It’s mushroom-hunting season in Schuylkill County and le Perche

In continental France (as opposed to the French Antilles, battered by tropical storms), autumn arrives as autumn should: bright, blustery days, cool nights, alternating with periods of damp and rain. Perfect weather for mushroom hunting in a region like le Perche, where there are over 1,000 different varieties hidden among the undergrowth of the forests that have given this region its name.

Perche, I learned on the site of the regional park (http://www.parc-naturel-perche.fr/en) comes from an Indo-European root word, perk, which has nothing to do with the English word spelled the same. “Perk” applies to oak trees and is both the root of the Latin word for oak, quercus, and for the region where I have my home.

This time of year, in oak forests all over le Perche, men and women not afraid to get their feet wet are out searching for mushrooms.

At my village café, where I’ve earned the right to stand at the counter with the regulars and pay a round of drinks from time to time, I’ve been told it’s a record year. Why, all you have to do is plop down on the ground (if you’re ready to get the seat of your pants wet), plunge your hands towards the earth, and begin harvesting.

I’ve benefited from this abundance. Just yesterday a village friend gave me a bag of “trompettes de la mort,” trumpets of death—not a very promising name for something you’re supposed to eat. These dull, velvety black mushrooms look like the trumpets angels play to announce the Apocalypse. Their form is also very close to that of a highly toxic South American flower that bears that very name: Angel’s trumpet.

When receiving a gift of wild mushrooms in France, considered a great delicacy, one is supposed to first ooh and aah while caressing and gently sniffing a specimen. That done, the next step is to wax nostalgic about memorable mushroom meals. Ah! Ce bon petit rôti de veau aux girolles—ah! That delicious little roast of veal in girolle mushroom sauce. Finally, after more profuse thanks, one declares what one will do with one’s own little treasure: a creamy soup, a sauce for pasta, un bon petit rôti de porc (pork roast), or, better yet, an omelet.

I held my bag, I said my thanks, all the while silently remembering my own experiences with woodland mushrooms. Memories took me all the way back to my first summer in France. I met a man in a café in a little village in the mountains above the Côte d’Azur. He invited me to accompany him to a dinner at the home of friends.

Always ready for new adventures, I accepted. That evening, we drank a Beaujolais wine called “Pisse-dru” (the first word I think readers can figure out, the second means heavy or abundant) and ate wild mushrooms sautéed in garlic and butter. There was some oohing and aahing, but there was also some concern. One of the guests was not sure these mushrooms were real the thing.

“Fausses chanterelles” (a variety of wild mushroom), he declared. Not poisonous, no, but very hard to digest.

The other French guests, always on the lookout for good argument and debate, begged to disagree and defended the honor of the host serving us this gastronomic meal. Better than the original, more flavorful, they declared as they swallowed generous mouthfuls.

I had no opinion, at least none I wanted to share. I was doing my best to wash the mushrooms down with gulps of Pisse-dru. They were gooey, downright slimy. It was like eating pan-fried slugs (which, also known as escargots, are another French delicacy).

That was not a good evening. I had, and still have, the American’s fear of wild mushrooms coming from anywhere but supermarkets or specialty shops. Leaving the dinner party, I felt nauseous. I wondered what would come next. Luckily, the answer was nothing. I went home, refusing the gentleman’s offer to check out his little villa overlooking the sea, and went to bed.

I also have a Schuylkill County experience to relate. Once, at my mother’s home in Pottsville, my sisters and I looked on as my former French brother-in-law made himself an omelet with morel mushrooms he had found in the woods behind our house. The morel, or morille, as it is known in French, is the Cadillac of mushrooms, and it sells for a Cadillac price.

Oh là là! My brother-in-law was so excited. Terrified, my mother, my sisters and I feared he would die before our very eyes.

But he didn’t, probably because the French know about mushrooms. They track them in secret forest groves whose location they reveal to none but their most trusted friends. Picking up the scent, they are like human beagles sensing, not beast or blood, but a musty, earthy smell that, for the French, has the power of an aphrodisiac.

More prudent hunters carry a guide, beginners accompany the more experienced, and when truly in doubt, it is possible to take one’s find to the local pharmacy. In France, pharmacists are supposed to have the know-how to decide if, eating your mushrooms, you will live or die.

As I’ve been writing this article, I’ve been busy digesting, a cult-like activity in France that requires time, attention and care. I’ve also been listening to my body for any gurgles or untoward movements of the digestive tract. So far, so good. That means the omelet with sautéed trumpet-of-death mushrooms I ate for lunch is going down just fine.

I accepted the gift. I didn’t ask any questions about whether the mushrooms were safe or not. I have complete confidence in the friend who offered me them. I also listened carefully to his wife, who explained what I was supposed to do with them once I got home:

I filled a bowl with water, added some vinegar, and washed them several times. That done, I carefully drained them and just as carefully laid them out, one by one, on a tea towel. By morning they were dry. By lunchtime, I was ready to give them a try.

I sautéed them in butter and garlic. Then I folded them into an omelet I ate with fresh baguette, salad from my garden, and a glass of Burgundy wine.

Who knows? A few more experiences like this and I’ll be out hunting mushrooms myself.

Connections, virtual and real

My summer has been a busy one and I’ve devoted a lot of my time to strengthening the Pottsville-Paris-Perche connection. I’ve had a friend from my Pottsville High days to visit and my niece from Auburn came for an extended stay. For a good part of the summer season, I’ve been busy honing my skills as tour operator and guide.

Now I’m off. I’ve put my house back in order, caught up with weeding and hoeing in the garden, and can sit down for a rest. I get up early, do yoga, and listen to the radio, all elements in a cherished routine I’ve let go for too long. But now that dear friends and family are gone and quiet and calm have replaced the bustle, the outside world has come rushing back in.

It’s the radio, a habit and a passion. I don’t stream the news, I don’t podcast. I collect information the old-fashioned 20th century way, tuning in to favorite shows on a little transistor at set times each day, imagining that, all over France, others are doing the same. I like that idea of a community of “unlike-minded” individuals, doing the same thing at the same time, sharing a real-time experience while preserving our independence of mind.

My mother also loved the radio; she was a member of WVIA and a great fan of public radio. Her favorite shows were “Car Talk” and “Prairie Home Companion.” “Morning” and “Evening Editions,” along with The Republican Herald, were her main sources for the news.

In France, I listen to the equivalent of American public radio, two national public-service stations whose names say it all: France Culture and France Musique. Since I arrived in France thirty years ago (the first day of summer 2017 marked the anniversary), France Culture has been my constant companion, and to all those voices on the radio I owe much of what I know about France and the world. I can even say that radio has helped to bring about important and radical changes in my life.

Thanks to France Culture, soon after my arrival in France, I discovered the Austrian writer Thomas Bernhard. Though his name may not be a household word, at a difficult turning point in my life, this man’s novels helped me to move forward and change. I also travelled to Austria to visit the places he wrote about and to attend his plays at the Burgtheater in Vienna, all because of what I’d heard on the radio.

On France Musique, I discovered Betty Davis. Her “Anti Love Song” was released in 1973, but I have to admit I listened to it for the first time in 2016. What a voice! What a woman! Better late than never to discover one of the greatest voices of funk.

The radio also brings me the kind of in-depth reporting it’s difficult to find anywhere else. French radio still takes its time; one-hour programs are the rule, some extend to two or three. For me, the radio is a true school of life.

Sometimes, though, I can’t take it all in. The news is too painful, incomprehensible, so far beyond anything I have ever experienced that I want to shut it out. Just this morning I listened to a report on France Culture about the Syrian regime of Bashar el-Assad and how his government eliminates any trace of dissent.

The words I heard were raw: if a Syrian protests, he or she disappears from the face of the earth. Like the Nazis before them, the regime has documented the process: victims are tortured and killed, then they are numbered, a tattoo on their skin. No name, no identity. Finally, the corpses are photographed. One courageous insider released those photos to the world, but that is no guarantee justice will be done.

I listened to the broadcast a second time to prepare this article. The same harsh words, the same unimaginable reality as I sit comfortably at my desk. Garance Le Caisne, author of Opération César, a book documenting the Syrian project of mass execution that has already resulted in more than 100 thousand deaths, emphasized that as she spoke Syrians were continuing to be tortured to death.

That’s the radio. That’s having some time to myself: the juxtaposition of opposing realities as I, an onlooker living in comfort, come up against the constant specter of pain and death.

During the broadcast, I heard an interview with David Crane, founder of the Syria Accountability Project and co-author of the 2014 Syrian Detainee Report. He claims that “beyond a reasonable doubt,” the Syrian regime is committing crimes against humanity, calling the methods “medieval” in their cruelty.

The rack, the Catherine wheel, the iron maiden, repeat strangulation, poison gas, drowning or beating to death. Torture and cruelty traverse the ages with apparent ease.

I listen, keep my distance, do not participate.

During the recent visit of my niece Leah, we spent a lot of time immersed in beauty, natural beauty and the creations of artists from around the world, their works spanning thousands of years.

We hiked through the hills and valleys of le Perche, where farms and churches, hundreds of years old, blend with the landscape in an almost perfect marriage between Nature and humankind. In Paris, we visited two museums a day, taking in wonders until we were ready to drop.

As we walked in the country or toured the city, whenever I had a spare moment, I read a biography that had taken hold of me, Dorothy Day: The World Will Be Saved by Beauty, written by her granddaughter, writer Kate Hennessy.

Dorothy Day, founder of the Catholic Worker Movement, held up by Pope Francis as the very model of an American saint, devoted her life to the downtrodden and forgotten, working tirelessly to offer them better lives. She helped and sometimes saved those she could, but she placed her faith in God and beauty when it came to the salvation of the world.

Listening to the radio, confronting the horrors of torture and war, I’d like to believe Dorothy Day was right. Beauty can save the world. It transforms onlookers into participants and makes us more alive and aware. We all need beauty and we need to share it. Pottsville, Paris and le Perche have grown closer together this summer because I have shared beauty with family and friends.