Everything seemed so right.
We were on our way to the Puget Sound Mycological Society's fall show in Seattle. Why not stop on Mt. Hood and check out our favorite mushrooming sites. After all the rain that we've experienced, surely there would be mushrooms. So it was in mid October that we packed our bags and mushroom baskets into the Subaru and headed north.
Mushrooms are always a nice
addition to the kitchen.
What a disappointment! Historically in October, we've harvested abundant quantities of cauliflowers, pigs ears and golden chanterelles, and matsutakes. This year, however, we found only a few frozen mushrooms where we would have usually collected baskets of matsutakes and cauliflowers. In lower elevations where we would have usually found pigs ears and golden chanterelles along with cauliflowers and coral hydums, we collected only smaller quantities of chanterelles.
Still, it was wonderful to be in our old mushrooming territory, and we're glad that we made the stop on Mt. Hood. And, after all, isn't unpredictability part of the reason that we love mushrooming - you just never really know what's going to happen in the fungal world!
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