Forging and the Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon
Have you ever found out about a new style or trend or been shopping for a new car, and suddenly noticed them appear almost everywhere you look? This is known as the Baader Meinhof Phenomenon.
Our senses (sight, sound, smell, touch) work closely with our brain to process a myriad of information. As incredible as our brains are, there is simply too much to pay attention to at all times without getting totally overloaded, so our brains have developed a sort of “override” system for “unnecessary” information. This means we could be looking right at something and just not see it. Until, however, we give our brains the right cues that will help us see what we *want* to.
Humans are descended from hunters and gatherers. Our brains are hardwired for triggers (stimulus) and rewards because of our ancestors’ reliance on foraging for food. An unfortunate side effect of our industrialized society and the availability of food in grocery stores, foraging has become a bit of a lost art, but thankfully, it’s not that hard to retrain our brains to be on the lookout for food.
Looking at the leaf canopy or the littered forest floor, it’s pretty difficult to see much of anything besides leaves and trees, until you get really specific with your brain about what exactly it is you’re looking for. Take chanterelle mushrooms, for example. I had chanterelles for the first time at my sister’s house seven years ago. She told me she’d found them in the woods. Every time I went in the woods after that, I found myself scanning the forest floor for chanterelles. But I never found any, because I hadn’t given my brain enough information yet to know what to “look for.”
It wasn’t until I’d looked at dozens of pictures of chanterelles online, learned about the different species, their favorite hiding spots, and *when and *where I should be looking.
“The woods” wasn’t specific enough. “On north-facing slopes, right after a rain in September, near the roots of broadleaf deciduous trees, such as beech and oak” got me a lot closer. And then once I’d found my first one “in the wild,” I suddenly started seeing them EVERYWHERE. (For more information on safe mushroom hunting, check out this blog post).
I’m not a big fan of hiking, but people seem to like to do that, so I realized that combining my love of food and foraging with what most people call “hiking,” and I became a fan as well. I’ve learned a ton from reading books and looking online, but as with most things, I learn best when I can find a friend to point the first few treasures out to me. Then, I let my brain and my eagle eye go to work.
In the woods behind our house here in TN, I’ve already found over 30 species of mushroom (12 edible), all kinds of nuts like walnuts, pecans, chestnuts, lots of fruit- blackberries, raspberries, wild grapes, persimmons, and, most importantly, PAWPAWs.
You can check out my Tennessee foraging log here! I’m doing my best to document all my findings and keep a record of what grows natively around me.