Mad about Mushrooms . . .

Welcome, 2018!

It's that time of year when I sit at my computer to compose a message to our dear and loyal readers and fellow mushroomers.   Hopefully, they'll find something in it that inspires them, because it is always my purpose to do so in these pieces.  The pursuit of wild mushrooming is, in itself, inspiring; the forests in which we seek them, the beauty in those forests, the things we learn about them by researching what we've found and by what we learn all on our own, all of these are inspiring and are good reasons to get out there and look for these jewels of the forest floor. 

Setting goals, like mushrooming on Wind Mountain,
keeps our hobby fresh and invigorates us year after year!

We're getting older.  Both of us are now in our 70's, and we don't get around as well as we used to - particularly yours truly.  Yet, throwing in the towel in an activity we've loved and been fascinated by for so many years is simply not an option.  We won't explore and search for new spots as aggressively as we once did, perhaps, but we'll still do it, and will be especially thrilled when our explorations - guided by what we've learned over the years - meet with some notable amount of success.

The forest floor always delights - imagine mushrooming in
a land where wild cranberries form a carpet beneath our feet!

So, to those of you who are still in your primes, we tip our hats and offer congratulations.  Enjoy it and milk it for all you can.  Take care of yourselves and preserve your physical health for as long as possible; it's not a given, and can change at any time.  Know that eventually, it will change and when it does, try to make the best of it. 

Even when there are no edible mushrooms in the refuge,
Douglas iris beckon us into the woods to share in its beauty!

And for those of you who are more like us, don't give up.  The more sedentary you are, the more sedentary you will be.  Keep at it to whatever degree you can; persevere against the aging process and continue as long as you possibly can.  It may be difficult, but the alternative is worse.  Look back on the wonderful memories you've created, but make some new ones, too!

Thanks for the memories, dear readers, and here's to the multitude of memories we'll all collect in the years to come!

Foraging draws us into the landscape
where we become lost in the magic of the moment!

 If you'd like to keep up with what's happening in our fungal world, please visit the category ALL THE LATEST MUSHROOM NEWS from time to time.  Look forward to meeting you there!

 

 

 

Welcome, 2017!

Visiting a Norwegian gingerbread village
was a delightful way to end the year.

You may not have heard, but 2016 - the fall mushrooming part - was cancelled on the south coast. At least, that's how it seems. After a far-from-red-hot 2015, we thought that the year just ended had considerable promise, with timely rains in late summer and other signs we viewed as favorable and auspicious.

But apparently, no one told the mushroom gods. The lobster mushrooms were scarce. The chanterelles - whites, goldens, pig's ears and black trumpets - were few and far between any place we sought them and where we'd found them many times before. Boletes and Cauliflowers were even scarcer. Our killer spots for Matsutakes in the Mt. Hood area yielded only a few. We've yet to see any significant fruitings of hedgehogs or winter chanterelles (yellow feet), and our traditional Super Bowl foray for these last of the mushroom season gems looks like it could be a bust this year.

This wasn't just us; we heard many such comments. Commercial mushroom buyers are scarcer than in previous years. Typically, we’ll encounter commercial operations in our travels from Brookings through Bandon and up into Coos Bay, where it’s not unusual to count at least five locations for the pickers to choose from. But not this year.

Nonetheless, it hasn’t all been horrible. We found some specimens we'd rarely - or never! - found before, including the colorful Agaricus californicus.

          Unexpected weather brought
               unexpected mushrooms.

But overall, it was, quite simply, a less than memorable mushroom season.

For hobbyists like us - people who gather mushrooms for their own pleasures and tables - a down year or two is mostly just disappointing. However, for those who harvest forest products for a living, and for those who depend on supplementing their income by gathering and selling wild mushrooms, a lean year has a much greater impact. One friend, for example, has always counted on the income from fall mushrooming to pay for gifts for his kids at Christmas. This holiday season was less cheerful than normal.

I could offer reasons and explanations galore, but this "expert" - and as time goes on, I don't think there really are any true experts - is going to blame it on the capricious mushroom gods and just express hope that next year, things turn around and we get a bumper crop. The climatologists offer hope for a more normal year - the strong El Nino oceanic phenomenon is over, and the La Nina to follow has never really materialized - so hopefully we can expect something more like normal in 2017.

On the other hand, what we are seeing in the opening days of 2017 suggests anything but: Portland is just now starting to dig out from over a week of frigid cold, with up to a foot of snow in places, followed by an ice storm. This was the worst winter storm in more than twenty years, and Mary and I got caught right in the middle of it and can certainly vouch for its severity. So much for global warming, eh?

Now, what to do when the mushroom season is a bust?

          A second flush of Blue Oysters is
                    just beginning to show.

• One possibility is to get into cultivation. Although Mary and I have never reaped bountiful crops from our cultivation efforts, there are lots of kits available that seem to work pretty well and are fun to experiment with. We recently inoculated a bag of straw with Blue Oyster Mushrooms, with help from Ron Bossi of the Wild Rivers Mycological Club, and they fruited beautifully. These lovely Blue Oysters were the highlight of our New Year’s Eve dinner.

• Another possibility is to use this time to hone one’s mushroom identification skills. We believe that this is particularly important in a season with so many reports of mushroom poisonings. Frankly, we’re quite perplexed by the number of amatoxin incidents that keep cropping up in the news. For example, there were a cluster of death cap cases (seven individuals) in one small area in California over a three day period!   What’s happening to cause all these poisoning cases? Perhaps the relative scarcity of edible mushrooms could have prompted some people to take chances they otherwise would not.  Perhaps the poisonous mushrooms looked similar to the edibles these individuals had foraged and consumed in their native land. Perhaps the collectors did not have the knowledge to distinguish a particular edible mushroom from a look-alike. Did they understand, for example, that if you set out to collect Matsutake, you must be able to differentiate this choice edible mushroom from the look-alike Amanita smithiana, which is highly poisonous?

• Yet another possibility in a slow season is to rededicate oneself to giving back to the hobby. There are lots of ways to do this. If you aren't yet a member of a mycological society convenient to you, join one now and become active:  volunteer for different jobs, help with identification, lead a foray, mentor new members, participate in the annual exhibit, serve as an officer.  In your community, make sure the public library knows you and has your contact information so that they can refer patrons to you who have found mushrooms and want help identifying them (assuming, of course, that you are qualified to do so). And ensure that others understand the personal responsibility they bear in gathering wild mushrooms, properly identifying them, consuming them, and sharing them with others.

With this message of “giving back.” we thank you for your loyal readership of our website, and wish you good health, happiness and a bounteous harvest in 2017!

If you'd like to keep up with what's happening in our fungal world, please visit the category ALL THE LATEST MUSHROOM NEWS from time to time.  Look forward to meeting you there!

 

Meeting "popcorn" and his lovely
daughter gave us reason to celebrate
in 2016 even if the mushrooming didn't.

Welcome, 2016!

 

Our summer included a lovely flight in a
1929 Travelair biplane over the central Oregon coast.

As we get older, we learn a few things not readily apparent to us when we were younger. At least, hopefully we do, and hopefully these lessons make it a bit easier for us to navigate life’s travails... the inevitable times when things don’t go entirely our way and we are disappointed.

In mushrooming, these disappointments aren’t infrequent: the places we’ve come to count on through years of experience for some reason fail to produce. Sometimes, this is due to conditions: the rains weren’t timely, or there’s been a dry spell, or perhaps a cold snap came at the wrong time. Occasionally, it’s because there has been wood cutting, property development or other environmental activity.

And sometimes, it’s simply because someone else got there before we did. It’s perhaps this latter situation that bothers us the most, but it can’t be helped; other folks want to gather mushrooms, too, and we ourselves have probably done this to others more often than we’d care to admit, either consciously or not. The

          Springtime brought us Verpa,
     accompanied by cottonwood seeds.

Most of all, though, these disappointments arise because things change, and it’s not always to our liking. But whether we like it or not, change will come, in mushrooming and in life.

Mary and I went to a long-time favorite Asian restaurant in Portland the other day. They’ve featured a signature dish that we really loved for well over ten years (revealing what it was might also reveal the identity of the restaurant, and that isn’t our intent). Over the years, the consistent excellence of this particular dish was amazing; it was always simply wonderful. The service wasn’t always great, and other menu items were merely OK, but this one dish was the best of its kind we’d ever encountered.

The last time we visited this restaurant, we were surprised to find that it wasn’t anywhere near as good. We certainly know that any and all restaurants can have an off day; the regular cook could be off, there could be lots of reasons. But we said something about it to one of the owners as we left, not in a mean-spirited way, but because we sincerely felt that they would want to know, and our comment seemed to be received in the spirit it was offered.

So we were mindful of this earlier visit when we went there the other day, hopeful, but prepared that things might not have improved. And they hadn’t; if anything, our beloved dish was worse than before. It's a simple dish, with few ingredients, and a change in sources was highly unlikely to have been the cause; the cause was doubtless in the preparation. They just weren’t making this dish the same way, and it really showed.

As we left, I told the owner - a different one than I’d talked to before. This time, the reaction was different, too. My comments, even though courteously and sincerely offered, were clearly not taken seriously, as if I simply didn’t know what I was talking about. OK, that’s his prerogative, and they still seem to be doing a pretty decent business, but from now on, they will do so without us. This restaurant isn’t the same one we came to know and love... it’s changed. And we won’t be back.

     Our travels last year took us far afield
        to South Dakota, and, of course, we
                    went mushrooming.

The lesson here is that restaurants we love and mushrooming places we love and all kinds of other things we've learned to love in life inevitably change with the passage of time. We don’t like it, but that’s the way it is. We can bemoan this fact and let it ruin our day if we so choose, but it will happen regardless. And how we react is the lesson learned.

We must always remember to really appreciate those wonderful places that we have come to love. Enjoy them, treasure them while we have them. Some will last as long as we do, but some will not, and will fall by the wayside. It’s simply inevitable. This is frustrating; it takes time and effort to find new places to dine and new places to mushroom and all those other things, but we simply must expend it... even though we don’t particularly want to.

We get lazy, we see no reason to find new places when we already have as many as we can handle. But then we lose one, for whatever reason; we must either find a new one or two to replace it, or we must accept having less. We must find new restaurants, and new places to mushroom, and new all kinds of other things that we lose with the passage of time, just to maintain our current level, let alone advance it.  And along the way, we’ll encounter new things, learning as we go, and in the end, we'll find new places that we'll come to love just as much.

That is our thought for 2016: enjoy and treasure our favorites, but summon the energy and curiosity to find new places and things to replace those we inevitably lose. Have a great year, and as always, thank you for being one of our readers!

Offshore and onshore rock formations make for a dramatic
land and seascape near our home in the hamlet of Port Orford.

Welcome, 2015!

Buddhist Monks, marching off to morning prayers
in Yangon (Rangoon), Myanmar (Burma)

 

As I compose this, our annual kick-off to another year of mushrooming and whole-hearted enjoyment (during a very determined January rain storm), I find myself pondering what I might write that would be worth your time to read.

I could discuss our mushrooming efforts this year, which weren't particularly successful, but as always, were rewarding in other ways and were simply a lot of fun.  But somehow, that doesn't seem quite the right direction.

       Samurai welcomed us to the Tokyo Airport

Or, I could write about some interesting travel we had, because in this respect we were fortunate indeed; a trip to the astonishingly beautiful Ireland (where mushrooms are, at best, ignored despite the fact that they are very plentiful); a long-overdue journey to the New England states, which we extended into the lovely Maritime Provinces of Canada (bring with you a healthy appetite for lobster if you are lucky enough to go!); or the autumn trip we made to Japan, visiting two beautiful ladies who were once exchange students we hosted in the early '80's and who now have fine husbands and remarkable children and made us feel so welcome and appreciated that we can never repay them; or the continuation of that trip with a visit to the spectacular country of Myanmar, which you may know as "Burma," an ancient country where tourism is a brand-new phenomenon.  Any of those would be worthwhile, and perhaps interesting, topics for our "Welcome to 2015."

                       A hot air balloon drifts above
           the ancient temples of Bagan, Myanmar

But as I think about these and many other things that made 2014 a special year for us, I find that what I really want to say is "thank you."

Thank you for being able to live for another year in a place I truly love with a wife and life partner that I love even more.

Thank you for friends and loved ones who enrich our lives every day, people who genuinely care about me and about whom I care deeply.  We share with each other both our troubles and our triumphs,  and we - all of us - know that we are there for them, and vice versa.

                   Inedible, but incredible!

Thank you for the opportunities we've had to build a comfortable lifestyle, affording us the resources to indulge our love of travel and to enjoy new activities as well as old ones, of which mushrooming - and all its aspects - is one that we particularly enjoy, and is the central subject of this website.

And, last but certainly not least, thank you for the opportunity to share this enjoyment with you, our readers.  We never imagined when we began this modest effort that we would acquire a loyal readership that comes back to us, time after time, year after year.  But we are sincerely grateful for it.

 

"Sally, the Dog" greeted us at the free campground,
Shire Camping, New Brunswick,
which is "open to the friendly and respectful public"!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Welcome, 2014!

"May you live in interesting times," goes the well-known Chinese curse.  We now hope for a bit less interesting 2014 than 2013 proved to be.

  Ubiquitous work boats filled the waterways
                    of the Mekong Delta.

The year started out interesting enough.  A trip to Vietnam, a spectacularly beautiful country that had been on our "bucket list" for years, was more than interesting enough; we traveled all over the country, seeing aspects of it that we suspect folks who go there on packaged "tours" miss entirely.  We came away with vivid memories and a real affection for these people, who welcomed us as graciously as if our two countries had been staunch allies for centuries.  The scenery was varied and astonishing, the history fascinating and the foods were absolutely scrumptious, as well as beautifully presented.  Markets, which we were drawn to, were especially interesting, full of all kinds of exotic foods, including many different types of mushrooms, of which we recognized exactly none.  In general, the cities were beehives of activity (Ho Chi Minh City, as an example, has roughly 10 million people and about 7 million motor scooters, most of which appear to be in use at any given time; traffic is simply chaotic,  with the motor scooters careening madly about like Harry Potter and his chums playing "quidditch!").  Looking back on what we saw, we have little doubt that these industrious, hard-working people are well on their way to prosperity and modernity.

  Vietnam was a beehive of activity 24/7!

As with most travel these days, the "getting there" part was predictably unpleasant.  Why do airlines bother to advertise, when they then proceed to do everything they can to make the experience as unpleasant as possible?  It's a mystery to us.  Nonetheless, once there, the country was worth all the travails of modern air travel; we highly recommend it as a destination.

The rest of our travels were shorter trips; they included a lovely May trip to Crescent Lake in Central Oregon, where our hoped-for encounters with Morels and trout went largely unfulfilled.  It was beautiful, however, with an evening lightning show over the lake for good measure.  From there, we headed south to explore around Klamath Falls, with hopes of seeing (and photographing!) the unique mating dance of the Western Grebe, of which we'd seen films but had never witnessed.  Wonder of wonders, our timing for this turned out to be perfect, and we saw a number of displays of their crazy, synchronized dance and even managed a photograph or two, making the trip for us.  We never really expected to see it.

  What's more beautiful than a morel?

A trip to Mount Hood in early June led to the best day of Morel gathering we ever had.  It was so much fun to encounter this often elusive species in numbers, and we confess to a bit of greed on that foray, although I hasten to add that none of them went to waste!

In late spring we had begun to plan in earnest for a big trip in the fall, so it came as something of a shock when a routine annual echocardiogram - I'd had a slight heart murmur for years - suggested to my outstanding doctor (who specializes in reading "echos") that the time had come to actually do the surgery that we'd all known was eventually coming.  Tests were run, plans were made, and the surgery was scheduled for mid-September.   Now things got interesting, in the sense the Chinese imagined when they originated their famous curse.

Conditions for a fine fall mushroom season seemed to be in place.  I regretted my bad timing as August transitioned to September and we started to find Chanterelles in numbers on our property; it seemed inevitable that we would miss most of a great season, after a poor season in 2012.  Timing.

It's hard to believe for those of us on the downhill side of 60, but these surgeries are now so common that they're almost "routine;" almost, I say, because when you are the subject, there is nothing "routine" about it!  Nevertheless, I was calm as the day approached, confident in the medical team that would operate on me, opening my chest cavity, handling my heart, replacing a defective valve and performing a bypass while there.  I'll confess, though, that my outward calm gave way to some internal jitters as the hour approached. 

A happy day for both of us,
the surgery now behind me.

My lovely wife (and the best mushrooming partner a man could ever ask for) was with me every step of the way, sleeping in a chair in my intensive care unit room (which was too small for a more comfortable "bed" for her), and on a cot when I was moved to a regular room.  She could not have been more loving or supportive, and I can't imagine how I could have made it through those dark days without her;  I will never forget it, or lose the profound gratitude I feel.

The surgery was completely successful, albeit with a few not-uncommon complications.  My doctors tell me that I have a long and happy life ahead of me.  And that life, shared with my beloved wife, has new meaning; after this experience, I'll appreciate it even more, and the time and adventures we'll continue to share will never again be taken for granted, as they may occasionally have been in the past.  Our lives are precious, and we must live them accordingly.

    Not everyone was happy in 2013!

As soon as I was up to it after the surgery, we ventured back into the woods.  By then, however, the season was well past its peak; dry weather, followed by a cold snap, took care of that.  We had a good outing on Mt. Hood at our "secret spot" for Matsutakes.  On our own property near Port Orford, we found some more white and golden Chanterelles, although not in any real quantity, and on two occasions, Mary happened upon cauliflowers, unfortunately one of which was well beyond its prime.  We did find a massive fruiting of Oysters on an alder tree down the hill, and a couple of weeks ago, had an outstanding day gathering Hedgehogs, but that has been the extent of it.  We'll await next fall's season with great anticipation, and will be ready to really devote ourselves to it.

Good luck and good health to you, dear readers, in 2014 and the years that follow.  No one is more appreciative of the value of your time than we are, and we will do our best to reward the time you spend with us with good and interesting information about mushrooming, and occasionally, life in general.  If you think of a way we can improve our efforts, please let us hear from you!

And, who could resist including
this charming Vietnamese baby in their post?

 

Welcome, 2013!

...And good riddance to 2012!  We say that with tongue only partly in cheek; 2012 was among the worst, if not THE worst,  year we've had in our thirty-plus years of mushrooming.  There.  We've said it.

Sure, we found some mushrooms, and sure, it was always interesting and absorbing to tromp around in the woods looking for them.  And we're willing to admit that the combination of some extended, non-fungal (but very fun!) travel, the lack of success we experienced on the forays we did go on, and - just perhaps - our own advancing years contributed to fewer hours spent in the pursuit of our quarry. 

We rented a classic Morgan to tour Scotland!

"Bad" years are never entirely bad, either.  A little humility is never a bad thing for people who have fallen into the trap of thinking they're pretty darned good at any activity, mushrooming or otherwise.   It also displeases the mushroom gods if they think they're being taken for granted.  And perhaps the lack of the mushrooms we'd come to expect led us to pay more attention - not to gather, but to observe and enjoy -  species we normally just pass by.

And there were causes for minor celebrations along the way.  One was the discovery of a small but worthwhile patch of candy caps, a lovely addition to our stores whenever we can get them.  They were the direct result of a "lead" by Eve and Stephen Thompson, and the celebration of a nice find is made even better when it's directly attributable to really good friends.   I should add that this was a "lead" in the sense that they practically took us by the hand, led us directly to the candy caps, pointed at them, and said "There they are!," then stood by while we cut and bagged them.  That, dear reader, is a lead!

The Mushroom Queen with
her prize!

Then there was the day Mary came home from a solo foray (I was in the midst of a project, and couldn't join her) bearing a beautifully crisp Cauliflower mushroom, which is always a cause of celebration.  She earned the title of "Mushroom Queen" that day; she often does.

Friends Eve and Steve cornered a beautiful grouping of absolutely perfect Amanita muscaria just as they were popping out of the ground, and we watched them grow into astonishingly beautiful maturity, and then into their inevitable decay.  Steve is a very fine photographer, and chronicled their lives.  By the time those Amanitas were gone, they were like old friends, and we found ourselves mourning them, in a way.

There were also the days that we headed out together, filled with the heady anticipation that this would surely be our day: conditions were right, the weather had changed for the better and our season was about to take a dramatic turn for the better.  They never turned out that way this year, but sharing days like that with somebody you care about certainly lessens the disappointment when things don't work out exactly as planned.

We weren't really looking, but happened
upon this specimen in Scotland.

There were a few other highlights, too: a fungal photography class in June put on by Steve Trudell, long-time professor of mushroomy stuff and esteemed co-author of Mushrooms of the Pacific Northwest, a must-have for anyone seriously interested in the subject.  We've known Steve for years, have taken classes from him before, and always - always - learn a lot from him. 

And in October, we had the pleasure of seeing the latest performance (they're way too good to be called "shows") by Taylor Lockwood, the best (and most widely-travelled) mushroom photographer on the planet.  Taylor is a born entertainer as well as a good friend.  He never fails to surprise and delight, both in person as well as through his videos, calendars and books.

It's funny, in a way.  As I review what I've written above, I find myself thinking, "Shame on you; here you are, whining and complaining about what a lousy year it was.  It was actually a great year - just different!"

Well, right you are.

And with that thought, we wish you a bounteous and rewarding 2013, in every sense of the word!

A cottontail thinks I can't see her.

She's mistaken! 

Welcome, 2012

It's that time of year when we look back and review, as well as look forward and make plans.

For us, 2011 seemed like the most hectic year in memory.   We had pretty major construction projects going on, at our home near Port Orford as well as our cabin near Mount Hood, plus we had a lot of travel; our two longest trips were to Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi in August, and a trip in early October that started in Washington, D.C. and extended itself north through Maryland, Delaware and New Jersey (where we visited long-time friends), then west through Pennsylvania and Ohio (where we made a pilgrimage to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum in Cleveland, and highly recommend it!), then south through the eastern corner of Kentucky, Northern West Virginia and the Sheanadoahs in Virginia, before returning to D.C., then home.  Luck was with us all the way.  The fall colors were at their absolute peak, and although we have not yet had the pleasure of visiting New England at this spectacular time of year, what we saw would be very tough to beat!

We're looking forward to 2012. 

All this resulted in our doing a bit less mushrooming than normal.  In the spring, we were late for the Montana Helvellas, and also missed most of the warted Puffballs around Mt. Hood.  Then, on another trip, we completely missed the spring Boletes and Morels; we simply weren't there when the mushrooms were.  We can't say whether it was a "good" spring or a "poor" one, but it wasn't good for us, except for the simple pleasure of being there.

This fall, we mostly confined our mushrooming to areas around our home, near Port Orford, and based on what we saw, it wasn't a very good year.  Sure, we found all the mushrooms we normally do, but not nearly as many as last year, or most years.  The lack of timely rains was the likely culprit.   To compound our failures, our absolute favorite, the Cauliflower mushroom (Sparassis crispa), was conspicuous by its absence.

One quick trip to Mt. Hood yielded a lovely Coral hydnum, as well as some nice Chanterelles, both White and Golden, but again, not nearly as many as normal; worse, a jaunt to our perennially infallible Matsutake spot came up empty-handed, a first ever.  Maybe we were early, but I suspect not.  Again, the lack of timely rains was certainly a contributing factor.

But we found enough to get by, if not to be as generous with friends as we normally are.  And as usual, we enjoyed our time in the woods, and saw things that made us glad to be alive.

We felt we had a good year with our website.  We improved our timeliness, though we still have room for further improvement.  We were proud of the additions to our recipes section, as well as our restaurant reviews, which are fun for us and we hope are interesting to our readers.  Business was up for our retail section, and we think we've made some very worthwhile improvements to it, with new items added and several new additions planned.

So all in all, a good year, and - ever the optimists! - we look forward to an even better one in 2012!

Welcome, 2011 - Better Than Ever?

Ending and Beginning is what we're supposed do at this time of year, along with the obligatory resolution or two.  So, let's get started.

The "Ending" part would have to start with a review of our year in mushrooming.  The Spring had nothing really memorable to report, but the Fall was definitely one to remember - a banner year for Matsutakes and Chanterelles.  The Boletes didn't really come through for us this year, and we only found one Cauliflower, and that one rather small, but the Chanterelles and Matsutakes - WOW!  We can only hope that 2011 will be as good... asking for better would border on greedy.

A basketful of chanterelles
always brings a smile to
Steven's face! 

Our look back would also have to include  a review of our travels.  No major trips this year (they will come in 2011!), but a lot of travel around our Pacific Northwest for various business and personal reasons, and a quick trip to California to visit family (my much-loved aunt) and lifelong friends, plus a short visit to Death Valley National Park, a first for both of us.  That latter jaunt was an eye-opener, not what we expected, and spectacularly beautiful in its way... but we wouldn't want to go in summer! 

Our travels exposed us to a number of wonderful restaurants, some new to us and some old favorites revisited, that we thoroughly enjoyed.  Mary's talents in Internet research led us to some delightful surprises, but every once in a while, pure dumb luck and a strong hunch or two led us to real "finds," too.  Some of these are now included in our popular restaurant review section, with more on the way.  And in this regard, we've resolved to "bend" a principle: until now, doing something nice with mushrooms has always been a prerequisite, but we've decided to add a section for those rare restaurants that neglect the fungal universe but earn recognition for other reasons.  Stay tuned.

Everyone loves mushroom soup. 

Our webshop has continued to grow, with mushroom-themed fabrics a category that's become especially popular.  We've expanded our sources for these, and are adding new ones regularly.   Products made from them - aprons, napkins and the like - have been well-received, too, and will expand along with our selection of fabrics.  More people than ever have taken up the challenge (and needle and thread) to make their own fashion statement by sewing a pillow, shirt or blouse from fungal fabrics.  A word for those procrastinators out there (and you know who you are!): don't dither.  If you see a fabric you like, act quickly.  Fabric availability is not long term; a manufacturer's run is a one-time thing in all but a few cases, and is rarely repeated (when it's gone, it's gone!).  We have sadly watched several of our favorites disappear into fond memories this year.

Cooking has always been a core part of this website, and our recipe of the month section has found a wide and appreciative audience.  Our recipe contest had the biggest response ever this year (now to choose a winner - a daunting task if ever there was one!).  We'll continue this, of course, for 2011.

With this website, we always  try to include news and information for those who share our enthusiasm for the fungal, and this will continue, too, with some species-specific articles added, and also some features from other enthusiasts that we think are particularly worthy.  One of these will be "Tizzy's Tips," a regular posting from a long-time correspondent whose hard earned knowledge of the mushroom world has made us more knowledgeable, and will do the same for you.  Check it out!

Our most spectacular find this season! 

I mentioned resolutions, too, so here is one: to continue and enhance our efforts to make this site timely and relevant; to reward the time you spend visiting us with information, ideas and opportunities you might not find elsewhere.  And here's one more: to continue and increase our activism for sane and reasonable conservation efforts; an important ingredient in this is to encourage the various government entities to end needless regulation of recreational mushroom gathering, and focus such attention on commercial harvest, which - particularly when done in larger groups - is too often allowed to pillage the resource and, potentially, its future viability.  We hope our readers will do the same; officials do respond eventually to sufficient pressure (hint: well placed, reasonable articles and guest editorials often carry much more weight than simple letters directly to the individuals and groups responsible).

Clusters of yellow feet appeared in January. 

As always, we appreciate the input of our readers, and depend on it for ideas on how we can make our website more valuable to you.  Please let us hear from you!

So with that, we bid 2010 a fond adieu, and ring in 2011 with much anticipation.  It's been a great ride so far, and we look forward to an even better ride ahead!

 

- Steve 12/31/10

Welcome, 2010!

Every year seems to have some outstanding mushrooming event for me.  2009 was the year of the discovery - discovering unfamiliar mushrooms.  It's one of my favorite things.  Let others fill their baskets with chanterelles and boletus.  That's OK with me.  I'm into discovery.

2009 found us encountering fungi in Port Orford that we'd never previously found.  How can that be?  Over the past 10 years, we've spent many a carefree hour wandering the forestlands that dominate the landscape.  Yet, it was only in 2009 that we sighted gymnopilus spectabilis and other heretofore unseen fungi.  Serendipity, that's the only possible explanation!

Another discovery:  Thanksgiving 2009 was spent in Yosemite.  Imagine our astonishment when the fee taker at the entrance to the national park answered our question about mushrooming by pointing and saying:  "There's a huge cluster of some kind of mushrooms over there".  He was most certainly right.  We were greeted by a massive collection of collybia growing within 200 feet of the west entrance to the park.

We were delighted to find boletes in
Iceland!

And yet another discovery:  mushrooms in Iceland.  Can there really be forests and mushrooms in a reputedly treeless landscape?  Much to our delight we learned that Iceland had begun an extensive afforestation in 1950, resulting in the planting of millions of seedlings over the years, 30% of which were native birch.  On a whim, while driving the Ring Road, we pulled off the highway, walked about 50' over to the fencing that enclosed a replanted parcel of land and came upon a fine collection of boletes.  Our optimism was rewarded!

Surely that's what keeps me motivated to continue wild mushrooming even after all these years:  the discovery, the challenge of unearthing a new-to-me species.  It's this incentive that is the driving force that lures me back into the woods time after time.  And, it's one of the reasons that I'm looking forward to 2010 with such enthusiasm!

Welcome, 2009!

As I sit at my computer at our log home in Port Orford, composing these lines, it’s New Year’s Day, 2009, a hearty winter storm is raging outside, mushroom season (such as it was) is nearing an end, and it seems an appropriate time to look back, and forward.

It’s been a fascinating journey so far.  Since we began in mid - 2007, we’ve been astonished at how our readership has grown.  We never imagined that we would have readers all over the country, as well as international readers from as far away as Europe, China, India and Africa, somehow finding our website and taking the time to explore it.  We’ve tried to hold up our end by adding new updates and field reports, monthly menu recipes, some op-ed work (and opinions we have plenty of!) and many other features. 

As we look back, we feel we’ve accomplished a lot.  And we have plans for more changes and improvements in ’09 and beyond.

 

A cauliflower always brings
a smile to our faces.

First and foremost in our capitalist hearts, we have just added a retail section, A Gift Shop for Mushroomers.  We’ve begun with a nice variety of unique, high-quality items that any mushroomer would appreciate (or you may decide you can’t live without!).  They’re all very affordable, and we’ll be adding new products regularly.  So if you haven’t already visited it, please do so, and let us know what you think.

The web shop joins our existing Invite Us sections, in which we offer to come speak to your group about mushrooms, or to host forays in the fall, with you coming to join us.  The A Gift Shop for Mushroomers and the Invite Us sections are the only segments of our ‘shameless commerce division,” as Click and Clack, the Tappet Brothers love to say on their beloved Car Talk program on National Public Radio, and the rest of our website will always be completely free (and hopefully useful!) in every respect.

We’ll continue to offer features on preserving mushrooms, which has generated a lot of interest.  Mary has recently achieved Family Food Educator status with the Oregon State University Extension Service, and will continue to offer advice on these subjects in the website, as well as responding to specific inquiries from readers.

     Wild mushrooms are
     always a treat in the
     kitchen!

Cooking is also a major area of interest for our readers, so we’ll continue to offer new features on cooking and recipes, including our very popular Incredible Edibles - Recipe of the Month.  And since eating is the proper thing to do after cooking, we will also continue to offer occasional reviews when we find a restaurant that does something nice with mushrooms.  And the Recipe Contest shall continue, so come on, you foodies – get those entries in!

Our features on specific mushrooms - Morels 101 and Verpas 101, to name two - have proven popular, so you can expect those will be expanded considerably.  And, of course, our field reports will continue and, in the future, we’ll strive to always be timely and current.

Thanks, finally, to you, our readers.  Your enthusiastic response has energized us to keep working on our website, honing and refining it, and adding new features.  We would really appreciate hearing from you, with your comments, thoughts and suggestions.  You see our website from a different perspective than we possibly can, and your input would be most welcome.  And if you run across an area somewhere in western or central Oregon that always has way too many morels for you to handle, you can feel free to contact us about that, too!  Good ‘shrooming!

 

Our Beginnings in 2008!

 

 

We were astonished by the
abundance of boletes in 2008!

The pursuit of wild mushrooms has been a thoroughly absorbing interest of ours for over twenty-five years.  The pursuit is not terribly difficult (they don't run very fast, after all!) and it takes us to beautiful places where we see many beautiful things besides mushrooms.  We learn about trees and how they co-exist (or not!).  We see and learn about wildlife, too, and find out which mushrooms are eaten by them (or not!).  Wild mushrooming teaches us to observe, in some ways like photography does; we notice more as we walk and even drive through forests.  Our observational senses are turned up to "maximum" when we are out there, and we notice things the casual hiker does not.  In some ways, mushrooming is like an Easter egg hunt for adults.  And even on those forays in which the mushroom gods do not smile on our efforts, we invariably see or find something that rewards us.

When we hit our fifties, we had always planned to pull up stakes from the big city (first Portland, then Seattle, in our case) and move somewhere on the Oregon or Washington coast where we could live and do the things we loved all year round, rather than just on the sometimes too-short weekends.  After an extensive search, we settled on the southern Oregon Coast, and found a heavily wooded parcel south of the little town of Port Orford in Curry County, 70 miles north of the California border.  It seemed to have everything - good fishing nearby (both fresh and saltwater), lots of wild critters and scenic beauty everywhere we looked.  But did it have good mushrooming?  We were experienced gatherers, by this point, but our efforts had been limited to northwest Oregon and western Washington.  We were delighted to learn after a foray or two that indeed there was fine mushrooming to be had here - many familiar species and a few that were new to us.  We signed on the dotted line and never looked back.

Spring is a symphony of color in Curry
County!

We were driving through Eugene, Oregon in early April near the Willamette River.  Steven nodded toward the land near the river and said, "Boy, that looks like Verpas."  He was saying, in our verbal shorthand, that it looked like a good area to hunt for Verpa Bohemica, an early Spring mushroom sometimes called "the early morel" or "false morel."  There were cottonwoods growing in the area, and the underbrush looked like there might be some nettles as well.  The leaves on the cottonwoods were still tiny.  He was right.  It looked like a great spot for Verpas to me, too, but the point is that with our experience and interest in wild mushrooming, we looked at our surroundings differently and in more detail than we otherwise would, and we recognized an area that looked like a likely spot to find a certain, specific kind of mushroom.  Yes, it takes a while to get to that point, but we do eventually reach it.

We are not professional mycologists, a title that properly requires a college degree and a lot more  scientific background than we will ever have.  Rather, we think of ourselves as "experienced mushroomers," gatherers for our table and our enjoyment.  We know what we know from years in the field, from reading and study, from membership in several mycological societies and from associating with bona fide experts in the field.  Will we ever know as much as they do?  Not a chance.  But we also are always keenly aware of what we don't know and that is knowledge that can be of even greater value.

A young bobcat
seems overcome
with curiosity!

There are over 2,000 species of mushrooms in the Pacific Northwest alone.  No one could identify precisely every single one of these.  We have learned to recognize a couple of dozen species that are safe edibles that we enjoy, and those are the ones we gather.  We also recognize a hundred or so others that interest us for some reason, usually their unusual beauty, but which we either don't particularly like the flavor, don't know are safe to eat or, more directly, know are unsafe to eat.  We may take them home (carefully segregated from the others in their own container) for further study or observation, but we never even remotely consider putting one in our mouths. 

The old adage, "Every mushroom is edible...once" is a good one for wild mushroomers to keep in mind.

 

 

We also enjoy eating wild mushrooms in a variety of ways.  Cooking is another interest of ours, and the unique flavor of wild mushrooms adds a whole new dimension to it.  There is also undeniable pleasure in eating a dish containing mushrooms that we ourselves have chosen and gathered and, armed with the knowledge we have accumulated, know that we can eat safely.  Mushrooms are a healthy and very flavorful addition to our diet and, the experts tell us, are a great source of minerals for our continued good health.

Our mushrooming has been a fulfilling and thoroughly enjoyable hobby for us and we intend to pursue it for the rest of our lives.  Just as there have been many friends we have made over the years who have taught us much of what we know, we recognize our own obligation to share that knowledge with others who are interested in these fascinating fungi.  After all, the mushroom gods are watching!

Rhododendron can grow tall in Curry County!
Notice how the rhodies tower over
the solitary hiker in our refuge one foggy morning.