Mietzke's Holden Adventure

I took the first bus down with Matt and Caleb to go hunting for morrell mushrooms in the burn area from the fire last summer. I worked in the morning and then headed down lake. It was amazingly beautiful! The sun was shining and the sky was clear. All of the dog-wood trees near the lake are in full bloom and beautiful with their buttery yellow stars. The Indian paint brush is also in bloom as well as other bushes and trees in reds and yellows and stark white standing against the beautiful spring green of shrubs and grasses coming to life after a long cold winter. I felt like every step of the way was a confirmation that love does really exist in our world subtle and brilliant in everything around us.
We headed up the trail and came to a vista overlooking the lake and forests and I gasped at the beauty of the lake and the mountains still peeked with snow. The lake was deep blue with the blue greens and browns of the mountains surrounding. I was amazed at all the color and all of the depths twists and turns of all the hills and valleys. The rocks are rough and jagged and create a texture to the view that makes you want to be able to touch it and hold it somehow committing every piece to memory. Turning to walk back into the forest was almost unbearable aside from the promise of mushrooms. We walked for about twenty minutes until we reached a gully where the black from the fire covered everything. The standing trees were black and soft to the touch as if they might crumble into ashy pieces below my fingertips. The devastation from the fire seemed so complete, so final. We then began to walk in among the ashes and what remained from the fire. Blackened fallen trees, sticks and rocks, browned pine needles covered gray and black earth in a carpet of completion and then I saw my first mushroom. I had been taking in the bleak picture that the fire had left behind after coming up to it through lush forest land, thinking that nothing could survive here. I bent down to pick it and suddenly as I looked around I began to see the shapes of twenty or more mushrooms. I got my bag and began to pick the morrells.
After I had picked in the first patch I wandered up the blackened gully, sometimes standing for long periods of time sometimes squatting to get a better view for long moments I would look seeing nothing and then as if by magic I would turn my head an suddenly all around me there were more mushrooms than I could count and I had even stepped on one. The mushrooms were everywhere. They always seemed to appear like a surprise as soon as I was about to give up on an area I would see one and then twenty or thirty more would come into view. I even caught myself laughing in the silence at how tricky they seemed to be as if the forest were playing a game with me.
It felt so good to touch the earth, to feel the life possibility there. When you are spending an hour staring as hard as you can at the ground you begin to see other signs of life breaking through the darkness renewing the forest one sprig at a time. Everywhere I looked subtle signs of life were emerging, blades of grass on a blackened bush with leaves just at the base right above the earth. The smallest trees under an inch tall pushing up through the soil, and small spots here and there that had been missed by the fire altogether by some stroke of fortune.
There were foot prints in the mud from all different kinds of animals, deer, coyote, squirrel and others I did not recognize. Matt even saw two tree frogs! I was also surprised at the smell of the earth. I was expecting a burnt smell like that of a campfire, but the forest smelled like spring and promise, like garden decay and growth. It smelled good.
We picked about twenty pounds of mushrooms in about and hour and then went back to sit on the bluff overlooking Lake Chelan. We ate lunch and talked and I drew a picture trying to capture the view in my small way. As we were sitting we could see the bus coming down the switchbacks and heard the Boat on Chelan, coming to get the group of May youth weekenders from the dock, so we headed back down the hill. When we got there Mark and Nancy were preparing to go for a swim in the lake. They went down first and I changed into my swimming suit and headed down a few minutes later. Matt and I ran off the dock into the frigid water. I don’t know what I was expecting but I wasn’t prepared for it to be that cold. It was shocking and exhilarating and I swam as quickly as I could to get out of the water. Dripping in the sun my skin warmed and tingled, and for that moment I was fully present and alive. What an experience! My first jump in the lake of the season, guaranteed not to be my last.
I want to bring Dave and the kids down for an over-night camp on the bluff and experience a sunrise over the water. I can’t believe we live here! It is magical!