What is tangible and knowable

I like to think, even though I know that the brain is an imprecise instrument and is subject to many distortions. So I value the tangible elements of the world. A simple realization on the mushrooming trail about the edible shaggy inkcap Coprinus comatus started me on the trail, that food grows on the side of the road. Because I live in a low-income social class, mushrooms have become part of my survival. I value knowledge, especially when it is practical. One of my strongest insights is that human as a living being is dependent on nature. The biosphere is the life-support system of our species. The edible fruiting bodies of mushrooms are a very small part of a larger system, but they are important for both species conservation and human nutrition. Gathering mushrooms for food allows you to connect to a larger system. My homeland, this region, belongs to the forest-steppe zone in the temperate zone. This sentence also made my heart beat, because it opened up the memory of the thousands of experiences that I had had while walking through the countryside. Mushrooms typical of the landscape line up one after the other in my memory. These mushrooms, together with their habitats, represent the homeland for me. I have a very real and practical patriotism. I am not deluded by the illusions of others. I have very often bent down to the tangible reality and surveyed the landscape. I know the mushrooms, the landscape, life, my reality. I love my world.