Slowly but surely, I am learning the ways of this new forest I live in. The woods of the Upper Midwest are entirely different from the Sierra Nevada, and the learning curve has been as steep as those peaks. But I’ve started to be able to find mushrooms on my own, finally.
To be sure, I am still relying on my mushroom mentors for general locations, but once there, I’ve started to get the hang of the exact sorts of ground that might hold this or that forest treasure.
Right now it’s chanterelle season, and in my area there are two species of chanterelle popping: One that’s all yellow, and one with white stems. The one with white stems, Cantharellus phasmatis, the “ghost chanterelle,” is better because it is more resistant to bugs. This is a new species for me, and that tip was from my friends Alan and Michael. (Apparently there’s a third and even fourth chanterelle here: One in Wisconsin, C. spectaculus, and one up north, C. formosus I think)
The two chanties popping now like oaks and moss and grass. So once I get to a spot, I wander around looking for big oaks — big trees tend to be more mycologically active than little ones — and then try to find areas with moss and grass around them. It’s been working so far.
Gotta tell ya, though, that first time I put it all together felt like a win. Each mushroom has a “code” in terms of where and when you look for it. And I am finding that the codes I’ve learned in the West over the past two decades are only marginally applicable here. So I am constantly getting that rush you get from success at a new endeavor, even though I’ve been mushrooming for a very long time.
Each trip I make, solo or otherwise, is an information dump. I learn that this tree or that is likely to foster mushrooms, that a certain ground cover is what you’re looking for when it comes to X or Y mushroom, that if you see Mushroom A, you’ll likely find Mushroom B nearby — amanitas and boletes are like that.
I also learn that what are to me subtle differences in terrain can make a big difference. Back in the Sierra Nevada, we’re always looking at altitude and slope aspect, i.e., 7000 feet on a north face. Here, where even the hills aren’t terribly high, my mountain-trained mind doesn’t really pick up that there’s a difference. But there absolutely is.
Even a few hundred feet higher than base level ground can delay or advance a mushroom by a week or more. And those slope aspects apply here, too. Sunny and south-facing? Tougher for the shrooms.
Another piece of Western mushroom hunting applies here, too: Rain maps. In the West, shroomers scan rainfall maps intently because it can rain like hell on one side of one mountain, but not on another mountain, or even on the other slope of the same mountain! Things are not so precise here, but it matters nonetheless.
I was in Wisconsin last weekend, and it was not nearly as wet as it has been here in the Twin Cities. That plus different soils and different altitude — we were about 500 feet above where I live in St Paul — meant that the mushrooms where thinner on the ground, but less waterlogged than here. I went to another Wisconsin spot and it was downright dry because the soils there were sand.
The big picture in all this is one of self discovery.
We are all learning new things all the time, and most of you reading this do so by reading or watching about your topic, and then, ideally, having another human skilled in that thing show you the ropes in person. That all sets you up for your own adventures, whether it’s foraging, hunting and fishing, language learning, science experiments, cooking, relationships.
You will fail. (I fail all the time.) You will, in this current example, wander the woods many times and return home fruitless but wiser — although, speaking of fruit, I didn’t get any mushrooms in that dry, sandy spot, but I did score a basket of black cap raspberries!
That’s another piece of this process.
In my wanderings, I often discover spots and other treasures that maybe the person referring me to that spot didn’t know about — the raspberries, in this case. That’s a way both mentor and student can help each other: You may tell me about one aspect of a thing, I go off and explore that thing, and maybe I return with another point of view, a new observation, or even a bowl of raspberries…
I am jealous of your temperate summers. I assume that mushroom hunting in Texas is done in entirely different seasons. Luckily, I have enough hobbies I'm still learning that I don't need to pick this one up, as fun as it sounds to wander through the woods doing this.
It’s amazing how even seemingly small geographical distances can yield different species and subspecies - e.g western Mass to upstate NY to Maine. Always learning. All the time. ✌️