Muchroom Walk

Muchroom walk – Penang, Richard

One Friday morning , the mornings that fit perfectly into schedules, we went to fetch our fellow friends ( the jolly dog) for one of our good old walks up the hill. The road which led to our old friend’s house was exceptionally covered by trees beside the road, bending out towards the road. There goes by the paragons, Gurney, and here we are, yes, driving into the jolly friendly little field giving us room to park in front of the house, behind a tree, beside the path. There came Mademoiselle Cleo, trying to nibble my hand with joy until it fell off, and big David, the friend. In came Cleo the dog and David the friend into the car, the dog breathing heavily even with the air conditioner, her fur always curiously getting smoother everytime we meet her, Cleo again going out into these weird moving objects(cars) and how curiously fast we are going in this… what is this? After some chats, we arrived at our destination. Cleo stayed there, waiting for the sign to come out of the car, but when she was out of the car, she was still stupidly excited, blast, trying to choke herself in the lead. If she was a bit more patient I wouldn’t need to struggle to put my bad on. Despite all these inconveniences, strangely enough, you would feel jolly with Cleo, her excitement spreading like scattered seeds into your feeling making you excited! After the usual preparations, we entered the forest.

We hadn’t been in this forest for a pretty decent amount of time, as we had been always going to the other track where we would normally settle at a river, if not a waterfall, so that erosion could gather itself which made the forest slightly unrecognisable, but I still remember and saw the giant clump of deep green palm trees which stood on the left covering the sunlight. Then came the good ol’ steep part of the hill, where on the right would be a fully open view of the buildings and houses in the countryside. The view would be apparent for a while until at the near end of the steep part of the hill where some lofty trees and half-grown seedlings slowly transform, as you go forwards, into a proper thicket of the forest. At this part of the hike, I saw the first sight of a unique mushroom such that I thought I never saw. The mushroom looked like a floating peeled pomelo skin (pomelo being a fruit which flesh is alike to oranges), half rotten, some with purple specks on top of them, some with purple covered on top of them. What is so odd, or even unique, you could say, about the shape of the mushroom is that the top of it is curved upwards, which makes it look like a circle. The one with purple specks has an imperfect and rough circle, whilst the other one with purple coated smoothly on it has a circle with a smoother edge, even though they are uneven as the imperfect one is. They appeared occasionally in this flat walk in the thicket, some on the left, some on the right. I wouldn’t call them exactly the same species I saw while walking but they seemed pretty similar to me. After a short while, came the ruins of bricks, that I recall, were built for Queen Victoria to be carried sitting on a sort of posh chair, I should think, to be walked to or even more. This ruin could be used as a station to rest on, if you like, which was what I did for a short while, waiting for the Adults, (Cleo is a teenager but still behaving pretty similar these days), after being released from the leash that she would choke herself on as to sprint up and down the hill until unseen, from the Adults to me. Cleo is a Belgian Malenua whom’s fur is thick and getting smoother, as I said earlier, and a very energetic and fit dog, indeed.

A few minutes before the adults caught up, I started to hear a rare song from a bird. The bird’s tune had a slight discinence which was descending, descending slowly to quickly. It had sharps in the descent of the tune, I should think, but what an interesting unique sound it made! Then came big David and dad to whom I suggested the sound to. Even David, the master, I might say, of the plants and the animals of the forests in penang, couldn’t identify the species who sings this odd music. Then, in a short while, we decided to move on to a path that connected to the good ol’ path that me and dad and william normally goes. On the way was a rough sandy path, beside it the normal soily forest. Yes, I should say the sandy path on the way was like being on a beach except in a bird’s eye view it would be bumpy and wavy leaves mostly bright green making up the view of the forest instead of the deep coral blue or light salty blue waves of the sea beside the beach. I saw some more interesting mushrooms, some whom looked like yellow fluffy flowers, some who were dark and spotty and big. Then came the path that me and dad so much know.

This path that me and dad know so well was a path of flat and of wide as its identity, which would give room for any satisfying thoughts that would pop into me, because there would be no disturbing steeps bits in the path earlier to focus the strength of the brain into the leg muscles, nor would there be plants pricking me occasionally to also disturb me. Then, of course, with no disturbing matters, apart form the chatting of the adults, which wouldn’t be austere for I was far away from them, a satisfying thought came to me, one that I was and will do great research in: Cooking. Not the normal dishes that you cook at home with everything you want for cooking, but the one-pot dishes that we (including Willam) would cook simply, while travelling. Of course we would give all the washing up business to William, because it definitely was (not) the best job anyone could do! Now my job was to find dishes that are not too complicated that could be cooked in a pot, no ovens, no proper blenders etc. Just the simple ingredients and the simple cooking. I had already found a lot of yummy and easy soups to cook so all I had to do was to think about the heaven of it being cooked and memorising all the steps and ingredients for making the recipe. The recipes I found earlier were: Cream of mushroom; Mushroom barley soup; pumpkin soup; lentil soup; curry lentil; mac n cheese and how to make proper hot chocolate (optionally with whipping cream and marshmallows on top of the drink.) These recipes I discovered in Youtube videos, so I was replaying the Youtube video about Puny pie about making the dishes in my mind. After what seemed like no time but, I knew, was an hour or more of walking through a flat wide path shaded by the lofty trees (the last bit of the trail was steep but it didn’t seem to bother my musings) and reaching another station which was bigger than the first one which originally had a pullup pole fastened to trees close to each other which is now non-existent. This station was the closest to the river that me and dad and WIlliam sometimes hike to. I stopped here to wait for the adults, Cleo walking towards me and showing that she needed (more like wants) to be itched while waiting for the adults.

After quite a while, I heard the footsteps and the chatting of the adults, who came up and chatted a little bit more in the station. Then, in a short while, we went to trot the last bits of the trail to the river. It was a steep descent where I felt like my legs could carry me faster, and faster. So here I ran joyously, and in the last part of the last part of the trail I had to slow myself down to not slip and get cramps from the slippery rocks. And there, on the right, was the river. We stopped there for a long time beside the river with a proper brake of legs with an appetiser of a drink: green tea. Beside the river we were resting not in soily earth, but in the slightly slippy boulder where we boiled the water and chucked the tea inside. I played fetch with Cleo because I didn’t want to disturb the chatting of the parents. It was not as desirable and joyous as I had wanted it to, for as I stumbled across rocks as to avoid my shoe from being dipped and soaked from the cold water which surrounded the islands of little rocks which I was stumbling in, which didn’t work because big teenager Cleo bumped into me like a damned juggernaut as to trip me into the water. I was starting to not be typically pleased by Cleo’s clumsy and stupendous behavior, for after that as I stood on a high rock and threw the stick away she came back, meaning to hand it over to me, as I crawled down to a lower rock, she dropped it closeby in the river. It was out of reach from my arms, but I didn’t calculate that, so I bent over and unexpectedly fell into the water. I screamed to myself: “Blast! Stupid Cleo!” of course in a lower class manner because I wasn’t born to be a retarded posh idiot, and after a few more fetches, Cleo finally understanding the means of what I wanted, not her, I came back to take sips of the tea that was made for me, understandably. After finishing the tea while listening to the parents’ chit-chat of adult matters we washed our cups and packed our equipment to go back down the hill. I was surprisingly cooled down and sympathetic to Cleo, changing my mind and thinking that it was a wonderful time to fetch. So off we went, down the hill, not in the same way, but in a good ol’ shortcut.