The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: The Spring by Megan Weiler

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II: Two Years Later
33

(excerpt)

“This is where Costanzo used to park the car when we came to look for mushrooms.” I express surprise that a car can go up this road at all, steep and rocky as it is. “Oh yes,” she says, “he used to drive up here or even further, sometimes into the woods as far as the cabin. He knew this road so well, maybe even better than the road to Vigliano. He often waited in the car for me while I went looking for mushrooms.”

I can tell that she is happier as soon as we’ve entered the woods. “Vigliano is good for convenience,” she says. “But this place is good per la persona.”

It quickly becomes clear that her casual remark about finding “a mushroom or two” was the greatest understatement. We’re not in the woods for five minutes, still far from reaching the cabin, when she suddenly climbs up an embankment and starts poking around in the leaves with the tip of her umbrella. Almost immediately – “Look at these gallinelle!” The word for chanterelles is “little hens.” I didn’t think she could be so happy about anything: she laughs with pure joy, encouraging me to pick the tiny yellow mushrooms as well. “There’s another patch. You get those.”

The first ones always come out under chestnut trees, she tells me. Only later do they come out under oak trees as well. “Who knows why?” But not just under any chestnut tree, only under certain ones. She speaks of mushrooms as “being born.” “Who knows why they are born in one spot and not another?”

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