Mushroom Anna's Adventures

I am always impressed that no matter how diverse National Forest users are (4 legged, 2 legged, spore bearing, cone bearing, it’s quite a varied crowd), we all share one commonality. We need this place, and we’d all throw a righteous hissy fit if something were to happen to our preferred habitat. “Come now Anna, you cannot possibly need the woods. The National Forests enrich your life, but you’ve lived in concrete boxes before without perishing,” you might reply. This is only half-true. Before I discovered my love of mycology and started to revel in the places it brings me to, I was bordering on spiritual code blue. But this is not an entry about my pre-mushroom angst, or a litany about hating the city. I will firmly maintain, however, that learning wildcraft changed my psyche and fed a soul that was starving for some source of joy and truth in a monkey-world gone mad. And I am far from alone. 

Most obvious to me are the other mushroom people— there is a fervor, a light spring in the step when you see a mycophile in his or her element, be it the woods, lab, cultivation workshop or at the identification table. For those who hunt as voraciously as I do, the woods feel like an innately correct milieu— a place where the senses come alive, the mind clears itself, and primal intuition functions keenly. It just feels RIGHT. 

There are other woodland denizens as well, of course. Sometimes my encounters with them are positive, other times not so much. Often, other people who use the woods are flustered and confused that I would hunt fungus— as though these fruiting bodies are no more than the vilest veggie in the world. I delight in disabusing them of this notion, and encouraging them to see my pursuit as a legitimate pastime. 

In particular, off roaders, shooters, anglers and other red-blooded Americans find me a strange bedfellow, and raise an eyebrow when they pass my camp and its profusion of identification guides and stem butt shavings. I am well aware that Americans are generally mycophobic, and I’ve become accustomed to discussing my passion with people only to see them shudder, cringe or furrow the brow and urge me to do something less dangerous. It does however surprise me even more when one of my fellow Forest addicts reacts in such a way, and I endeavor at every turn to engage these individuals in a way that will help them understand how simply rapturous it is to spent time in the Forest pursuing mushrooms. 

The reason I stick with this ferociously positive attitude stems from an experience I had not long ago in the Tahoe National Forest during the spring porcini season. I spent the day sliding down and trudging up steep, snow-soaked hillsides, filling my basket with all manner of edible fungi: Clavatia sculpta (sculpted puffballs), Gyromitra montana (snowbank false morels), Spring King porcini (Boletus rex veris), the oft maligned and semi-deadly false morel (Gyromitra esculenta, one of my favorites from a flavor and texture perspective, by the by) etc and so on. I was pretty pleased with myself when I decided to pitch camp at the head of an earthen road that wound down into a shaded mountain meadow. 

In the semi-dusk, I managed to burn my paw on my cooking pot, and so I trudged over to a 4’ deep snowbank and stuck my stinging finger into it, cursing myself for being too lazy to deploy the headlamp in the gloom, and for not bringing a stick of butter on my camping trip. I heard the whizzing growl of an approaching dirtbike, and craned my gaze over my shoulder to see a middle aged man, somewhat rotund but still fit, come zooming up the switchbacked forest service road. He evidently spotted me because he throttled back instead of taking the next curve with all the juice his bike could summon. Sure enough, he made a beeline for me and my snowdrift, coming to a shuddering, puttering halt about 2 yards away. 

“Hey, have you seen another fella pass by here on a bike?” He killed the engine, saving me the task of hollering my reply.

“Can’t say I have, sorry. I did just make camp about 20 minutes ago, so I haven’t been posted up all that long.”

The helmet nodded. “OK, well if you see another dude riding an orange dirtbike, can you tell him I went back?”

“Sure thing.” 

“Hey, did you hurt your hand or something?” I blushed.

“Um yeah, I burned my finger a little bit. It’s not bad.”

“What are you doing out here alone?”

I shrugged and squeezed the snow a little tighter. “Hunting mushrooms. Found some good ones today!” 

His face blanched. Pale as a sheet, he quaked, “Oh jesus, you should be careful. That is SUCH A DANGEROUS HOBBY.”

I tried to examine him using my Wise Mind. I saw a man enjoying his day. He was a lover of engines, moderate speeds, trees, places that folks don’t typically visit. I guessed he was married with kids, and supposed he’d been biking these forest roads and dirt paths since he before he finished his Eagle Scout project. I also tried to put myself in his shoes for a second, in a limited way: I imagined taking up his hobby right this moment, bodychecking him off his bike and tear-assing off into the woods to find the burliest mud pits, gnarliest log jumps, clutchest curves I could. I blanched, pale as a sheet, and quaked, “Your hobby is also REALLY DANGEROUS. You should be careful, too.”

He thought about it for a second, rocking back on his narrow seat and letting a small smile play on his wide, honest face. 

“Not if you know what you’re doing.” 

A pause.

“I saw some mushrooms in the meadow down that way,” he pointed past my truck and into the darkening depths of the Forest. “They looked like golf balls, or the top of a meringue pie. Big, too.” He cupped his hands to show me the size.

“Oh yeah, those are puffballs most likely,” I replied. “They cook up like tofu if they’re solid white inside. Good for the fry pan.”

The small smile spread a little wider, got a little more knowing. 

“Mushrooms still give me the creeps, but that’s completely cool.”

My socially anxious hand cooled down and stopped melting the snowbank, and the pain of my burned finger retreated underneath a small charge of glee.

“Thanks for the tip.”

“No problem. Happy hunting. If you see my buddy, tell him to hurry on in, cause that snow-chilled Coors won’t last all night.”

It may sound cliched because it is, but Woody Guthrie’s words resounded in my ears as I bedded down that night:

This land is your land, this land is my land

From California, to the New York Island

From the redwood forest, to the gulf stream waters

This land was made for you and me

As I was walking a ribbon of highway

I saw above me an endless skyway

I saw below me a golden valley

This land was made for you and me

I’ve roamed and rambled and I’ve followed my footsteps

To the sparkling sands of her diamond deserts

And all around me a voice was sounding

This land was made for you and me

The sun comes shining as I was strolling

The wheat fields waving and the dust clouds rolling

The fog was lifting a voice come chanting

This land was made for you and me

As I was walkin’  -  I saw a sign there

And that sign said - no tress passin’

But on the other side  …. it didn’t say nothin!

Now that side was made for you and me!

In the squares of the city - In the shadow of the steeple

Near the relief office - I see my people

And some are grumblin’ and some are wonderin’

If this land’s still made for you and me.