On Men as Mushrooms and Bears

One afternoon, near the tiny indescribably beautiful village of Vlkolinec, we spent the day hiking in the woods. We being my friend, Elizabeth Bennett (one of the wittiest and most spirited women you can imagine), and her friend (my friend now), Marta, who is one of the remarkable people you meet--she is humble and selfless and serving in a rare way. Anyway, these two girls were teaching me how to find mushrooms so that we could eat them. You have to be able to distinguish between the good ones and the poisonous ones by how they look and smell. You have to know where and when to look for them (after the rain is followed by warm weather, in the morning so no one gets to them first, in the pine-needly ground under an evergreen). And sometimes you're lucky and sometimes you aren't. We found only a couple.



Also, Slovak bears must be different from Pennsylvania bears. I'm fairly certain that PA bears are perfectly safe--unless you get between a mother and her cub, there's nothing to worry about. Evidently Slovak bears are very dangerous and they often tree people. So in addition to mushrooms, we were always on the lookout for bears, although in a sort of different way. They said if we were loud enough, our voices would scare them away. The two girls looked for mushrooms, and I took care of the talking loudly and often to scare the bears away job. Elizabeth expressed her desire for a man who is like a bear--who knows what he wants and goes after it without fear and takes it. I'm not sure that I'm interested in a bear in quite the same way.