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Ruralite Cafe: Published 5/4/00By Lisa Majors-DuffIn search of morels and muscle cream |
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Who would have thought that a pleasant Sunday afternoon walk in the woods would have resulted in a stiff neck on Monday morning? But that's exactly what happened to me this past weekend.
Since we'd spent most of Saturday indoors cleaning house, Greg, Niki and I decided to head over to Whittier to spend Sunday afternoon with my mom and dad. The weather was perfect, and Mom had black-eyed peas simmering on the stove. Needing to get back into the exercise routine ("Summer's closer than you think," the ads keep telling me), I talked Greg into accompanying me on a 3-mile hike along an old logging road. Knowing that some sports event was being televised that day, like every other Sunday on the calendar, I mistakingly thought he'd need more convincing than what was actually required. Turns out all I had to do was ask, and Greg was on his feet and heading in the right direction. My husband, as I soon discovered, was on a mission - a morel mission. He'd found one of these brainy-looking fungi by accident near our house in Balsam and now he wanted more. He dreamed of making a meal by sauteing his mushrooms in butter and eating every bite. Almost immediately on our walk, Greg found what he was looking for, though this particular speciman was on the puny side. The poor, little thing was wilted over, and its cap could not have been more than an inch tall. Nevertheless, in his pocket it went. It took about half an hour before Greg would find another opportunity to bend over and scoop up a morel. This one, though, was, I imagined, near perfect as far as fungus is considered. It stood closer to 3 inches tall and had a nice rounded cap. It was with this find that I began to notice that my husband, who has always enjoyed nature from a slight distance, was actually studying the ground and the dried leaves that covered it. He was looking right past everything that had been catching my eye - the white trillium, four varieties of violets, buttercups, spring beauty, bloodroot, bellwort (or wild oats; I get them confused) and wild geranium, just to name a few - and heading straight for the decaying logs on the side of the trail. Though I was still not convinced that he should eat these mushrooms, I decided to help him find them. The pale brown shade of the fungi, combined with their preference for hiding among the similarly-colored leaves, made locating them a real challenge. And this is where the stiff neck comes into the picture. I must have walked two out of the three miles looking down at the ground. The morel hunt turned out to be successful when judged on the quantity collected. Between the two of us, we managed to nearly fill Greg's baseball cap with mushroom caps and stems. These, combined with the half dozen he'd found at home, were enough to make a meal. That's when I began to worry that Greg would actually eat these things. Now I'm not one to turn my nose up at fresh-from-the-forest edibles; in fact, I take pride in knowing that the new growth on an Eastern hemlock can be sustituted when you run out of lemon pepper. But mushrooms have always scared me. From the psychedelic to the deadly, I've never had to urge to experiment. Call me crazy. After a lot of convincing by Greg that he'd be OK, I did not go as far as arranging for the funeral, but nor did I sample even a sauteed sliver of a 'shroom, keeping in mind that my daughter needs at least one parent in her life. Greg, I'm happy to report, is alive and well. He claims the mighty morel tastes like fish (I'd have thought chicken). Whatever you do, don't take this happily-ever-after story as an open invitation to try your hand at surviving against all odds in the woods with nothing but a frying pan and some melted butter. Mushrooms, as well as many other things growing around these parts, can be extremely dangerous. The "morel" of the story: Know without a doubt what it is before you put it in your mouth. |
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