(essay)

At 11 o’clock, the autumn orange leaves were falling, and the red kia soul was moving along the ring road towards the forest.

Outside the window, warm autumn colors intertwined with summer greens, the car smelled of coffee with coconut syrup, and I pressed the gas pedal more and more to get to our beautiful destination as soon as possible and enjoy the beauty. { {1}} Once in the woods, the main task was to leave all the trees, bushes and the car intact, because everything grew so tight and close to each other that it was harder than I thought to get through and not touch the trunk with a mirror.

At the entrance lay a large block of stone, which apparently someone put here to block the road. However, it was a few meters away, so it could be bypassed. But it turned out that I should not be afraid of trees and bushes, but of this stone block, with which I still did not miss very well. But it’s empty.

Our family and I came to an incredible oak forest, where we planned to spend our weekend, breathe the cool autumn air and, if lucky, gather mushrooms.

Divided into two, we went to different sides, with knives and buckets in hand. The fragile oak leaves rustled underfoot, the sun peeked out from behind the clouds, then hid again, and the wind tore acorns from the oaks, which, instead of falling down, fell painfully on the head.

For the first half an hour we just walked through the woods, staring at the leaves lying on the ground. Then we noticed the cap of one mushroom and next to it a whole meadow of mushrooms. We tried to carefully cut the mushroom, not to step on the one that grows nearby, and not to lose what we had gathered.

After a while we all walked together to a nearby pine forest. We met several companies of mushroom pickers, exchanged smiles and jokes, peeked into each other’s buckets to assess the situation and moved on. The smell of pine needles, oak acorns and moisture wafted everywhere; the wind swayed the tops of thin pines. Only the thought of tomorrow’s work day and a lot of chores at home made us get to the car, put a bucket of mushrooms in the trunk, press the gas pedal and go home in an amazing autumn mood. Outside the window, orange leaves were falling down, and the car still smelled of coffee with coconut syrup…