Every fall I have one dream. I dream about early morning in the oak grove. Each tree is huge, age-old. I dream that it’s October, and even air is golden from the color of the foliage and leaves. I dream that I went to mushroom picking with my parents.
It’s one of my favorite recurrent dreams 🙂 Because it’s not just a dream, it’s a childhood memory. Each year until we went to pick the mushrooms. And this forest from the dream is a real place. It was pretty distant from my town; we went there only during good seasons. But it always was my favorite place though during these times I hated to go for mushrooms.


I spent two good weeks at the beginning of September at hometown. I haven’t been at home for a year and a half. And last time I’ve been there in September was more than four years ago.
The forest is a part of my dad’s life. Especially during this part of the year. So I was happy to be with him. So happy that I didn’t notice that we went for mushrooms.

Here I should say about Belarus forests. My home town is Brest, it’s a on western part of the country, mostly flat with a lot of swamps. Locals spent summers picking wild berries in the woods, late summer rains bring the first mushrooms – usually, porcini or boletus. Fall adds variety of mushrooms. My dad used to hunt for them until the first snow (usually late November).
Forests are mostly mixed: pines, birch, European oak.