In the forests full of mines, Ukrainians find mushrooms and resilience

ZDVYZHIVKA, Ukraine – Deep in a pine forest north of Kiev, the Ukrainian capital, a beautiful mushroom has warmed its brown cap in the gentle autumn sun:

it was an almost irresistible scene for Ukrainian mushroom pickers.

But all around was danger.

On the mossy forest floor were row upon row of trenches from last winter’s Battle of Kiev, and countless mines and shells without exploding.

Weighing the risk of mines and the lure of their prey, thousands of Ukrainians hunted mushrooms in the first season since the Russian invasion.

Now they are in the post-harvest phase of the season, counting their haul and preparing to save it for the harsh winter ahead.

The risk may seem extreme for what has long been considered a pastoral hobby, but Ukrainian mushroom pickers see it differently.

They are fond of their peaceful walks in the woods and see in them a sign of Ukraine’s resilience and a way of preserve ordinary lifein time of war.

“I wanted to go back to a quiet life,” says Dmytro Poyedynok, 52, a yoga teacher from the Kiev suburb of Bucha, who was mushroom hunting one late autumn day.

He said he considers these mushroom hikes “symbolic for me, in that it’s a peaceful hunt” in a forest that has seen so much violence.

In clearings and meadows tanks burst rust.

Earlier this fall, while hunting for mushrooms, he came across a child’s makeshift grave.

People who have experienced the horrors of war often find great comfort in routine.

But now many have lost their jobs and rely on mushrooms to earn money and store food for the winter.

The mushroom diggers may have lost loved ones, but they weren’t about to lose the glimpses of their former lives they found in the misty, damp autumn forests.

As the war drags on into its tenth month, the Ukrainian government and people remain defiant, even as electricity goes out, water taps run out and apartments hover in freezing temperatures from lack of heating, while missiles Russians attack infrastructure targets.

The Ukrainians, many of whom have second homes in the city and are attached to the countryside even though they live in the city, have said they won’t kneel before anyone, but would to pick potatoes or photograph mushrooms.

So Poyedynok cycled through the pine forests around Bucha, carrying a few plastic bags, which he did all his life.

He experienced the occupation of Bucha, a month of horror in which Russian soldiers shot civilians and left their bodies in the streets.

He says his uncle was killed and that he was arrested and threatened with execution.

Forests in occupied areas continue to be heavily mined.

Mines and unexploded ordnance cover thousands of square kilometers of Ukrainian territory, according to Interior Minister Denys Monastyrsky.

The Ukrainian government has asked the population not to pick mushrooms and the government agency for forest resources has imposed formal constraints walk through the forests of nine Ukrainian provinces, including the region around Kiev where Poyedynok is heading towards.

But specialists say it will take at leastit’s a decade clearing forests and many Ukrainians were not willing to wait that long before returning to their favorite hobby.

Reports of mine-digging mushroom hunters came regularly from the nine provinces where walking through the forest was prohibited.

The figures aren’t huge for a war believed to have killed tens of thousands of people: da three or four people by region they stepped on landmines, dying or losing their legs, while foraging for mushrooms, according to local authorities.

“In general, people are careful, but not everyone is,” said Viktoria Ruban, a spokeswoman for the Kyiv province’s emergency service, who responded to calls when mushroom pickers trampled landmines.

Poyedynok held massive yoga classes, but only a few of his students stayed in Ukraine.

The money he can earn from teaching has dropped sharply, and mushrooms, as often happens in times of famine or hardship in Ukraine, have helped him.

He said he managed to collect 250 kilos of mushrooms.

His family kept most of the mushrooms for the winter and gave many away to friends and family.

. They also started selling mushrooms.

Some of the buyers are mushroom pickers who crave the thrills of the pastime but are too cautious to venture into the woods.

“Those who always go to pick mushrooms, but are now scared, began to visit us only to smell, to look at them,” says Poyedynok’s wife Yana Poyedynok, “and eventually they started buying them.”

Subsistence

The family has earned some $1,000 this season by selling mushrooms.

“It’s not a lot,” says Yana Poyedynok, 44, “but it covered some small expenses.”

Most of the time, Dmytro Poyedynok went out picking mushrooms by himself.

After the hike with his family, when he stumbled upon the boy’s grave, his wife and son began to be afraid of the forests, and now they rarely go with him.

They only go to forests they have been to before and which they regard as such insurance.

As Russian soldiers withdraw from Ukraine, the celebration is often short-lived.

Bodies are soon found and stories of atrocities against civilians emerge.

But those are past deaths.

Forest dangers threaten death today and tomorrow.

In September, when most of the northeastern Kharkiv region was retaken, it was right in the middle of the mushroom season.

Within a few weeks, reports of mushroom pickers trampling the mines began to arrive.

According to local authorities, three people were as of October mutilated in the reclaimed forests.

In a forest on the outskirts of Izium, a city of Kharkiv, investigators found hundreds of graves with civilians and a mass grave where, according to authorities, Ukrainian soldiers appeared to be buried.

Next to this forest lives 65-year-old Raisa Derevianko.

In September, he watched the exhumation of human remains from a bench in front of his home.

You can now observe the demining work.

Mushroom season came and went, but she never made it to the woods.

“This is all awful,” says Derevianko, referring to the mass graves.

“But what I want most is for them to finish clearing my forest. I miss mushrooms so much.”

c.2022 The New York Times Society