from the forest floor

Bob Peterson says that lightning wil blow the mushrooms out of the ground. "It's nothing scientific, the ion-ization of the air particles or somethingorother like that'll do it to 'em" he explains. Now every time I see lightning (which has been quite often lately) I think about all the mushrooms bursting out of the wet soil. Bob took off on his mini bike down the dirt road to visit the other neighbors, and I wandered to the garden to check my peas.

Early this spring, I went mushroom hunting for the first time. There was something magical about finding a morel in the forest. The pigeon river country was just beginning to come to life. Soft moss hugged the rolling slopes that were dotted with patches of trout lilly, trillium, and dutchmans britches. I searched intensely for a while, darting from ash tree to ash tree and frantically scanning the forest floor until my eyes threatened to twitch. Then I thought to myself 'maybe mushroom hunting is not for me', and became distracted with other forest delights. I ran my hands over the soft moss, and took a good look at the dutchman's britches blooms. I rooted around in the leaf litter and smelled the wonderful smell of decaying organic matter, a smell pitifully absent from my sandy garden. I completely forgot about the hunt.

When I finally got my nose out of the dirt and came to, I realized I had no idea where I was, except that I was somewhere within the largest contiguous tract of wilderness in the lower peninsula. I had to find my mushroom guide, who I had last seen crossing over the far slope nearly a half hour before. The setting sun added urgency to my search, and I stood still and listened for the crunch of leaves underfoot. All was silent. Running out of the beech maple grove I had wandered into (this is one of the only things I know about morel hunting- don't look for them in beech maple forests) I finally found patrick my guide frowning at the truck of a large ash tree. no mushrooms there either. he told me that he found two mushrooms, but didnt pick them (he knew I needed the practice). So I went to the place he had marked with his hat and began to search again, with renewed hope. A dark, mysterious glow caught my eye, and before the image of the morel registered in my brain, I knew I had found one. I found the second morel within seconds of the first, the glowing fungus that was at once very natural but very out of place in this seemiongly angiosperm dominated forest. I spotted 2 more on the way out, not seeing the morels but their magical glow.

We left the woods with a bag of ramps (delicious greens that taste like onion, garlic, and leek all in one) and a handful of morels. Not a great haul, but not bad for April. With all this lightning we've had, the forest floor must be glowing by now. I can't wait to get back.

Thirsty Thursday

On Thursdays I go to the Grey Rock for some beers with a handful of working soil scientists, but mostly retired soils scientists. We talk about hunting and fishing every week, without fail. Now I know all about beaver trapping and 'yote hunting and how to smoke a sucker and how to call a turkey. Sometimes we stray from the topic of hunting and fishing for a quick comment about the weather or a tale about an ancient knee replacement. Or ponder topics such as "Did Donny over at the Oscoda office retire yet? No, I heard he's got a few weeks left yet..." But those topics usually fizzle out quickly, followed by long silences that can only be broken by news of smelt abundance at the south side of Higgens or that gobbler that was so close, but never within shooting range.

Last week, however, was different. It was a warm and sunny Thursday. A recordbreakingly warm day for the first of April, if I recall correctly. No one wanted to set foot in the dark, smoky interior of the Grey Rock. So we started to call around, looking for a backyard or porch to host Thirsty Thursday. Marty, who retired just three months ago, was our first choice. He lives close to town and has a nice porch that would be the perfect setting to quench our thirst. But try as we might, Marty takes a nap during the day, and proved impossible to reach. We had to move on to Greg. Now, Greg is a recent soil retiree as well, but his porch had just been stained. Would this be an issue? Yes. But we could go as long as we kept off the porch and stuck to the lawnchairs. Now that he is retired, Greg has a lot of time on his hands. In addition to staining the deck, he has turned to cutting down trees, apparently for recreation. Using an intricate pulley system that all the retirees were extremely excited about, Greg had removed about half of the trees in his backyard. We talked about tree removal for a while, and than jumped over to the topic of the census, and then home heating.

I was starting to wonder how long a story about a rogue propane tank could go on, when the silence we had all been waiting for finally came. We let it linger sweetly for a few pensive moments, and then dove headfirst into 'who's been sucker fishing on the Black?'