Morel Lust

The news came in last night, just as the sun was sinking into Lake Champlain. "Hey, hey, hey! Found my first blacks today!!!" Local forager Moore Mushrooms was starting off the season right, somehow managing to find the proverbial needle in the parched and sprawling haystack. We added morels to the ForageCast on Monday, but with the caveat that only a good rainstorm would send these finicky fruiters up from the earth. Moore must have been out at his secret spots with a watering can, lovingly coaxing those blacks out of the ground. His harvest was modest, but enough to send me into a frenzy.

We grabbed a flashlight and drove off to check on an abandoned parking lot where we had just missed a collection of bloated blacks last spring. Our spot was barren, our disappointment palpable. In a pathetic last resort attempt, I got down on hands and knees and started frantically scouring a nearby cluster of aspen. My forager's eyes became feeble as darkness fell on the old parking lot, so I started clawing at the ground and hoping to feel a cool, moist morel jump into my greedy grasp. This technique did not catch me any morels, but I almost scored some exciting bycatch - an impressively large dog turd. That was when I knew it was time to call it a day.

We returned home and retreated to the computer, telling ourselves Moore's find had been an anomaly and hoping to forget about morels until the next rainfall. Jenna opened her inbox only to find an email from a friend who had expressed interest in taking one of our workshops this season. Without even searching, she had stumbled upon yellow morels right outside of Burlington. "I spotted about 10-15, but didn't pick any," she nonchalantly reported. I'll just call it beginner's luck.