A First-Timer's Guide to Mushroom Foraging - The Source

We meet for a second date. Since dating in Central Oregon immediately requires a shared seasonal outdoor activity — such as snowshoeing, hiking, or boating — we decide to go camping.

Hiking beside an undisclosed river near an equally undisclosed campground (see — I’ve already learned the first rule of Fight Club, err, Forage Club — don’t talk about where you forage) he spots something in the dirt. He reaches down and quickly unearths a large, beautiful mushroom seemingly out of nowhere.

“Was it a chanterelle?” My friend, also a forager, asks when I recount the story a few days later.

“Yes,” I say, surprised at how quickly my friend clocks it. “Then he chopped it up and added it to the chicken marsala he made that night in a cast iron skillet over the campfire. It was absolutely delicious.”

“That was a good move, huh?” my friends asks.

“Yup. Sure was.”

“Where was this again?”

So of course I tell my friend the exact location.

After dating into week three and passing an incognito background check (he just has a wilderness permit violation in 2014 to really worry about) I trust him enough to drive us deep into the woods and he trusts me enough to reveal his foraging sites so I can write about it for all of Central Oregon to read. But don’t get too excited yet, I think we are still dating, so there will be no identifying site information here. That’s the second rule of Fight Clu-, err, Forage Club.

I also learn two rules that every beginner should know: Never munch on a hunch and never eat a mushroom raw.

We veer off one of the many generic tree-lined mountain pass highways. I am informed that it is the top-secret spot and to tell no one, so it’s good that I actually miss seeing the sign for the turn-off because I am writing notes. Mostly, this:

Did you bring a whistle?

I did.

Good. Three is an emergency situation. Two is ‘I found chanterelles.’ One is ‘where are you at?’ We can also Marco Polo. He pauses. Hey, what’s that crow doing?

When I look up we are on a forest road. We are searching for three things: rock rings for camping, construction tape on trees identifying previous forage sites that replenish about 10 days after a harvest, and mushrooms because, well, mushrooms.

The truck suddenly stops and I lurch forward. He removes his hand from my knee because, well, mushrooms, and he reverses the truck to pull it over.

Immediately we see different varietals: coral mushrooms that resemble undersea castles and devil’s tooth mushrooms that appear to bleed into the earth. We primarily seek white and golden chanterelles whose local season runs from September to the frozen ground in November. The ‘scaly,’ or an inedible species of chanterelle, are also present.

If mushrooms are cut and not edible, I learn that good practice is to toss them against a tree to release spores for propagation. A drop kick also works, harkening back to my half-hearted hacky-sack days as a teenager in a location not too far from this one.

Back in the car we spot a fire ring and set up camp for the night to breathe with the trees and a frog croaking in near-perfect gumption. We gear up for my first forage. He hands me a knife and says to always carry it open — no, just kidding if you are reading this I remember you said it’s the opposite — and make sure I have my brightly colored shirt, long pants and brimmed hat to reduce eye pokes from branches when we step off trail.

And it is off trail where everything changes.

Every step fills with an originality and rawness of wonder. It all connects. There is no one way anymore, no single path. The leaves and soil and moss and sticks create the map. I look up at treetops and talk to birds while he looks down toward the earth and spots signs of bear skat a little loose from too many half-consumed mushrooms.

He sees one, and then I do: two big white chanterelles. I squat down close to the earth.

Remove leaves and sticks that may have grown with the mushroom. Push down into the soil, feel the stem. It must connect to so much.

Open the blade, point the knife away from the thumb, cut. The mushroom releases easily. It is cool and firm and delicate. Brush off some of the dirt, as it’s best to clean mushrooms every step of the way. Place in a collecting bag.

I stand up.

“Once you see one, then you start seeing them everywhere,” he says.

This is perhaps not a metaphorical statement that I think he is expressing about awareness and expanding consciousness when we start noticing things that we don’t usually notice. Rather, since he is an earth sign on the zodiac wheel, he likely means that mushrooms grow in groves and next to one another. Where there is one, there are many. They act as sponges, he explains, which is why a healthy environment is so vital.

Upon returning to camp he hands me the feather of a Steller’s jay. I stare at an indigo blue so specific in its color I’m not sure it’s found anywhere else. A moment of contrast, of truth.

We exist in these symbiotic relationships with awareness and non-awareness of networks that connect above and below, left and right, me and you. Me and him. Even to the campfire that night when I chop up the white chanterelles and place them in the oil to create the cast iron sizzle, and watch.

When we finally see it, we see: rejuvenation is wherever we are (which may oftentimes be an undisclosed, top-secret and beautiful site.)

Note: Be sure to check out local foraging regulations before venturing into the known and unknown.

Dirt, decay, life.