysters as well as more porcini, until our baskets were overflowing with a wealth of edible fungus.
It wasn't the mushrooms that were the problem for me so much as the offroad nature of the foraging. Going from the gravel track onto paths through the trees, crossing brooks in the clear, delicious air, it was when we started to follow moose tracks the trail began to get hairy. Crashing through head-high grasses I found that I became food for every biting insect in the forest...Bitten, scratched and poked by branches, pursued by relentless hoards of mosquitoes that buzzed in my ears and larger insects that gnawed at my head beneath my hair, I crouched my way through mud and bracken on twisted ankles and emerged always too late to take a break from walking.
With a basket of glorious mushrooms we left the forest and made our way to a lake where we swam in black, rusty water that tasted of pine and pure fresh air and felt like redemption. Kreg described the feeling of the water as something like angel wings against the skin.
Looking forward to cooking up some mushroom parcels and enjoying being back in civilisation. It's been a fantastic day but we're all exhausted!...