Simon climbed out of the river and onto the bank, reaching for a white towel he'd draped over a boulder. The sun in its oblique angle didn't offer much heat, but after he'd towelled off, he stood on the sandy riverside and with his eyes closed faced the light until he could feel it reach inside him and scour what the rushing water could not reach. He'd pitched camp near the eastern border of Quebec the previous morning. Here, in these forests, he could replenish some of his supplies, despite the lateness of the season. The eastern provinces were a better source for some of the mosses and lichens he could not find in such abundance out west. Club moss and Asclepias. He scoured the forest floor for seedpods, herbs and fungus. The evening before he'd had the marvellous luck of discovering a cluster of Laetiporus cincinnatus, the mushroom foolishly called 'chicken of the woods' by those who could not liken a food to itself, and although he did not usually eat fungi, he had been losing weight lately from his exertions, and needed to give his stomach something to work on.
