For as long as I can remember I have hunted mushrooms with my grandfather. Over the years, every late summer and autumn we would routinely hunt for mushrooms in our local forests, grandad leading the walks, whilst I followed him. We hardly ever talked, except to examine specimens and to indicate a good find. I learned to memorise grandad's secret mushroom spots, hidden under and around rocks, where the mushrooms would appear without fail. Grandad advised me each year again and again which mushrooms were good for cooking, drying or pickling, which were edible, which were bitter and, of course, the few that were poisonous. He would make a mark if I missed a particular mushroom hiding place; the one that was hard to spot close to a particular landmark that only he seemed to recognise. He secretly enjoyed the fact that his memory of the mushroom growing places was far better than mine. I learned to face my fear of adders (there were many encounters) and of getting lost. With grandad at my side, I knew I was safe. I also learned to like the taste of mushrooms, although this was a long time in the making. For many years I stubbornly refused to eat any of the mushrooms we collected. To me, they tasted of ‘the forest'. As I grew older, the mushroom hunts became an eagerly anticipated yearly ritual; an escape from London, where I lived at the time. For grandad, I suspected, the forest provided time alone, but also a continuation of family tradition. As a boy he had hunted mushrooms with his mother. Now it is me who walks the same trails hunted by my grandfather and great grandmother before me. When I interviewed grandad about the mushroom hunts, grandma interrupted the conversation (as she often did) to tell astory of how her mother-in-law, collecting a surfeit of lingonberries in the forest and without the means to carry them safely, had unashamedly stuffed them in her underwear. Grandma laughed as she recounted how she had resolved not to eat them. For grandad the forest and mushroom hunts were a way to exercise, he told me, as well as to collect a reserve of mushrooms to pickle for winter. But mostly, he said, they wereabout the excitement of the hunt and the thrill of finding mushrooms. It is the thrill of the hunt that I too was hooked on from early on. The mushrooms are well hidden in the forest bed, near invisible among the colourful autumn leaves that pave the forest floor. Countless times I was excited to find what I thought was a bright yellow mushroom, only to be disappointed on discovering it was an autumn leaf. The hunt gets you hooked.You always want to go just a little further, in case you will find some more. I would spend manyhours with grandad, walking the forest and often cycling to different parts of the forest. He would never use the brakesgoing downhill. I followed him, cycling more cautiously. At home, grandma and mum worried, imagining we had got lost or had an accident. Towards grandad’s later years, our walks got shorter and our roles reversed. Now I led the hunt and grandad followed with his walking frame. We rarely exchanged words. The intimacy of our relationship was communicated through the rhythm of the walk, our love of the forest and the shared satisfactions of successful hunting. We had no need to speak. Grandad passed away in February 2020 at the age of 93. The last year I took photos for the series was 2019. That year, I hunted the mushrooms alone and took them to grandad’s house where I cooked them for him. It was on this walk that I took the last images of one of our favourite mushroom hunting groundswhich has now disappeared; the trees cut down and sold, the ecosystem changed. The mushrooms will most likely not grow again there in my lifetime. My grandfather’s name was Kaino. In Finnish it is a name derived from adjectives meaning ‘shy’ or ‘timid’. It is how I always thought of the mushrooms, hiding in the undergrowth, revealing themselves only to those who had learned to read the forest. July 2020