From supermodel to queen of mushrooms – on the road with Saimi Hoyer in the Finnish forests

That she is here now with a basket, hiking boots, white blouse andSaimi Hoyer himself would probably have least suspected that he would be trudging through the forest with glasses in his hair. After all, she used to walk the catwalks of the world. Lived in Tokyo, Paris and Florence, modeled forandand started a dazzling TV career in the 2000s. Her fair face with elf-white eyebrows and fiery red curls is not easily forgotten. Yes, the camera light made her happy. Gave her energy. And freedom. Until she was locked in a hospital room for two years at the age of 37.

An autoimmune disease with the complicated name hypogammaglobulinemia was debilitatingSammy HoyersHer immune system was so strong that she got one infection after another: salmonella sepsis, adenovirus... When things became very critical, a priest came for the final anointing. But she survived. For two long years, the native Finn only saw a single tree outside the window of her hospital room. And swore to himself: “I will live until I reach Punkaharju; back to the place of my soul, in the vast forests of my childhood.” Her second life emerged from this promise to herself. “My real purpose on this earth,” as the 50-year-old says today.

“All the medication meant I couldn’t smell anymore. Taste nothing. “Feeling nothing,” recalls the now 50-year-old. With numb fingers, she collected her first mushrooms around her cottage in Punkaharju. For example, a Hygrophorus camarophyllus, which smells of honey, incense and nutmeg. Or the delicate green-blue Clitocybe odora, which she likes to use to make an anise-flavored sorbet.

More than 5,500 different types of mushrooms grow in their homeland, the Finnish Lake DistrictSaimaa. Always near trees, because they live in and with trees in symbiosis. 300 of them are edible. “When I wander through the birch forests today, I always have oil and salt and pepper with me – some types taste best raw!” Anyone who accompanies the mother of two almost grown sons on her search will soon share her fascination for the magical world of mushrooms. “They have their own beauty and shape. They are miracle tubers with tons of different aromas, an underground system that helps trees communicate with each other.”

From a biological point of view, fungi belong to their own kingdom alongside animals and plants. However, only since 1969. In the Middle Ages, people still believed that mushrooms were not living beings. They were later classified as plants. “Isn’t it crazy?” Saimi Hoyer marvels, “Mushrooms are still completely underestimated today. Molds as penicillin are one of our strongest weapons against this. And a honey mushroom in Oregon, America, is the largest living creature in the world: weighing 400,000 kilos, up to 8,500 years old, measuring nine square kilometers – a giant mushroom.” Thanks to their tiny spores, fungi are omnipresent and yet rarely obvious. Many grow hidden as a finely branched network, the so-called mycelium. However, we often only notice those species that form fruiting bodies. “Mushrooms surround us everywhere, we breathe them, we even have them in our bodies,” says Saimi Hoyer.

While she usually walks alone through the forest for up to twelve hours and “feels closer to nature and myself than ever in my life,” the mushroom expert and successful author offers hikes and workshops, culinary evenings and cruises in the fall. Your homelandSaimaais the largest lake district in Western Europe, over 13,000 lakes make the region a natural paradise. “The Finnish right of everyone allows collecting. “But 98 percent of all mushrooms in the country are not harvested,” she says.

What a treasure! As a source of food, as a raw material for clothing or in medicine. “I drink tea made from dried birch sponge every morning. That strengthens meHoyer is convinced. But it's not just the nutrients in the mushrooms that are driving the growing fascination with the tubers. The associated walks accompanied by the essential oils of the tree resins are also making mushroom picking increasingly popular. Like forest bathing, only with harvest. And maybe even a hike to yourself – like Saimi Hoyer. Or to put it in her words: “Mushrooms teach us that everything is connected to everything else.”