As I approach my most reliable maitake tree – a hollowed giant, long gone but still producing – my steps slow to prolong the riveting suspense. This decaying oak let me down last year, but then again, so did my other trees ... chalk it up to a bad season. It’s only early September, and a bit drier of late, but this cool, misty morning is full of promise.

My quads are burning, and my left knee is giving out from the climb. But with a season-defining harvest of Craterellus tubaeformis and Hydnum umbillicatum pressed close to my chest, I feel no pain. The yellow foot chanterelles and hedgehogs – freshly plucked in the alpine air and still cold to the touch – are pristine and unblemished, a gift from the well of autumn’s abundance.

On a soggy Green Mountain morning, I am following a mossy streambank under a mixed canopy of hemlock, ash and birch. My every sense is engaged as I scan the surrounding soil in a search of the peerless porcini. After multiple failed early season attempts, my timing is finally perfect. Kings are back in action, and I let the bloated old ‘flags’ – yellow-pored and squishy stemmed – guide me straight to the prime specimens, mycological royalty camouflaged beneath autumn leaves.

I spot a single porcini and veer off-trail on impulse, following the narrow spine of a coniferous ridge along an undefined path blazed by deer. The landscape is steep and unforgiving, and the fungi dwindle as I hit higher and drier ground. Wild turkeys disperse into the trees as I reach the crest of the hill, feeling duped and sidetracked by the lone porcini.

As I travel a familiar trail, the frost-nipped forest offers new perspectives and mycological surprises. With six-year-old Eliana leading the family foray, Noemi descends from Mama’s baby carrier, eager to put her newfound walking ability to the test on some rugged Green Mountain terrain. Grandpa is here as well, joining us for a socially distanced outing.

Invigorated by a late October spell of wet, balmy weather, wild mushrooms are making unexpected late season appearances. In the last week, I have seen pristine wood blewits, elm oysters, late fall oysters, shaggy manes, and velvet foot mushrooms (enokitake). These are all hardy fall fruiters, but unusual to find going strong by Halloween in northern Vermont.

As I awoke this morning to snowflakes landing on my frostbitten windows, mushroom season felt far away. Autumn in Vermont is phenomenal yet fleeting, and it is hard to watch the long awaited fall flush shrivel up with the snow.

Were it not for the neon pink, grotesquely phallic elegant stinkhorns, I never would have noticed the hen hiding in plain sight in downtown Northampton, MA.  Just when I thought the 2012 season had come to a close, the foraging gods have rewarded me with a final, long awaited treat. 

As I scoured the woods in a last ditch attempt to find a hen before the looming frost, I grew increasingly hopeless with each step on the raw ground. After a dry, underwhelming season, the soil was finally saturated after a week of relentless rain. If the soaking rains had come at any point throughout the summer or early fall, the woods would have been teeming with fungal diversity.

Yesterday was the first day of fall, and it seems we have hit a turning point in the foraging season. After a mediocre summer harvest, fall has announced its arrival with a formidable flush.

The woods are full of teeth right now – not only is lion’s mane starting to ferociously flush, but hedgehogs are popping up along moist riverbeds and streams. Fall has arrived, at least in northern Vermont. 

Forgive me, foragers. Life has been hectic, and a month has past since my last ForageCast. Fortunately, I have nothing but good news to report. After two long-awaited prolonged showers, the woods are beginning to burst with mushrooms. The rain coincided with a cold front throughout the region, which means we are starting to see the full cast of fall fungi. The past couple days I have been starting to find yellow foot chanterelles, hedgehogs, and porcini, and today a reader submitted a photo of a maitake that generously fruited on a stump right in his backyard!

As I walked through the sun-soaked woods in shorts and a t-shirt this morning, for a fleeting moment it felt like summer. The fungi, however, have not been fooled by the unseasonably warm weather. Unless you are looking for chaga or artist’s conk for a medicinal tincture, your November forays are unlikely to be fruitful.

The streets are full of colorful costumes, but the woods are no longer full of colorful fungi. Things have changed since September 27’s ForageCast, when I was so spoiled by the wild bounty that I was leaving prodigious patches of honey mushrooms and aborted entolomas untouched. “I don’t have anything against these mushrooms, but it’s hard to get excited by ground beef when you have unlimited free filet mignon,” I remarked nonchalantly.

After one of the Northeast’s wettest falls of the century, my foraging eyes are on like never before. I am having an extremely difficult time prying my gaze from the ground, which has proven dizzying at times but more lucrative than expected. In the last two weeks my foraging eyes have inadvertently spotted bundles of cash on two separate occasions – first $20 and then $13. Money may not grow on trees, but it sure does seem to nestle up among the fungi from time to time!

Take a load off my fanny pack. Take a load for free.

That just about sums up how I felt as walked out of the woods yesterday, my back almost crumbling under the weight of innumerable mushroom-filled paper bags.