It's fall, maybe a nice September morning after a rainy night, and you drive through the scenic landscape of the black forest which is fortunately located very close to where you live.

You know some spots, but today you want to find new locations where your friend, the Psylocybe Semilanceata or Liberty Cap as his buddys call him feels at home. You are looking for cow pastures, preferably between 500 and 1000m above sealevel that seem to be quite humid. Your friend has preferences, but is unpredictable.

You spot a large pasture, lots of cows, stream nearby, hummocky topography and jump over the electric fence. You take your time, eyes on the ground, occassionally using your hands to look under the grass. You are patient, because at the beginning your friend is shy and tends to hide. After half an hour, voila ! - he's living here. Back to the car get the paper bag and the knife.

The first ten or so fruits of your friend (fruits are the shrooms, your friend mainly lives as the mycel under the ground, and picking fruits does not hurt her) you will eat immediately. Hmm the next ten as well, because you keep getting happier and happier. The white-grey-brownish caps (the drier the lighter) start to get a blueish teint and really stand out, so you can spot them from a distance and you search gets more effective.

After a while you stop collecting, you're here for scouting, not harvesting. And now taking the eyes from the ground is very rewarding, because the colors of the grassland, the forest, the sky and even the cows started glowing and the landscape looks so beautiful. You never saw so much shades of green and the cows seem to be very friendly. An attempt to talk with them results only in licking your hand though. You spot some other humans walking around with bags and looking at the ground. That would be an opportunity to get to know some fellow shroomers, but by now you don't trust your language skills anymore and feel more like driving home and prepare the remains of your hunt as a tea and have what is called a heroic dose.

A Note to Shroom Hunters in Citrus States

It seems that a large number of cattle farmers have figured out how to keep those pesky hippies out of their fields, and talking inanely to their bovines. For the past few years, they have been feeding the cows oranges. They leave piles of them in the fields, and the cows eventually eat them. It seems the high acid content destroys the fungi spores that the cows ingest while grazing. (yes, shrooms grow in cowshit for a reason).

Just a little tip for those out hunting this spring.

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