I'm sitting here on a beautiful, rainy day at the end of a Michigan April, contemplating the emerald green of the new growth. The grass is impossibly soft; new buds stand out like millions of tiny jewels against the black of wet tree trunks. The crabapples and plum trees are sporting their May blossoms early, pinks and whites and magentas. The gray sky, so oppressive two months ago, now looks soft and warm as velvet. There are garter snakes on the move, even in the middle of the city; fat woodchucks snuffle around on the embankment of the railroad tracks. After the long winter, everything is beautifully, impossibly new.
Fig. 1-1: Maple Street, in the rain.
Fig. 1-2: The plum tree. View of Aberdeen Way, out front.
For anyone who's lived in Michigan for any length of time (at least in the Lower Peninsula), you've most likely heard of that jewel of the northern forests, the elusive morel mushroom. The mere sight of one will cause even the most reserved of us to clap our hands and jump up and down like little kids; then it's all yellow rain-slickers and five-gallon buckets, combing through the backwoods in the drizzle and fog, hoping to find a nice big morel patch somewhere.
The second time I found one was at my (now ex-) girlfriend's house, down in the woods behind her backyard. Then I went out on a 20-mile hike in May, and found a whole mess of them (there must have been twenty, and big ones) far out on the Potowatami Trail. I didn't have a bag, so I put them in the ruined hood of my poncho and tied it up like a bag. Had to soak them in salt water to get the slugs out - they were a couple weeks old by then - but they were still good.
Fast-forward to this year. I get home after a long day at my college classes, thinking wearily that I have to get out in the woods and do some morel hunting before it's too late. The problem is not the "getting out in the woods"-part, or even finding the time to do it. The problem is that morels tend to appear whenever and wherever you're not looking for them. Thus, I might spend two days lost in the Houghton hills and see nary a one, and come back with nothing but a cold. My best hope was to talk with my boss, and see if she'd be willing to let me tag along (she's a big morel hunter too - her whole family is of the snowmobiling, venison-loving, northern-Michigan vein).
I step out of the car and poke around the crater of a tree we'd just had cut down and ground out, thinking about how I should get around to raking up the rest of the wood chips. It was some kind of ash tree, got the bugs inside inside it last summer, and by fall the bark had fallen off. The wood was still solid all the way through. It's a bit like having maggots run around under your skin until it falls off: you die, but you're still relatively intact. Thus, our poor ash tree joined the legions of standing dead, victims of the Emerald Ash Borer.
Fig. 1-4: The ash-tree crater.
At any rate, there I am, standing with my hands in my pockets and absent-mindedly kicking some woodchips, when I notice something odd in the grass. I look closely, and there, to my astonishment, is a covey of tiny gray brains.
Morels! And yes, I did clap my hands and jump up and down. Who the hell cares what the neighbors think. Over the next day or so I would find several more, a whole patch of them feeding off the dead roots of the ash tree. I decided (naively) to let them "grow", thinking they would get bigger (they don't - the size they pop up as is the size they remain). So like a fool I left them there.
The next day, my brother cut the grass. He ran over my morel patch with the lawnmower. Needless to say, I was a tad bit steamed.
It wasn't a total loss, though - not really a loss at all, as it would turn out. I managed to grab up two bowlfuls of scattered morel pieces, and quite a few that the lawnmower blade had missed. With the grass cut, it was much easier to see the squat ones hiding down there. A couple were stepped on, and there were grass clippings all over them, but they were still good.
Fig. 1-5: Examples of morels from my yard.
But herein lies a great mystery: the conditions for morels simply weren't there. Here's a classic morel habitat:
1. deep woods
2. lots of shade
3. on a damp hillside
4. under a living fruit tree.
And here is where they popped up:
1. in my backyard
2. out in the open
3. on a (relatively) dry lawn
4. on a dead ash-tree crater.
Adding to the weirdness is the fact that I was thinking about morels all day, and they suddenly just "appear" in my backyard.
Go figure.
At any rate, with all the rain we've been having, it looks like it's going to be a good, long season for morels. Hopefully more will pop up in the yard. If not, of course, I guess I'll have to head out into the woods in a rain slicker with a five-gallon bucket. So if you see me wandering, lost and alone through the Houghton woods, smile and wave, and keep driving, even if I flag you down. Who wants a rain-drenched, mushroom-picking lunatic in their car, anyway?
Rick Out.
Fig. 1-1: Maple Street, in the rain.
Fig. 1-2: The plum tree. View of Aberdeen Way, out front.
Fig. 1-3: Morels (Morchella esculenta).
The first one I'd ever found was on a "Wilderness Survival" camping trip up at a friend's aunt's house down on Coon Lake Road. She had a small grass farm of glacier-scooped rills and hollows, and behind this a small patch of woods where we set up camp. That's where I found the mushroom, on a hillside, standing all alone. Having completed the hand-clapping-and-dancing ritual - my troop must have thought I'd gone nuts - I fried the morel up in margerine and garlic powder. It had the consistency of a wet sock, but oh was it ever good.The second time I found one was at my (now ex-) girlfriend's house, down in the woods behind her backyard. Then I went out on a 20-mile hike in May, and found a whole mess of them (there must have been twenty, and big ones) far out on the Potowatami Trail. I didn't have a bag, so I put them in the ruined hood of my poncho and tied it up like a bag. Had to soak them in salt water to get the slugs out - they were a couple weeks old by then - but they were still good.
Fast-forward to this year. I get home after a long day at my college classes, thinking wearily that I have to get out in the woods and do some morel hunting before it's too late. The problem is not the "getting out in the woods"-part, or even finding the time to do it. The problem is that morels tend to appear whenever and wherever you're not looking for them. Thus, I might spend two days lost in the Houghton hills and see nary a one, and come back with nothing but a cold. My best hope was to talk with my boss, and see if she'd be willing to let me tag along (she's a big morel hunter too - her whole family is of the snowmobiling, venison-loving, northern-Michigan vein).
I step out of the car and poke around the crater of a tree we'd just had cut down and ground out, thinking about how I should get around to raking up the rest of the wood chips. It was some kind of ash tree, got the bugs inside inside it last summer, and by fall the bark had fallen off. The wood was still solid all the way through. It's a bit like having maggots run around under your skin until it falls off: you die, but you're still relatively intact. Thus, our poor ash tree joined the legions of standing dead, victims of the Emerald Ash Borer.
Fig. 1-4: The ash-tree crater.At any rate, there I am, standing with my hands in my pockets and absent-mindedly kicking some woodchips, when I notice something odd in the grass. I look closely, and there, to my astonishment, is a covey of tiny gray brains.
Morels! And yes, I did clap my hands and jump up and down. Who the hell cares what the neighbors think. Over the next day or so I would find several more, a whole patch of them feeding off the dead roots of the ash tree. I decided (naively) to let them "grow", thinking they would get bigger (they don't - the size they pop up as is the size they remain). So like a fool I left them there.
The next day, my brother cut the grass. He ran over my morel patch with the lawnmower. Needless to say, I was a tad bit steamed.
It wasn't a total loss, though - not really a loss at all, as it would turn out. I managed to grab up two bowlfuls of scattered morel pieces, and quite a few that the lawnmower blade had missed. With the grass cut, it was much easier to see the squat ones hiding down there. A couple were stepped on, and there were grass clippings all over them, but they were still good.
Fig. 1-5: Examples of morels from my yard.But herein lies a great mystery: the conditions for morels simply weren't there. Here's a classic morel habitat:
1. deep woods
2. lots of shade
3. on a damp hillside
4. under a living fruit tree.
And here is where they popped up:
1. in my backyard
2. out in the open
3. on a (relatively) dry lawn
4. on a dead ash-tree crater.
Adding to the weirdness is the fact that I was thinking about morels all day, and they suddenly just "appear" in my backyard.
Go figure.
At any rate, with all the rain we've been having, it looks like it's going to be a good, long season for morels. Hopefully more will pop up in the yard. If not, of course, I guess I'll have to head out into the woods in a rain slicker with a five-gallon bucket. So if you see me wandering, lost and alone through the Houghton woods, smile and wave, and keep driving, even if I flag you down. Who wants a rain-drenched, mushroom-picking lunatic in their car, anyway?
Rick Out.
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