In the woods something stirred

Walking through the woods above the village where I live, could sometimes be a weird experience - a feeling of being watched!  Figures flitting silently between trees, momentarily concealing themselves behind the broad trunk of one the numerous leafy chestnut trees - only  to appear, nonchalantly on the trail some hundred metres ahead. As we pass I am greeted with a smile and 'Buongiorno' , ten seconds later they have disappeared.  A figment of my imagination?  No, they are funghi hunters searching for a particular mushroom, the' porcini'.  A secretive world.  Porcini pickers each have their favourite spots amongst shady glades of the chestnut trees, so secret that it is rumoured they will not reveal them to members of their own family!  Now I am accepted as just a 'crazy Englishman' who walks for hours just because he likes walking through the woods and they quite often show me what they have gathered, secure in the knowledge that I will not know where to look for their porcini.  If they realised that the 'rather large watch' on my wrist was a GPS trail recording device on which I could record their location - it would be a different matter.  They are safe, I have no intention of spoiling a centuries old tradition of secrecy, and if I do find any porcini it will be the traditional way - poking around the leaf covered roots of the chestnut tree - and not with the aid of technology!