For the past few weeks, I have been eagerly looking for the first sign of morel mushrooms. One of my favourite aspects of living in the countryside in Ontario is the wild mushrooms and plants you can find. Morels are wonderful not only because of how delicious they are, but also because they are easily recognizable and relatively safe to pick wild. After the past few days of rain, I could feel that this might be the perfect time to catch them before they disappear.
Important Note: Many mushrooms are poisonous and dangerous. People die every year from picking and eating wild mushrooms. You need to do your research and be 100% sure of a mushrooms safety! Please be careful!!
The weather was damp but mild, dew and light rain hanging on the leaves and grass. Luckily I have new waterproof boots James gave to me, so sludging through the fields and grass was a pleasure. I love the idea that there is no bad weather, just bad preparation. If you are properly dressed, walking in the rain and mud is a beautiful, calming journey and is the perfect way to do some walking meditation.
Like a scene from the first season of True Detective
Before setting off into the forest, I wanted to explore the abandoned barn behind our house. You can see how worn out and run down it has become over the years. Recently my father and I have watched as huge vultures have been circling and flying around the barn. We thought there might be a dead animal nearby, so I wanted to see if I could find what they were drawn to. One thing that has always made me a little uncomfortable is that I’ve found beer bottles, plastic and other garbage around the barn. I can never tell how old it is, but it seems clear that sometimes someone comes and drinks and squats in the barn. I even imagined that I saw a small light or fire coming from it at night one time, but I didn’t want to go and find out. I didn’t find anything that would explain the circling vultures, but it was nice to walk around the falling building and notice all the growth and moss slowly taking over.
The first morel I found of the season.
Once I reached the edge of the forest along the corn field, I started my search for the morels. You can find a lot of advice online about which tree’s morels like and what types of areas you can find them in, but a lot of times its really just chance if you happen to stumble on a batch of them. Luckily, I knew from previous years roughly where to check and started looking through the grass and brush on the edge of the field. This was the first morel I found, and I quickly found several others nearby. Morels are wonderful but they are very fleeting. In just a few days, they will go from full bloom to being old and falling apart. Insects love to hide inside their folds and in their stem and will quickly start eating away at the flesh of the mushroom.
This was the second morel I found, and you can see how they are typically tucked away amidst the grass and twigs, making them harder to spot. You have to tread lightly because you might even trample on some without even noticing. I will return to this same spot in the next day or two to see if any more have sprouted and come up.
My whole walk was about 3 hours long, with most of it spent slightly bent over, scanning intently to find more morels. While going for walks is wonderfully refreshing and relaxing, looking for something takes a lot of energy and focus and can be extremely draining. Luckily there was a lot of beautiful surprises and moments to enjoy that gave me a break from searching and helped me relax and appreciate the moment. Can you see Charlotte in the photo above?
A particularly eerie part of the woods I have never explored
I decided to explore some new areas of the forest, hoping maybe under the pine trees would yield some morels. Sadly I did not find anything, I think the pine needles cover the ground too heavily and make the soil too acidic for these particular mushrooms. I know in the late summer and fall, lots of mushrooms, especially ink caps, love to grow under the pine trees. There is something about the absolute silence and hush in deeper parts of a forest that leaves me a little unsettled and sends chills down my spine.
Small batch of beautiful mushrooms growing beneath a gnarled apple tree. These I would not eat as I’m not 100% sure they are edible.
One beautiful aspect of this area is that a lot of it is forgotten and lost to people’s memory. This bridge is an old, probably over a 100 years old, bridge which used to support a railroad above it. Now it is a farmers path between fields, all the tracks long gone and forgotten. If you walk above the bridge on the path, you cannot even see the water or hear it. It’s like a completely different world, the normal world above with fields and tree’s, and this hidden valley and creek below, overgrown and forgotten. I’ve started wandering over to this area more and more on my walks recently, and love how quiet and peaceful it is.
This time I stumbled onto something truly special. It felt like I was witnessing the physical embodiment of the forest, an ancient spirit dwelling inside the body of an old, huge snapping turtle. At first I thought it was a rock that looked a lot like a turtle and I quietly stared at it for a few moments. The mud on its back, with several leaves and twigs seemed like the perfect camouflage. Slowly it swiveled its head and seemed to look directly at me. It was then that it really sunk in that this huge silent creature was real and staring right at me.
Snapping turtles, just like all turtles in Ontario, are endangered and are barely surviving as a species. To see such an old, majestic one was incredibly special. I quietly made my way up stream, hoping to wade across the creek and get a closer look. But when I came back, only a minute or two later, the turtle had completely vanished and disappeared. I searched upstream and down, but could not find any trace of it. I almost had a moment of panic as I walked through the tall grass along the banks, worried that I might accidentally walk into the turtle and get bitten. Sadly I was unable to catch another glimpse of it, but hopefully in the future our paths will cross again.
As I made my way back home along the path, I continued searching for morels. I wasn’t having any luck until my eyes were drawn to something slightly orange off in the bushes. I thought it might be a grouping of mushrooms on the ground, but realized as I came closer that it was a fox who had died over the winter. I’m not sure if it was shot by a hunter or was injured, but it seemed almost peaceful curled up as it died. Perhaps almost fittingly, just a few feet away, I found a group of several more morels. It’s amazing how life and death are so intricately linked and we often forget plants and fungi like mushrooms are the great equalizers and eaters of life. The help to decompose and break down all the nutrients, returning life back into the soil.
I ended up with about 7 morels from this walk, a wonderful little bounty that my father and I were excited to enjoy. Cutting the mushrooms in half, you can easily clean out any little bugs or insects hiding within, and after a quick wash in cold water, the morels are ready to be cooked. We simply fried them in butter, letting the natural morel flavours take center stage and be enjoyed all on their own. Hopefully there will be a lot more in the coming days and I’m excited to go off foraging, looking for more.