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.

As I entered the woods with my childhood best friend on my 30th birthday backpacking adventure, my attention was fixed on the ground as we followed a languorous river. Lipstick­-red, vomit­-inducing emetic Russulas lined the trailside, and acrid peppery milkies were sprayed about the flat forest floor. Deadly destroying angels were everywhere, menacingly elegant and dangerous. Yet a three-­mile, flat riverside walk into the backcountry did not reveal a single gourmet mushroom, and the soil seemed drier with each step.

Sauntering through a deep hemlock forest in the foothills of Camel’s Hump, I am scrambling to beat the slugs to June’s bumper crop of reishi. Chanterelle buttons glow on the soaking wet forest floor, the beginning of what should be a memorable July fruiting. Still, it will be at least a week before these golden beauties fatten up and find their way into an omelet.

From our motherload of gourmet wild mushrooms to the cornucopia of produce at the Ithaca Farmers’ Market, Ari and I have been eating very well this harvest season. However, one shortage that Ithaca does have is access to good quality fish. Since one of my last names is DiMare, meaning “of the sea,” it’s no surprise that my father grew up working on T-Wharf in Boston alongside my grandfather at DiMare Lobster Company. Coming from a lineage of fishermen and lobstermen, it is also no surprise that I grew up eating fish, and a lot of it. 

Once again, the maggots have beaten me to the porcinis. Jenna found the first lone porcini over the weekend, on a hike with a friend from our undergraduate years. With whiteish pores and a plump, reticulate stem, I immediately knew this was the prized cep, or king bolete (Boletus edulis). “Seeing is Boleting,” as the mushroom hunter’s adage goes, and once we were aware of the porcini presence, we all started to spot them with some regularity throughout the trail. Most were growing alone or with one or two comrades, though we discovered one goldmine of a hillside that was littered with small, early specimens. This spot too began as a single porcini, but as we glanced down the slope and focused our vision we began to notice many small caps barely lifting up the leaf litter on the forest floor. All were young, appearing to be in pristine condition, and we picked just enough for a garnish on the whole chicken from the Ithaca Farmers’ Market that we planned to roast later that evening.