great abundance, as one measures

great abundance, as one measures abundance of merkles. I had previously found under instruction a few merkles in old apple orchards, but never before made a true wood’s find.

I returned to my house, with merkles enough to give to a neighbor, who in earlier years had accompanied me on unsuccessful forays into our woods.

Even more was to come. On the next weekend, I received a call from a person in Peola Mills, who remembering my sad story of previous years, recalling my despair of ever finding merkles, to tell me that I was welcome to come pick merkles (“not all,” she said) that were growing under a wild crab apple tree, the location of which she offered to give me. I thanked her, and asked to be remembered another year, and reported my satisfying success on the previous weekend, adding that I had even given some merkles away.

I am not yet ready to believe that merkle hunters can always be counted on to be sharing and generous under all circumstances and all seasons, but have revised the judgment, that was growing to be almost absolute, because of my experience with them in years past, that they were all unreliable, not quite untruthful, but lacking in generosity and a sense of sharing.

My opinion now is, and I may have to revise my judgment during or alter next year's merkle season, that there comes a point at which a merkle hunter who is successful in his hunt, is moved to what at least appears to be generosity, both in sharing his knowledge of places where the mushrooms do grow, and beyond that sharing what is found. But that point is not easily defined or predicted. In dealing with merkles, I believe, a person must reach a point like that of the “critical mass” of nuclear materials, when something drastic happens, (explosions, in the case of nuclear mass) and “truth and generosity” in the case of the merkle hunter.

Next year’s merkle season, I expect, will be different from this one, and from all that have gone before.