We had permanent pasture on our dairy farm and one corner of the pasture was timber. We maintained a fence through that north end of the farm and it ran through our woods. There is a family story my folks used to tell about mushrooms and me. Before I had started school my parents took me out to the timber to fix fence. That was a chore saved for the spring to repair any damage to the fence before putting the cows to pasture when the grass greened up. As the story goes I wandered off into the timber while my Mom and Dad were working on the fence and when I returned I had a baseball cap full of morel mushrooms, the big creamy ones not the little grays. Mom used to tell the story and she would say that the first thing my Dad did when he saw the mushrooms was to kneel down, look me right in the eye and say “David, where did you get these?” I led them back to the spot where we found gobs more of them. My Mom and Dad looked at each other, laughed, and hugged me. Their laughter echoed through the timber. Later that night my Mom split a mess of those morels in two with a paring knife, floured them, and fried them in butter. She served them hot and salted. We smiled, the three of us, as we ate them in the kitchen.
So I’m in the ravine behind my house, walking slowly, looking at the ground. I can’t concentrate. That’s why I’m not a good mushroom hunter. To do it right you scan the ground slowly, imagining the shape of a mushroom, sweeping back and forth with your eyes, looking closely at the leaves, the twigs, trying to pick up that spongy top of a morel. The mushrooms are nearly the same color as the timber floor. It’s tricky. I get distracted.
The best mushroom hunting happens when you can barely see the first purple on the red bud trees. Some of the other trees are just showing green, but you can still see through them. It’s beautiful. If you are lucky enough to get a hot day soon after a rain the mushrooms pop up, some say, overnight. I have a hard time keeping my gaze on the ground. I love this time of year. I keep looking at the trees. I sit down on a stump and let the quiet take over. Its spring and life is good. I look at the back of my hands. They are starting to look old. Brown spots are beginning to show under the skin below my knuckles.
Off in the distance I see some May apples coming up. A farmer up the road, Bait Correll, always looked for May apples when hunting mushrooms. He thought May apples grew in the same rich dirt that grew morel mushrooms. Bait never took anyone with him to hunt mushrooms because he wanted to keep his spots secret. My Mom, whom Dad always said was a lot better mushroom hunter than he, looked for dead elm trees that had shed their bark. Her idea was the bark on the ground helped the mushrooms grow. They had lots of different theories, those people who long ago hunted morels in the woods around Danvers. If they were alive today they would be over 100 years old. They lived their whole lives on those little farms, milking cows, raising kids, hunting mushrooms, enjoying life.
It starts to spit a little rain while I am on the stump so I get up and start back to the house. I look only half heartedly for mushrooms on the way back. Actually the morels were pretty safe from me. I look for dead trees that could be cut for firewood. It will be a job to get them up the slope and into my yard. I’ll save that work for another day, maybe in the fall. This day, this beautiful spring day, is one made for thinking, and remembering, and finding mushrooms if I’m lucky. But really, I think I have both found and eaten more than my share of morels during this life. This year I’ll let those mushrooms, wherever they are, grow for someone else.
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