Catastrophic flooding has ravaged Vermont – inundating the downtown of our charming capital and leaving my quaint little riverside village reeling from damage to homes, roadways, and infrastructure.

Our family enters the forest to find a reinvigorated mycological landscape. Eight-year-old Eliana is mesmerized by a spiraling flush of dainty waxy caps, while three-year-old Noemi munches on trailside blackberries. Jenna is deep in focus photographing summer novelties like purple coral mushrooms and jelly babies, but I have only one thing on my mind: reaching my favorite local black trumpet spot, among the boulders and beech trees ahead.

Beneath the beech trees, I am following a vein of black trumpets as it snakes up a craggy hillside. These mossy slopes – rocky loam interspersed with cliffs and boulders – are prime trumpet territory. As I navigate low-hanging branches, I pause to admire the rich duff that has formed a plush saddle at the base of two elephantine beech trunks. The organic matter here is so soft and deep, I fear I could fall through and sink straight into the mycological underworld.  

At this point, anyone who’s not a mushroom forager in Ithaca must by dying for some sun. It’s been raining almost around the clock – a steady pitter-patter on the tin roof of our home, soaking the earth and flooding the streets. In fact, when I woke up this morning all roads in Tompkins County were closed due to flooding, by order of the sheriff! Despite the pouring rain, Ari still ventured out yesterday on an early evening two-hour hour mushroom foray. He returned home soaked to the bone, but with a huge smile and a grocery bag filled with black trumpets to add to the four-pounds of black trumpets foraged earlier this week. Mushroom foraging is at its peak - it really doesn’t get any better than this! 

My tongue has been reunited with an old friend – the black trumpet. Last summer’s drought took its toll on the trumpet crop, and this already hard to spot mushroom disappeared from Ithaca’s forests altogether. Despite many hours spent on hands and knees combing through moss patches, I did not find a single black, fragrant morsel.