An almost fruitless woodland wander, an unexpected gathering of toadstools and the pleasure of finding something beautiful.
Some of my favourite treasures haven’t cost me a penny. They haven’t come from an antiques shop, an auction or somebody’s wonderfully promising box of things at a car boot sale. Sometimes they’ve simply been there, growing quietly in a woodland, waiting for me to notice them.
Last autumn, a friend and I went looking for toadstools. It remains one of my fondest memories of that season, although for most of the walk it wasn’t looking particularly promising.
We walked round almost the whole woodland and hardly found a thing. By the time we were heading back, I’d more or less resigned myself to the fact that I wasn’t going to see anything that day. You can go looking, after all, but there’s no guarantee that what you hope to find will be waiting for you.
And then we rounded a corner.
Apparently, we’d been looking in the wrong place
The path opened up and there they were: my favourite toadstools, fly agarics. Those extraordinary red caps with their white spots, looking as though they belong in an illustrated storybook rather than growing quite happily in front of you.
After all that walking and finding next to nothing, suddenly there was an abundance. And it wasn’t just the fly agarics. There were hundreds of fungi, all sorts of different ones, in the very woodland we’d been beginning to think had little to show us.
That was what made it so wonderful. We hadn’t set off knowing exactly where to go or what we’d find. We’d wandered, looked and almost given up, and then the whole outing changed in the space of a corner.
I gathered quite a haul and brought them home to make a display amongst the flowers in my planted bed. And what a display it was.
Treasure doesn’t have to last forever
I consider all sorts of beautiful things treasures, and these were certainly treasures to me. They might not have been worth anything in the usual sense, but that wasn’t why I wanted them. I loved looking at them, loved bringing them together into something beautiful and thoroughly enjoyed having them there.
So did everyone who visited. The display became something we could all enjoy, a little collection of extraordinary things from an afternoon in the woods.
Of course, it didn’t last long. Fungi don’t offer quite the same permanence as a particularly good piece of old furniture. But I don’t think something has to last for years to be worth enjoying. Flowers don’t. A lovely supper certainly doesn’t, particularly in this household. Their brief existence doesn’t make them any less of a pleasure.
The display was wonderful while it lasted, and the memory of finding everything is still with me. I can think back to that walk now and remember the delight of seeing what was waiting round the corner, just when I’d decided there would be nothing.
That feels like a fairly good return on an afternoon out.
A treasure of a different kind
For my fiftieth birthday, my friend bought me a beautiful book, A Brush with Fungi by David Mitchell. As if that wasn’t enough, it was signed especially for me.
I was absolutely thrilled. There’s something particularly lovely about a present that connects with something you’ve genuinely enjoyed, and the personal signature made it more special still.
The woodland display was temporary. The book is something I can keep. Both belong to the same collection of pleasures: beautiful things, a friendship, a memorable afternoon and the excitement of finding something that means more to you than it might to somebody else.
That’s very much what I mean by treasure. Sometimes it’s something you buy, sometimes it’s a gift, and sometimes it’s something you discover when you’re out with a friend, looking a little more closely at the world.
I’m still glad we went round that last corner.