Holy Nights ⭐🌟🙏

These dark nights and short days continue to be amongst the most challenging and yet blessedly The Most Sacred of our lives; @vincentnijman and I are snuggling in and preparing for intensely cold weather coming soon.

We are just back from a glorious walk in the wild woods around our land, where again we visited the centuries (possibly over 1,000 years!) old oak tree beings, who live about 10 minutes' walk from our home.

Again we were blessed to see a load of funghi which we're getting more and more familiar with: I tend not to eat a new mushroom until I know it thoroughly and have observed it extensively in situ. But one is beginning to look more and more like a great, edible local foraging option.

We were discussing edibility of mushrooms in general today; when I began studying mycology in my teens, the general idea I understood was that at most there were only a handful of truly (deadly) poisonous funghi in my (European) country. But nowadays, the books denote practically 80% + of them with skull-and-crossbones! ☠️😵 AI apps might suggest an even higher percentage.

However, as we know from speaking with local foragers in different parts of the world, and having proper digestive functions and strong constitutions ourselves, we trust in others' experiences of eating certain mushrooms without any negative side effects.

It is very likely that the conventional approach to funghi - and to much wild food - is as distorted as the average person's gut flora. Asides from a truly (rare) toxification by mushroom, what is interpreted as 'poisoning' might even be a perfectly healthy healing mechanism.

Either way, to find out the actual comestibility, it is always best to know as much as we can about a fungo; real time presence with it, its smell and texture, its shape and size and how these alter according to age, situation and the elements. I feel that getting to know and trust a mushroom is like the development of a friendship, literally.

As with trees, as with landscape, as with the seasons in a new place; returning to real nature we're faced with startling and fascinating and frightening and illuminating facts in our new relationship with our surroundings.

Like with a new, potentially edible mushroom, we need to feel our way into familiarity with this place and its flora and fauna. There is no rushing this, and there are enormous riches to be gained from every divine moment of this getting-to-know-each-other. From just being present here and now.

These are my thoughts around this first Holy Night of the winter solstice; I feel immensely blessed and grateful to be in this space of such accelerated learning and strengthening of mind-body-spirit(-cosmos). And to be in this with my twinflame.... mmmmmmmm: ottimo!

With LoVe and Great Good Blessings & Bliss to you all, in this deep midwinter time!