The Great and Powerful Hunter of Funghi -- Calabria, Italy

Stanca.

Every part of me is "stanca".

My legs are stanca from climbing up and down and all around mountains whilst hunting fungi.

My eyes are stanca from deciphering a bed of autumn leaves from the round, brown tops of porcini.

My brain is stanca from trying to understand Italian and mostly failing (it's more exhausting to partially understand a language than it is to understand nothing at all)

My throat is stanca from "I don't understand what you're saying at all" laughter and "YAY! I FINALLY GET YOU" laughter and "OH MY GOD, I FOUND A PORCINI!" laughter.

Stanca, stanca, stanca.  

I enjoy this word because it makes me think of "stink", "stank" and "stuck" at the same time.

In case you hadn't gathered, stanca means tired.

Words I'm learning/remembering in Italian.

Colazione: breakfast
Pranzo: lunch
Cena: dinner
Mattina: morning
Pomeriggio: afternoon
Sera: evening
Ieri: yesterday
Oggi: today
Domani: tomorrow
Dopo: after
Prima di: before
Mi piace: I like
MANGIA!: eat (this is the one I hear the most)
Fichi: figs
Pomodore: tomato
Insalata: salad
Latte: milk
Funghi: mushrooms
Gelato: ice cream
Pane: bread
Panna: cream
Con: with
Caffe: coffee (this word is nearly tied with MANGIA! for being the one I hear most often. I am offered a coffee every time I enter the kitchen. Without fail. I now enter the kitchen with "no, grazie" on the tip of my tongue. When Giuseppe's mother is distracted and the three month-old boxer attacks me first, he looks a mite confused when I stare down at him with the prepared, pleasant, "no, grazie", and he continues to happily tear off my sarong. It will be a miracle if any of my clothes survive this puppy)

In case you haven't noticed, most of these words involve the preparation and consumption of food.

This is not a coincidence.

Giuseppe's mother prepared funghi for cena ieri sera. Giuseppe's father prepared insalata di pomodori. Between tasty mouthfuls of mushrooms and tomatoes, I managed to say something that may or may not have translated into "I much like mushrooms. Much, much, much."

This is why my brain is stanca. 

"Tony goes to get mushrooms tomorrow. With his brothers. You can go," Giuseppe shrugged. Mushroom hunting was clearly not his mocha.


"YES! Volo andare funghi!" I half-shouted, half-swallowed. It's hard to be outwardly ecstatic when you know you sound like an idiot.

One thing I truly love about Italians... they don't seem to care at all if you sound like an idiot. They laugh, congratulate you on your sad, sad Italian and carry on trying to communicate (even if it appears absolutely futile). 

Tony said something about leaving early. My ears perked.

"Mi piace la mattina."

Tony clarified "early". He and his three brothers would be leaving the family casa at five thirty. And they would be out for hours.

"Quando... umm.. quando..." I wanted to ask, "when will we be back?" but quickly gave up and made some hand gestures and sputtered a bit about "casa". Which always works in Italy. 

"No program," Tony smiled and leaned back in his chair with the immensely satisfied expression of a free man. "Pomerigio. Tre, quattro, cinque -- no program. Vino, fromagio, eat, drink -- bella."

"Buono," I approved of his lack of program.

"Mountains," Tony warned. "Caminare, caminare, caminare. Sempre caminare."

So. Lots of walking in the mountains. Colorado girl gots this. 

"Buona notte," I bid the family goodnight and set my alarm for five o'clock, feeling tingly and excited about the fact that I was about to finally, after years of pining, go on a mushroom hunting adventure.

In Calabria. With four old Italian brothers.

Could it be any better?

I woke up the next morning at 4:50, ten minutes before my alarm went off. It was pleasant to discover that even after two months of lazy Balkan picnics (interspersed with epic yoga trainings and not so lazy treks across the longest small towns in the world), my subconscious is still fully capable of waking me up ten minutes before my alarm goes off. Like a good subconscious should.

Rubbing the sleep from my eyes, I donned my yoga pants and the mossy hobo sweater I'd adopted at Sabina's and scrambled upstairs. Giuseppe's mother was already puttering around (as I am the goddess of naps, Giuseppe's mother may very well be the goddess of puttering. My places of worship are in kindergartens and preschools. Her places of worship are in large kitchens, vegetable patches and shops that sell irresistibly useless appliances) and Tony was getting his things together in the room next door.

"Caldo, caldo latte?" the wrinkled, bespectacled goddess asked as she poured my milk into a sauce pan and set a perfectly gigantic cup with a cheeky green face in front of me. The upstairs and to the right kitchen (there are three kitchens in this house. It's lucky that two of them are mostly deserted, else I wouldn't know what to do with myself) already smelled like coffee, so it wasn't long before my cheeky faced mug was filled to the brim with hot, hot milk and un poco caffe. Tony dipped bread into his espresso and I devoured figs with the joy and desperation of a child let loose in a candy store and told to eat as much as he likes -- but that he only has ten minutes to do so.

The three brothers arrived a little late (this is Southern Italy, after all), and I was introduced as "Aimee, una amica di Giuseppe. Lei da Colorado."  Each was properly awed by my origins and impressed with my mountain girl clout. I was given a camouflage hat by Bruno, and then we loaded into two vehicles, baskets for funghi, poky sticks and picnic makings in the boots.

The ascent into the mountains was long, nauseating and would have absolutely petrified me as a girl of twelve -- before I decided that being petrified is useless to me. Tiny, winding roads that definitely should have been one way but were somehow traversed by Italians going in all directions (as they seem to do when they get behind wheels. This is partly to avoid the enormous potholes in their tiny, winding roads).

"Musica?" Bruno didn't wait for Dimitri's answer, but inserted his CD and cranked up the volume. The musica wasn't all that bad and it wasn't all that good, but it was eminently clear that Bruno thought it was just about the best thing since nutella (they don't have Simons down here to ruin it for them). He was humming along, joining in on occasion and pretending to strum the guitar.

"Mio musica," Bruno turned his haggard face to me and managed to communicate that he plays the guitar, sings, and records his own music. Which he then plays in Dimitri's cars to Giuseppe's couchsurfers. "Io scrivero uno canzone per te," he grinned generously and began to sing, "Aimee... Aimee... Aimee..."

Oh, Madonna...

Tony distributed baskets and walking sticks. I gamely grabbed the smallest of both and we began our trek into leaf caked forest floors of Southern Italy. 

Yes! I am finally mushroom hunting. Perhaps I'll cast aside this goddess of naps business and become the great and powerful hunter of funghi. Porcini will tremble at the sound of my soft footsteps as I glide across the dry leaves. Chanterelle will shiver and quake all the way down through their golden stalks. Indeed, I will inspire terror in the caps of -- 

"Aimee!" Bruno's singsong voice rippled through the trunks and branches, reminding me that I'd been assigned to follow him. "Vieni qua."

I tripped over my own two feet and fell soundly on my ass.

Damn, that Italian moves like the devil. 

Bruno was already on the other side of the mountain by the time I pulled myself to my feet and brushed off my bruised backside.

"Aimee!"

"I'm coming!"

"Piano, piano, piano!" Tony chided from below.

Why can't I follow Tony? I want to go piano, piano, piano. This Bruno fellow is tropo veloce per me.

"Vieni qua!"

"SI!"

After half an hour of bitter, "niente, niente"ing through the forest, Bruno finally managed to corner some porcini. "Guarda," he squatted down beside them. "Questi sono multo buoni."

I found many funghi. White, yellow, purple, mottled brown. All the brothers seemed to possess uncanny omnipresence and knew precisely where I was and where all the bad mushrooms were, so whenever I enthusiastically began to galumph off for a funghi, they would shout, "Aimee, no buono," out of thin air.

It was unnerving. It also made me a little mad.

How do they know my mushroom is no buono? 
 
Although the four brothers never ceased to gripe about their being "nothing" in the forest, they managed to make it back to the car with heaps and heaps of funghi.

This great and powerful hunter of funghi might have made uno porcino tremble (it was in the vicinity when I fell on my ass). After two hours of stumbling helter-skelter up and down hills, I simply gave up following Bruno and wandered off to do my own thing. One cannot keep up with Bruno and keep eyes out for mushrooms at the same time. It is physically and mentally impossible. 

The second and third excursion saw me track down and capture one fine porcino.

"Bello, bello porcino!" I was soundly congratulated. Again and again and again. It's a pity that that lone porcino was the only bello specimen I captured. Had I found more, my ego would have been inflated enough to last for at least 17 years.

But every great hunter's got to start somewhere. For the fourth excursion, I decided I'd done enough starting and communicated that I'd very much like to sit at one of the adjacent picnic tables and read my book while the menfolk stalked their mushrooms.

I read for five minutes and napped on a bench for the rest. Four stanco, stinky Italians joined me about an hour later, bearing wine, tomatoes, and home-cured salamis.

It was a glorious picnic. I was told that the tomatoes and onions and olive oil in the margarita salad were from Bruno's casa, the salamis were from Dimitri's casa and I pointed out that the peri were from Tony's casa (but that the bananas probably weren't). As I contentedly sat on my side of the teeter-tottering table, I experienced one of those "how the hell did I end up here?" moments that sneak up on me if I begin for even a second to take my life for granted. 

After a quick caffe and another jaunt into the woods (I was absolutely knackered by this point, but did my best to keep my spirits high and my gaze low, Tony declared that we were finished for the giorno and that we could head home.

Mushroom hunting is far more intense a sport than the meandering through the forest I thought it was, I thought as I collapsed onto my bed in the downstairs apartment.

Stanca, stanca, stanca.