The Morel

In the uncertain world of mushrooming, there is a very certain, easily spotted, unforgivable crime. If one is out looking for mushrooms, one is not foraging for mushrooms. If you happen upon someone, in the woods, or the coffee shop, or in the cubicle three feet away, and they proclaim that they have been out foraging for mushrooms, you must view this is a sign that this person has not actually foraged for mushrooms. For someone who has actively engaged in the dark art of mushroom finding and keeping and, ultimately, eating, would never consider the task to be foraging. Foraging is a word that sounds civilized. Refined even. The word evokes an image of some guy wearing a backpack and Lands End shirts and pants with too many pockets and zippers, and shoes built for the outdoors, happily, lazily, traipsing through the woods, per chance spotting a mushroom and gently cradling it in his earthy hands before laying it to rest inside his pack. This is what foraging sounds like to me, and this is not what mushroom hunting is like, not now, not ever.

I spent a few moments, and by moments I mean hours, over the past week which is my birthday week (I celebrate the entire week, not just the day), on my hands and knees, crawling through raspberry patches and up muddy slopes. I spent time enduring the outdoors in a way that I have generally avoided during my first 33 years. I haven’t avoided the woods, I just haven’t had my eyes glued to the ground in a desperate search to locate the fungi that has been my prize: the Morel. I’ve been told that other people take to the woods to look for other varieties of mushrooms. Some people look for those saddle looking ones and grow off the sides of downed trees that find most of their fame in children’s picture books as a likely imagined resting place for talking frogs. Other people gladly hoard those big puff ball mushrooms. These people are strange and are best left to their perverted pursuit.

The mushroom Morel is a rare variety prized for it’s delicate flavor that can best be called, as analyzed by my sophisticated palate, mushroomy. Perhaps nutty. The mushrooms are rare, are not readily available commercially. They grow in early May, and if not captured within mere days of emerging, they will whither and dry and provide their dried cap as a billboard to anyone who later stumbles upon it. The billboard says “You, sir, are an idiot. I died three days ago”. I have seen this, and cursed my timing. But this is less about the Morel itself, for though the flavor is divine and many of the highest end restaurants will boast their inclusion on their menu, the true joy of the Morel is not found on the tongue, it’s found on the forest floor. To truly understand the Morel, you must hunt for it.

There is no foraging for Morels. There is only the hunt. These mushrooms might not move, and they might not bite, but they most certainly fight and hide and prove elusive to my strained eyes. I have looked for Morels for long enough that I can close my eyes and see their honeycombed dome peaking out from the leaf litter, and in my tortured sleep I see morels here and morels there, in fact I see them everywhere. But this is when I sleep, and this is when my mind teases me with things that it knows I cannot consciously accomplish. And so, the hunt is played out in private woods and public woods, woods that are filled to overflowing with ticks and thorns and No Trespassing signs. The idea is simple: walk through the woods, spot Morels, gently pluck the Morels and set them in a pouch. The reality is much darker. It’s a sweaty mix of scratches that bloody arms, and perhaps hours spent wandering without spotting a single Morel. Those are lost hours that bruise both soul and pride. It is the intense strain of spotting Elm bark and sojourning over fence lines to the grove of dead trees just beyond that hill that look so promising. It’s the emotional defeat when that dead patch of trees yields not a single Morel.

But there are minutes success in the hours of defeat, and there are untold moments when your eyes spot a Morel here and another there. A third and a fourth. Large yellows and small grays, and elusive half frees. When the first is spotted, confidence soars, and eyes focus. You pinch the first one and then the second, moving swiftly and certainly under the impossible impression that if not harvested quickly they will duck and dip under a leaf or under a loose strip of fallen bark. Here’s one! Get him! Got you! These are cries of Morel passion, and they are voiced instinctively when your eyes no longer betray and the Morel mirage proves real. There are times when the scratches on your arms mean nothing, and when the near certain promise of a round of antibiotics due to the inevitable Lyme’s disease seems a fair trade for a pound of fungus.

The definition of Morel hunting success must be put in some perspective for you. Walworth County morel success is not generally measured in pounds captured, as a solid haul of Morels might mean only 20 or 30 found in two hours or more. There are stories of hunters arriving at a tree and finding dozens and dozens of large Morels, but these stories are mere fairy tales to me. They might be the fairy tales that fill my dreams and consume my thoughts, but they are tales nonetheless. The hunt for morels will continue for me, for at least the next week while the season lasts. I will spray so much Cutter on my arms and clothes, and I will walk into the woods in search of an item far more elusive than any hunted animal has ever been. If you’re wondering where, exactly, my friends and I have been finding Morels around Lake Geneva, and if you were to ask me that question with specificity, then it would be obvious to me that you don’t understand the rules of Morel hunting. Rule #1: You don’t talk about Morel locations. Rules two and three are the same.