Morels: Questing for the mysterious mushrooms

Morels are of course fun to seek and good to eat, but their appeal is enhanced by the mystery surrounding when and where to find them.

Science's incomplete mastery of morels leaves room for luck and magic - two elements upon which one would not like to always depend but which can add enjoyment to some pursuits.

While most hunting seasons start on a fixed time and date, morel season starts when you find the first one, which in my experience in Buchanan County can range from March 28 to May 2.

In finding the first mushroom, science is not even as helpful as your own experiential database. You just have to assess extant conditions ranging from calendar and soil warmth and moisture to the state of the bluebell blooms and cross reference those conditions with your faulty recollections of when and where you found mushrooms.

In other words, you might as well just go to the woods and see for yourself, which I did for the first time this year on Tuesday.

In an outing intended more for sampling woodland conditions than for gathering mushrooms, I walked directly to the first dead elm tree in my purview and cast my eyes downward into the leaf and bark litter at its base.

In 49 of 50 years, that first-of-the season look has yielded nothing but eye strain and disappointment.

On Tuesday, my eyes locked instantly upon the wrinkled crown of a morel.

A closer examination revealed seven more - all minute specimens of a grayish-brown hue identical to that of its surrounding substrate.

The same scenario recurred at the next tree - first downward glance falling upon a morel, this time a larger cream-colored specimen, followed by a dozen more in a matter of minutes.

So much for luck.

A taste of the magic came later that day when by friend Arthur Clark and I happened upon a low-lying, river birch-encircled, not-quite-muddy expanse of leaf litter, through which poked the furrowed brows of at least 50 morels.

The powerful magic will come soon, probably after the next good rain, with the discovery of a big strike - large, luminous, conspicuous morels trailing off in all directions from the original find.