CHAGA THREE: A DIFFERENT AND MAGICAL WAY

I went yesterday to a part of the forest that is rarely travelled. It is hidden behind a series of fields, and it doesn’t look like there is a path there, but there is. I had forgotten about the chaga mushrooms, because being a mushroom expert or wild food forager or so on, is not my gig or destiny either. Most of the chaga is already harvested by people interested in using it and perhaps selling it. Yet, - there I was, not thinking about it at all, - and it showed up in front of me. And there was lots of it around. I was only a hundred or two hundred feet in. So I took a bit, and left some on the tree, - to be ethical. I truly wasn’t looking and didn’t have so much as a pocket knife. I knocked some off with my hand. And also a stick. There is something about it that I love. I have been drying these pieces out, and perhaps will ‘gift’ it to someone, or use it myself, - or some of both. I can honestly say, for some weird reason, - that I like it, - like liking a person. The mystical view would be that the spirit of the chaga is talking to me and found me. The regular view is that I just like it. I am somewhere in between both. I seem to have a vibrational or just natural affinity with the wildly popular chaga. I will be returning tomorrow to the same spot, - and there is a huge piece, - but I am not bringing a knapsack or tool and not taking it, - because I don’t need it for personal use (have some if I choose to use it) and for monetary purpose either (because I have no buyer). But I want to see more of that enchanted part of the forest, almost magical- and it’s a place I only went deeper into before.

It’s funny,- Alan Watts talks about such a place, that he knew, and says he doesn’t go too far into the path- he knows it comes out somewhere else,- but tries to keep it magical, by only lightly exploring it. So I will go in, - but not all the complete way- I have already had the same sense. It’s like something out of a movie- that particular place.

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