CHAGA TWO: WHAT THE HECK IS THAT?

This all started a month or more back when one of the dogs started barking at something in the forest. We were already deep in a valley where there are rarely people. I figured that it was a coyote. To my surprise, it was a guy up a tree with another man, a spotter, below. The two seemed like father and son, or uncle and nephew, and eastern European or Italian or ‘ethnic’ somehow. They had a cordless drill, some other tools, and were in the middle of working on something. I didn’t know then what they were doing, and just got the dog and left. The next day I couldn’t help but look at the tree when I went past there, and noticed they had built steps leading up to this big black thing. I looked up birch trees and mushrooms or something, and eventually figured out that it was the much sought  Chaga Mushroom they were after. And it was a huge one, bigger than any I saw on the internet afterwards- about four feet across and two feet high. It was, and still is, about three stories up, so it’s difficult to get at, and not worth the physical risk. But it got me keeping a special eye out for this mushroom, which is not shaped like a mushroom, but is an outgrowth of the tree that doesn’t really have a definite shape.

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