As a child, I hated mushrooms — or what I took to be mushrooms: slimy little buds that came from cans. Admittedly, I’d never tried them. Eventually, I did, and I came to like what I’d mistakenly taken as “mushrooms.”

I also recall being in the woods and wondering why we didn’t just pick the mushrooms that were all around us. Someone explained that they were poisonous, and my mother later clarified that “We only eat mushrooms we buy in stores.”

That limits things somewhat: champignons, portabella, and shitake are the only non-canned mushrooms I recall seeing in stores in the States. Of course, I never really went out looking for other types, so I’m sure I’m misrepresenting mushroom’s availability.

Then I came to Poland, and all my conceptions about mushrooms changed. Mushrooms became not something you bought in stores, but something you went out in the woods to find.

“Mushrooming,” for lack of a better term, is a popular hobby in rural Poland, and not only, for often people come from the cities for the express purpose of “mushrooming.” It’s a simple concept, really: take a basket into the woods and wander around looking for mushrooms.

Of course, not just any mushroom will do. Some, as a shroomer put it, are “edible only once.” Others don’t taste so good. What everyone dreams of is finding “prawdziwki.” I’ve no idea what kind of mushroom that would be (the mushrooms in the first image are “prawdziwki” — anyone know what they’re called in English?), but the word “prawdziwki” would be literally translated “little real ones.”

The first step is to find them. Most often they’re at the base of trees, or near them, partially covered, growing in damp ground.

A friend told a story of someone who, while out hunting mushrooms, unexpectedly came upon a deer with a broken leg, it’s antlers caught in the undergrowth. The gentleman managed to kill the deer with the small paring-knife he’d brought along for cutting mushrooms. Then he went back into the village, borrowed someone’s van, drove out into the woods, and loaded the deer up, only to find that the animal was much larger than he’d imagined and the antlers were still on the ground. So he tied the antlers up to the roof of the van, drove it home, and had venison for a week.

Once you find them, it’s not a question of jerking them out of the ground. Instead, you have to cut them carefully at the base.

In some ways, it’s a pleasant enough activity even if you don’t find any mushrooms. Fresh air, sunshine, singing birds — a pipeful of tobacco in my case. It’s not a bad way to spend a morning.

But the longer you look without finding anything, two conflicting thoughts start rising. First of all: “I’ve been out here for ninety minutes already and I haven’t found anything edible. This is a waste of my time now.” Second: “I’ve been out here for ninety minutes and I haven’t found anything edible. I can’t possibly go home empty-handed, so I’ll look longer.”

What’s worse is when your shrooming partners are finding “prawdziwki” and you aren’t. Of course, I’m a shrooming novice, and I guess I don’t know how or where to look.