Seeking out food that tastes like where it came from: Morel hunting in the forests of Central Washington

Eating a good oyster is like taking a bite out of the ocean. A Taiwanese High Mountain Oolong tea tastes like a walk through a high mountain tea forest; you can almost picture the tall spiky mountains when you drink it. Eating morel mushrooms is like the experience of being in the woods.

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On our drive down from Bellingham to Portland, taking the long route through the Cascades to avoid the Interstate, we went through Blewett Pass, an area that was burned in a forest fire last fall. Knowing that morels sprout up the spring after a burn, we wanted to stop and let the dogs run and have a look for mushrooms. Having camped in the area many times before, we knew that there were many logging roads that scour the area. We turned on a random one off the 97, not knowing what it would lead to. We found many cars on the road in a place where we rarely run into other people and instantly knew what others were doing at the spot: Searching for morels. 

We picked a pound of yellow and black morels, lingering in the duff surrounding nondescript pine trees. Under logs, not far from charred stumps, and deep in holes that were frightening to dig through with our hands, with centipedes crawling through pine needles, we got lucky. 

It takes a while for the eyes to get adjusted to what a morel looks like camouflaged in the forest detritus, but once we locked in on the honeycomb treats, we became like primitive hunters. Our senses were heightened; perceptions were highly intensified by the hunt for mushrooms.

We dropped the morels off with my friend Brad. An accomplished chef, we knew he'd know what to do with them.  On our return trip back from Oregon, we scored some mushrooms for ourselves. 

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Morels are a significant species in helping fire-damaged ecosystems recover. In spring, they are some of the first organisms to pop up from the barren ashy landscape left behind after a late summer forest fire. Their aroma attracts insects and mammals who bring seeds and life-breeding microbes from adjacent lands. Therefore, morels work as natural restorers of habitat. 

Morels help their hosts--larch, pine and Douglas fir seedlings--by penetrating into their feeder roots. It's possible morel mycelium infiltrates the root zones of most conifer forests in western North America and  then appears in the ashy remains to help restore life to the forest. 

These microrrhizal treats are living networks that connect life forms and forests, essentially regenerating life on this planet. Like a matrix, a biomolecular superhighway, mycelium is in constant dialogue with its environment, governing the flow of essential nutrients through the food chain. 

A forest ecosystem cannot be defined without its fungi because they govern the transition between life and death and the building of soils, all the while fueling numerous life cycles. 

For more info on how mushrooms can save us, see Paul Stamets's Mycelium Running.