Pretend Soup

What would the world be, once bereft
Of wet and of wildness? Let them be left,
O let them be left, wildness and wet;
Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet.

Gerard Hopkins

It’s a soggy Saturday morning. Although the sun is shining now, it rained hard most of the night. And as my 4½ -year-old grandson Boone and I head outdoors, we hear a soft, random patter of water dripping off leaves in the nearby woods.

A natural gatherer, Boone immediately sets to work harvesting spent flower buds, wet thistle weeds, blades of grass, and bunches of clover. He finds a red pail, half-filled with rainwater, and grabs a wooden stick. Into this soup pot go the greens, along with a handful or two of wet, sandy soil. Before you know it, he has stirred up a rich, muddy broth.

What else can he add? We talk about how mushrooms sprout like magic on damp days like this and decide that a few of them would make a fine addition to his inedible soup. It’s time for an adventure: a mushroom hunt in the woods.

While the two of us pull on tall rubber boots, I remind him that, while some wild mushrooms are edible, many are poisonous, and we don’t know the difference.

He’s already learned this wilderness rule well: No tasting. Ever.

We follow a narrow trail through dense woodlands on the property, water splashing down on us from the drenched foliage overhead. It isn’t long before we spot an assortment of mushrooms growing up from the soil, many of them slick and glossy with rainwater. “Look, another one!” Boone shouts. “Over here!”

So many different mushroom colors: bright orange, peachy pink, pale beige, and purple – yes, purple! – lurk under tangled growth and spring up from mossy mounds. We look closely at the shapes of their caps, the length and thickness of their stems. “Take a picture of this one!” Boone says, carefully holding up a new specimen before tossing it into the collection bag.

We use vocabulary like smooth, wrinkly, fancy, fragile, sturdy, plump. There are details to compare, interesting textures and hidden folds and gills to examine.

We breathe in the earthy smells of moist earth and tree bark as we make our way out of the woods. Even though Boone’s soup is “pretend,” our fungus foray has been a real sensory feast.

Boone dumps his samples into the waiting red soup pot and stirs. What a marvelous, messy mash-up of mushrooms!

The soupy concoction will go onto the compost pile soon enough, but for the time being, he is content to stir. And I am content to simmer in the joy of time together in nature with my little wild child.

“Children are born naturalists. They explore the world with all of their senses, experiment in the environment, and communicate their discoveries to those around them.”

The Audobon Nature Preschool

Note: While I allowed Boone to pick and briefly handle the wild mushrooms (and experience their spongy, slimy, slippery feel) before adding them to our collection bag, some experts advise against this in case of skin reactions to possible toxins. Regardless, it’s a good idea to wash your hands after these activities.