The final remnants of sunlight were sucked up by the growing tree canopy, along with our sense of direction. As we looked up from the forest floor, we saw that the woods around us, which had been a familiar scene of sunlit clearings and meandering paths just moments before, had abruptly changed to a vast area of dark brown shadows that was unfamiliar and confusing.
The proprietor of the foraging trip firm Dzūkijos Uoga, our guide Tom Baltušis, had also observed it. “This feeling has a particular term in Lithuania. Nugrybauti: lost while mushroom foraging in the wild.
These woodlands in southern Lithuania’s Djūkija National Park have a special appeal to a country so obsessed with foraging. The largest park in Lithuania is within an hour’s drive from Vilnius, the country’s capital.
