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 veggie
Registered: 07/25/04
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 Late Central Oregon mushroom season a boon for area fungus hunters
#12871254 - 07/09/10 05:06 AM (1 year, 10 months ago) |
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Late Central Oregon mushroom season a boon for area fungus hunters
July 8, 2010 -Bend Bulletin
 David Alexander's head is hanging out the window of his 1991 Toyota pickup truck, looking for a glimpse of morel mushrooms as we rumble down Tangent Loop in the Swampy Lakes area between Bend and Mount Bachelor.
Just a week and a half before, the avid mushroom hunter — who lives in Bend and makes his living as a nationally touring rapper — combed this section of the Cascade Mountains and came home with a bountiful harvest of the mycological marvels that are popular for their complex, earthy taste.
On this warm Saturday morning, however, things are looking bleak.
He ducks his head back into the cab.
“I'd like to call mushroom hunting an art,” Alexander said. “But it's a chaotic art.”
The funny thing is, many folks would describe the man's music the same way. Over the past 10 years, Alexander (stage name: The Dirtball) has steadily risen in the world of underground hip-hop, releasing several solo albums of his trademark rapid-fire raps. The Dirtball's sound is like Eminem's, but less violent and with a strong love for the Central Oregon way of life; when he's home between tours, Alexander loves to ski, split firewood and hunt mushrooms, be they morels, king boletes or matsutakes.
Earlier this year, Alexander officially joined the Kottonmouth Kings, an independent, party-happy, rap-rock group that has built an empire among kids through music and clothing. The Dirtball has since become one of the Kings' featured MCs, and Alexander just got home from a 37-date tour with Insane Clown Posse.
Before he arrived back in Bend, Alexander feared he would miss morel season, which usually runs from about May through mid-June. But a wet, cold spring pushed the season back about a month, he said.
“I came off tour thinking, ‘Oh, the morels will be gone,' ” he said. “But it'd been raining so much they never had a chance (to grow), and then as soon as we got that first sunlight, all this area just exploded. So I was surprised. This is an odd season.”
Alexander has been hunting mushrooms for 15 years. He was introduced to the pursuit by his mother, Marlene. At one time, he sold morels to local stores and restaurants to make ends meet.
These days, he hunts mushrooms mostly for the fun of it. He dries his mushrooms and eats them throughout the year. He also sends bags to friends in the music industry.
For Alexander, though, it's all about the joy of the hunt, which he calls a “chaotic art” for a reason.
“There are so many factors going into finding mushrooms. You've got time of season, temperatures, elevation, direction of growth and, you know, luck,” he said. “They grow at different areas and different times, so when you think you know where they are, you really might not.
“It's a chase,” he continued. “It's a mind game!”
Alexander spends much of his morel-hunting time in the Metolius River area, where recent forest fires have created conditions ideal for the fungus to thrive. But he also likes hunting what he calls “natural” morels, which grow on their own off-root systems, away from burns.
“I've got veins all over that I'll go check out,” he said. “It's all about trial and error, and asking people who know what's up.”
Early in the season, Alexander hunts for morels on the south- and east-facing slopes of mountains, paying special attention to land along old logging paths and flat, grassy areas near pine groves, he said. Later in the season, he shifts to the north side of hills, where the sun hasn't yet had a chance to focus its heat on the mushrooms.
When looking for morels, Alexander is a stalker, creeping through the forest with his eyes trained on the ground, watching for the distinctive fungus: the shape and size of pine cones, with an appearance like a honeycomb or a human brain.
For king boletes — whose season comes after morels, i.e., right now — Alexander watches for the mushroom's large cap, which resembles a hamburger bun on the ground. Matsutakes, which are hunted in the fall, are trickier; ideally, you want to harvest them before they've even surfaced, he said.
The Swampy Lakes area was a new hunting ground for Alexander this year. “I got home and kind of got word that there were mushrooms out in different spots,” he said.
The new location proved to be quite fruitful; Alexander said he found a bunch of morels there over the past several weeks.
“When you get into 'em, it's like a kid in a candy store, man,” he said. “As soon as you lock your eyes in on one, then it's on.”
That is, when he can find them. Last weekend, morel season was all but over, but that didn't dampen Alexander's passion for Central Oregon's mushrooming potential.
“Our woods are ideal ... for edible gourmet mushrooms,” he said. “Our backyard is the best place you can go anywhere in the world, so we're really fortunate to have this here.
“I think everybody should know that, locally, we sit on a gold mine.”
The lack of morels also didn't stop Alexander from keeping his eyes on the ground. And after an hour of no luck, all that wandering in the woods paid off when he stumbled across a king bolete in a clearing just a couple of hundred feet from his truck.
His eyes lit up, and you could hear the excitement in his voice.
“Here's a bolete, dude!” he said. “We're stoked! This is a king bolete!”
Within seconds, he'd made plans for the mushroom.
“What you don't know is I'm going to go home and eat it pretty much instantly,” he said. “I'll be cleaning this and eating it as soon as possible.”
If you go
What: Mushroom hunting
Where: Mushrooms can be found in various places in Central Oregon, including the Metolius River basin, across the Cascade and Ochoco mountains, and the Crescent/Chemult area. The Deschutes and Ochoco national forests have maps that show where mushrooms can be hunted. Your best bet is to ask someone who's in the know.
Cost: Personal collection of mushrooms on national forests requires a personal use permit, available free at all Deschutes and Ochoco forest offices. For more information, visit www.fs.fed.us/r6/centraloregon/products/mushrooms/index.shtml.
Contact: 541-383-5300, www.cascademyco.org or www.mushroomsinbend.org
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Society
Society
Registered: 07/03/04
Posts: 10,687
Loc: Society
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Re: Late Central Oregon mushroom season a boon for area fungus hunters [Re: veggie]
#12871769 - 07/09/10 09:02 AM (1 year, 10 months ago) |
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Sometimes I wonder how you find this stuff, veggie.
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Society
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