O, Chanterelle

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             In the beginning I was just like you, didn't know chanterelles from tam-o'-shanters. But once upon a time, long before you could buy fancy mushrooms in the store, my twin brother, Thor, proposed we drive up to Mt. Tamalpais to collect a special kind of mushroom called chanterelles by most people, "pfifferlings" by Bavarians, and Cantharellus by the early 19th Century Swedish child prodigy of fungi, Elias Magnus Fries, author of the Systema Mycologicum.

            Thor told me that chanterelles were baseball-sized orange fungi that hid beneath the leaf litter around the base of oak trees and were good to eat, so we should go get some. I wasn't doing anything special at the time, so I said okay. We headed out to Frank’s Valley along Redwood Creek, parked at what Thor said was a likely looking spot, and in a very short time he had collected enough of the prized fungi to make a meal. We drove them back to my place, sliced them thin, and cooked them for dinner.

            Now I'm no fancy epicurean with a lot of words to describe nuances of flavor, nor am I a scientist who can explain the chemistry of organic compounds on the biological surface of my tongue, and the electrical impulses firing excitement into webs of neurons in some tiny part of my brain. And I’m not even all that fond of mushrooms in general, but I’ll tell you what. Those chanterelles were a revelation.

            You might think I should try to describe the flavor to you, but the fact is, if you ask a dozen people to describe what chanterelles taste like, you'll get a dozen different answers. Some will probably even say “yuck.” If you really want to know what a thing is like, you need to experience it for yourself.

            So Thor gave me my first taste, but shortly thereafter he married his sweetheart and lit out for Coyote Springs, Wyoming. I searched for chanterelles on my own over the next few months and found not a single one. The wet season ended, and the dry season came and I sort of forgot about chanterelles. But I'll tell you what you already know. If you ever experience anything as sweet as a chanterelle, you're going to do everything you can to have that experience again.

            It seemed an easy enough thing to do, to learn how to find chanterelles. At first I did a little research, a little reading, and found out there was such a thing as false chanterelles (Hygrophoropsis aurantiaca), whose bland flavor will leave you wondering what the fuss was all about -- and that's just for starters. If you were to eat a chanterelle-looking ‘shroom called Jack-O-Lantern (Omphalotus olivascens), you could find yourself hooked up to a stomach pump at the local hospital and meeting some fella called a “mycologist” who would have been called in for the unenviable job of trying to identify what you ate.

            Nope, as alluring as chanterelles are, a few hours of intimacy with a stomach pump could turn just about anyone off the quest for finding them. Funny thing is, lots of folks who've gotten sick from false chanterelles curse all chanterelles. Even funnier is that some folks have actually taken a liking to false chanterelles and mock anyone who tries to tell ‘em the real thing is better. I don't know what to think about such people.

            Anyway, when the wet season came around again I spent several weeks going over a lot of ground up around Mt. Tam, and what a time did I have. At first I'd drop by on my way back from work, but darkness often chased me home empty-handed. Occasionally, though, I did manage to find a few of the evanescent little beauties on those brief forays. Each time I found some I felt like I was being drawn toward to a deeper undstanding of chanterelles, maybe even to an understanding of their source, deep in the ground. Things only a true mycophile would know. So I decided to take a little vacation time -- OK, I won't lie; I took three weeks -- to get into some serious, full-time chanterelle-hunting.

            My tools were simple -- a few wax paper bags, a pocket knife, and my favorite field guide, a musty old thing I found in a second-hand bookstore.

            Although I didn't find much the first couple of days, I felt I was on the right trail and sure enough, I began to find a few, and then a few more. Eventually I found a motherlode -- a patch that seemed to have as many chanterelles as there are stars in the sky. Right there in a small clearing, far away from any of the trails, the earth sparkled with dozens of golden eruptions. I collected great quantities of the mushrooms for three full days. I ate so many chanterelles that I dreamed of flamingoes and wondered if my skin was going to change color. I sauteed my chanterelles in wine, and I sauteed them in butter. I sauteed them in teriyaki sauce, and I sauteed them in peach syrup.

            I sauteed them in ecstasy, in rapture, blissed to the core of my being.

            But my bliss was short-lived. During the next several days I found not so much as a single chanterelle. I had become obsessed with them by then, however, and I made the mistake of trying to describe chanterelles, and my quest to find their source, with my wife and with friends. None of them had tasted chanterelles. They had laughed at me for being so avid about a mere fungus! A worthless object, quite possibly poisonous, fit only for scorn. And now I couldn't find any to prove how good they were.

            I continued to read about them, especially accounts from others who experienced them as I did. I was able to find such stories going back to the dawn of civilization. Once I thought I overheard a group of strangers talking about chanterelles, but when I listened more closely I realized they were talking about store-bought button mushrooms.

            No matter how hard I looked, though, I couldn't find any more chanterelles, and I began to feel resentment toward them. I even ate button mushrooms for a while, figuring there must be some wisdom in following the herd.

            But that didn’t work. My life came to seem empty and vain. I took to sleeping in the woods on weekends so I could seek my quarry at first light and continue until dark. I crawled through merciless chaparral, my body slashed by multitudes of branches. Rattlesnakes buzzed me, a primordial sound, a call of death. I came down with a nasty cold and broke out with a furious rash of poison oak. Wood rats and field mice and millipedes and banana slugs and Jersusalem crickets and God-only-knows-what-else crawled over me while I slept on beds of leaves. I didn’t care. What were mere creature comforts next to a basket full of golden chanterelles?

            By and by I finally found a couple of the beauties way up a no-name canyon, on a slope covered with poison oak. I took them home and cooked them up, savoring each bite like it was my first.

            For the remainder of the wet season I found many chanterelles, but now instead of picking them, I would just sit with them. If I found a few under some leaves I'd just replace the leaves, lie down and keep company with them. Some nights I couldn't find any, but I didn't let it bother me. Almost as soon as I gave up trying to find them I'd sit down right next to one. Sometimes I'd stay there all night, curled up with my prize, and awake refreshed, cold dewdrops dappling my flesh.

            Halfway through one night, while a full moon was directly overhead, I awoke with a start to the yipping of a lone coyote. On the ground next to me I could see the golden hue of a freshly emerged chanterelle reflecting the moonlight. I moved closer to it and put my nose down near its base and inhaled its sweet aroma. I carefully brushed away some of the topsoil around it and uncovered the glistening mycelium. In that moment, everything lay revealed before me.

            I finally was able to settle back into the mundane world of home and work. I still love chanterelles, but I keep my enthusiasms to myself. When I do talk about them, I speak in metaphor, like a poet. I don’t need to sleep in the woods anymore to find my fill of chanterelles, either. Now I notice them pretty much anywhere. I’ve found them on scree slopes in the High Sierra and on sand dunes in the Mojave Desert. I’ve found them in downtown San Francisco and even under my desk where I work.

            May your world also be filled with chanterelles.

            Happy New Year.

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End of an Era

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I was poking around on the north side of the mountain most of the morning, not finding much in the way of mushrooms and not feeling much inspiration for photography. I drove up the mountain and south along Bolinas Ridge, hooked a right at Rock Spring and pulled out near Sunset Point to take in the view before heading home. I'm scanning the scene when I notice something is amiss! Holy cow! I thought, "It's the end of an era!" Here's what I saw. Can you tell what's different?

When I saw what had happened I drove back up to the nearest parking lot and hiked down to visit the tree. The wind-sculpted top that's been iconic of Mt. Tam for at least 40 years or so is now an explosion of leafy branches on the ground below. A couple of large branches snagged on the way down and are now swinging in the wind, would-be widow-makers. In case you need a reminder, here's how it used to look:

Here's a picture of the same tree from Galen Rowell's book Bay Area Wild, which came out in 1997. According to the stock image profile at Mountain Light (which, like the book, also misidentifies the tree as a Monterey pine), the photograph was made in 1995.

And to take it back another 20 years, here's the tree in the book Tamalpais, by Bud Fellom and Richard Stortroen, that came out in 1978:

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Fine Falls

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Despite getting up at 5:30 I still nearly missed the mountain sunrise. Guess I dawdled a little.

Aside from just having a nice hike, I hoped to find enough water in the creek to photograph a waterfall or two.

With the falls in "gentle" mode, I crossed the creek and poked around the peripheral fern grotto.

Probably not that many people have taken in this view, but I know at least someone else has. A nearly full bottle of Sprite had been left behind.

Hopefully very soon there will be much more water pouring down the gulch -- too much to allow anyone to make a photograph from this vantage point at the base of the falls.

First time I ever saw lion's mane (Hericium erinaceus) on Mt. Tam.

This is as far down the trail as I'd planned to go. I was glad at least a little bit of water was falling here. The little orange things on the log are chicken-of-the-woods mushrooms. They must have sprouted before the creek rose.

Little purple cup fungi.

These deer mushrooms were just too perfect to pass up, having sprouted right out of a log just as sassy as you please.

Always nice to have a chance to photograph Western bluebirds.

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Fresh Fungi

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I didn't stray far from the area around my camera trap this morning. Followed some deer trails and nosed around looking for interesting fungi to photograph, like these cute little orange guys. On checking the trail camera I was disappointed to see that I'd forgotten to turn it on last week, so it's just been sitting out there missing all the action. Gnomes riding bareback on bobcats probably trooped through, of course.

I was a little bit startled by a funny sound on my way down the trail. It was Cataract Creek. There was water in it, and the water was even moving. If the rain keeps coming we might yet have waterfalls before the month is out.

I make a small effort to figure out the scientific names of the mushrooms I photograph. It's interesting to learn some of the diagnostic features of mushrooms, but I leave it to others when it comes to measuring millimeters, performing microscopy and using reagents to check for chemical reactions. Not that it wouldn't be fun to do all that someday.

I like the challenge of photographing mushrooms. I like these little guys, but I'm not crazy about the background. 

The pink gills are younger than the brown gills in the background, but both are the same species.

Not that you can tell, but Lepiotas usually have white gills.

Some fungi, like this little patch of Stereum ochracoflavum don't have gills at all. 

The very slow drip of Douglas fir sap.

Here's a bolete called Xerocomellus zelleri. It's listed as edible in California Mushrooms, and you can see by the scrapes on the cap that a banana slug would agree.

This was an interesting find. It looked like an ordinary large mushroom growing close to the ground, but when I looked for gills I found pores instead. It's actually a polypore, Jahnoporus hirtus, if I may hazard a guess.

It's late Saturday afternoon as I write, and the sky is becoming nicely overcast, with rain virtually assured for tomorrow. All I can say is: Keep it coming!

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Wet Knees

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This morning, for the first time since last year, my knees got wet when I knelt down to make some photographs. Yay!

I also finally saw a good flush of mushrooms on the forest floor.

The ground is finally wet, but the creeks have yet to start flowing.

It finally feels like the season is changing...

...from dry to wet.

Good thing I checked the trail camera. It had been knocked askew and had some little skinny branches in front of it. I sort of suspect a squirrel that showed up a couple of times. Squirrels don't like being spied on. When I put the camera on the ground once, not attached to anything, a squirrel knocked it over, then kicked it again while it was down.

I was poking around on a little-used path that runs roughly parallel to the Simmons Trail, heading for this grove of valley live oaks to see how their moss coats were doing, when I was surprised by a couple of hikers. I'm sure they were as surprised to see me as I was them. 

Not only were we off the beaten path, but it was still earlier than I usually start to notice hikers. But today, several people had beaten me to the gate at opening time (hey, I slept in), a couple of guys were already setting out to hike down the Cataract Trail when I pulled in to Rock Spring at about 7:15, and a pair of trail runners passed me while I was checking the camera trap. 

Here's a kinder, gentler Gomphidius glutinosis. Not really wet enough to be hideous.

I didn't know what these guys were. At first I thought they were honey mushrooms growing out of a buried chunk of wood, but then I realized they were boletes. I used my photo to try key them out in California Mushrooms by Dennis Desjardin, et al., and ended up (with just a modicum of conviction) at Suillus lakei.

More rain in the forecast for the coming week. Let's hope it comes. It's still way too dry up there for December.

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Acorns

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Canyon Live Oak

Weevil Hole

As I gathered a pocket full of acorns beneath this oak tree, a couple of hikers walked past, maybe 20 feet away, their eyes intent on the trail, and never saw me. And as I plucked the acorns from the earth I didn't realize how beautiful and unusual looking some of them were until I viewed them through a macro lens. One of the great things about photography is being able to bring attention to a common yet beautiful and interesting object that we would otherwise never notice.

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Good Ole Mt. Tam

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The camera trap hasn't been very busy this last week. I caught a bobcat the first week, a fox the second, and a buck in the third week. That is all. This morning I moved the camera once again to another spot in the same general area, this time along a rarely used trail that has caught both people and coyotes in the past, and where recent raccoon scat can still be found.

This has got to be an old RC Cola can with the red lettering completely faded.

Lichen galaxies.

Haven't seen a bobcat up here in a long time. So I brought my own.

They like it up here.

One of the best bobcat encounters I ever had on Mt. Tam started very near this city-view vantage point, three years ago this week.

Bobcat on Bolinas Ridge, November 18, 2012.

A red-tailed hawk soars above the ridge in an offshore wind.

Once the hawk passed, bird life resumed its busy ways. Here, an acorn woodpecker scores a nut from a canyon live oak (Quercus chrysolepis).

I feel this blog drawing to a close as 2015 winds down. I remain hopeful that we'll get some real rain before year's end. I'd like to close out with some nice mushrooms and waterfalls.

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