‘Twas a sunny Sunday morning, and I led a group into a dark, dank coniferous forest. From the moment we entered the woods, we all knew we had hit peak fall foraging conditions.

As a memorable golden chanterelle season winds down, a legion of fall fungi has arrived. Yellow foot chanterelles (Craterellus ignicolor and C. tubaeformis) and hedgehogs (Hydnum repandum and H. umbilicatum) thrive on the cooler days and crisp late August New England nights. Yellow foots and hedgehogs pick up where their golden relations left off, extending the season for singular chanterelle risottos right into October.

Ranging from flamingo pink to a deep autumnal orange, the cinnabar-red chanterelle’s vivid color demands the forager’s attention. Its flavor is classic chanterelle – piney, fruity, floral – and its red hue holds up well to a six minute sauté.

We parked our car at the Great Gulf Wilderness lot and headed into the White Mountain foothills for a pilgrimage to a favorite camping retreat during our high school and undergraduate years.

In the wake of a deluge of Biblical proportions, the mycological landscape is exposed and naked. Well-concealed secrets have been pushed to the surface in a rare tipping of the mycelial hand. Knowledge of the underground mycelial layout that would usually take decades to develop is readily available to anyone with a keen set of forager’s eyes.

We always enjoy receiving notes from blog readers, workshop participants and fellow mushroom enthusiasts. When local Vermont photographer Monica Donovan contacted us earlier this year asking if she could accompany us on a foray for a personal wildcrafting photography project, we gladly welcomed her along.

As Northeasterners grapple with yet another week of dreary days and squishy socks, a quiet revolution is afoot in the forest. Seemingly in unison, a staggering variety of whimsical woodland denizens are erupting from the warm, wet forest floor. Bearing witness to this grand rite of summer is like being reintroduced to a legion of old friends, popping back up out of the woodwork just as suddenly as they disappeared into the cold grip of winter. I can almost hear myself mumbling to the mushrooms: “Good to have you back, slippery Jack…Chanterelle, ma belle!”

As I walked the woods this afternoon, I could practically smell the chanterelles. The soil is wet, the air warm and sticky.

It is almost July, and the colorful cast of summer fungi is just starting to make its grand appearance. After May’s morel madness and June’s mushroom monotony, July marks the beginning of the true foraging season.

Even up in Vermont we have arrived at the tail end of morel season. I am still spotting plenty of morels, but they are bloated and waterlogged, the neglected victims of slugs, snails, heat, and torrential rain.

The alarm was set for 8am, but we awoke at 5:45 to the gentle pitter-patter of rain. I rolled over and tried to fall back asleep, but Jenna was already riled up and rearing to go. The morels were summoning us. We listened.

A perfect storm is brewing, foragers. Rain has fallen down upon our parched soils, and a slow moving cold front will push into the region Friday night. This means additional showers, just as daytime highs drop from the 80’s to the lower 60’s.  This means morels.

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.

Morels are deliciously close, and the first ForageCast of 2013 is here. Despite the dry ground, blacks are beginning to push their way out of the forest floor throughout New York, Connecticut, and Massachusetts. Even up north we are nearing prime time.

Morels are on the move, and ramp season is ramping up! The foraging season is upon us, and the landscape is bursting with new life. Even up here in northern Vermont, the snowpack is receding as spring ephemerals delight in the sunlight piercing through the leafless canopy.

As one of the season’s biggest winter storms prepares to slam Vermont, southern mushroom hunters are happily harvesting morels. MorelHunters.com is reporting finds throughout Georgia, South Carolina, Alabama, and Kentucky. Hunters as far west as Oklahoma are also frying up morels as I sit by the woodstove awaiting another dumping of snow.

This winter I have seen plenty of mushrooms, but they never seem to make it to the frying pan. Trouble is, I’ve been doing most of my hunting in the realm of dreams. The same thing happens every time – as I float through the bizarre and befuddling dreamscape, out of nowhere I find myself in a hemlock forest heavy with honeys, or a beech grove laden with lion’s mane. I have hit the motherload, and I gleefully reach for my forager’s knife. But before I can even slice into the first fungus, I am overwhelmed with doubt, and my treasure trove begins to feel tenuous.