Finding the Fungus Among Us

I love the Pacific Northwest, but let’s face it, it’s a rainy place. The winters are very long and gray, and I have heard it said many times that most Oregonians are sorely lacking in vitamin D. Without much sunlight in the winter months, we have to look elsewhere for this important nutrient. Fortunately, when it starts to rain in the fall, an abundant source of vitamin D appears all over our forests. Wild mushrooms.

On the weekends in October and November, we head for the hills and the coastal forests to forage for delicious morsels of fungi. Chanterelles, hedgehogs, boletes, pigs ears, cauliflower mushrooms, and many many more that I do not know well enough to feel safe eating cover the forest floor creating an autumnal Easter egg hunt.

Mushrooms are fascinating. They’re bright orange, neon yellow, slimy, bulbous, scaly, shaggy, and sometimes cinnamon scented like the white matsutake. Children love them. Our kids have been mushroom hunting for the past three years, and are fortunate to have fellow mushroom enthusiast friends with whom to share this experience. There’s something about discovering a bountiful patch of bright orange chanterelles together that really cements a friendship.

Equipped with our baskets, pocket knives and mushroom ID books, we spend the days tromping through the woods, encountering all sorts of colorful specimens. My husband was well prepared with two baskets tied on to his belt. On this trip, he managed to fill those and two bags in his backpack.

He’s a fun-gi!

I am pleased to say that this is a good mushroom year.We managed to pick all these in three hours hiking around one area, and there will be more picking outings to come. We feasted on scalloped chanterelles and sunchokes with sauteed lobster mushrooms and boletes on the side for our supper. There will be many mushroom soups and mushroom scrambles over the coming weeks, and enough dried mushrooms to give us that extra vitamin D we need through the winter. I love living in Oregon!