Mushrooms & Bathrooms
by Kathleen Meyer
June 2012
June 2012
Western Montana’s June rains are performing their miracle, popping millions of morel mushrooms through the sooty soil of last year’s big burns. One summer’s terrifying forest fires are the birth of another’s bounty. And everyone’s off on the hunt.
Now you might be imagining a spiritually uplifting walk in the woods, with wildflowers smiling, the music and dazzle of a kicking creek, frequent glimpses of woodland fairies, and then the sudden discovery of a giant morel—big enough for a meal. You oooh and ahhh. You fall to your knees. You note the firmness and blackness of the honeycombed flesh. Sooo perfect. Rejoicing, you tuck an offering of sweet grass around its feet and murmur prayers of mighty thanks to the Morchella gods, before moving on, yes leaving it, in all its glory, only to begin your sacred gathering with the next find.
And were you out searching for “naturals”—the fewer-and-farther-between morels, sprouting every year without a burn—you could expect such a blissful sojourn. But with burn areas, Think again. The lures of fortunes-to-be-made host a strange and scary modern version of the Wild West, a melting pot of faces and out-of-state plates belonging to the cheap hire-ees and gunslingers of commercial buyers. For locals, it’s a disheartening wilderness experience.
Still and all, the fanciful dreams of a freezerful of shrooms for snowed-in winter dinners spurs you to call a friend and pack the truck for an overnight.
A quick stop at the ranger station, to purchase an official picking map, also services to alert you to an altercation having just required the sheriff and his troops, twenty miles in from the end of the pavement, at the primitive hot springs you’d thought would make the perfect base camp. Something about commercial pickers not letting a local man make camp, or not letting him pass on through. Sounds too crowded and hot for your blood, so you change course, picking out another drainage on the map, and then finding cars pulled off all along the road. At one bend, you get out to stretch your legs and BANG a shot zings by—“This place taken!
Finally, you come upon a lonely stretch of landscape—barren, charred, bombed out—where you heave a sigh of gratitude, and screech to a halt. You grab your basket and your mushroom knife (with the brush on one end), and lock up the truck. It’s already five o’clock but you’re cheered by the thought that there will be picking light until 10:00 p.m. But then ten feet off the road, it becomes evident the hordes have been there before you, pounding further hell out of the scorched earth and clear-cutting, leaving nothing but stumps, obvious stumps of mammoth morels that might have been destined for your basket. Now all has gone up in smoke again, this time the smoke of human madness. In three hours, you’ve scoured, at most, a couple meals worth of baby morels—they surely poked through the burnt surface within the last hour— and you and your pal have taken on the smudged look of two chimney sweeps after a hard day’s work. The very last straw is your night-under-the-stars accompanied by the drunken target practice of neighbors much too close.
Now you might be imagining a spiritually uplifting walk in the woods, with wildflowers smiling, the music and dazzle of a kicking creek, frequent glimpses of woodland fairies, and then the sudden discovery of a giant morel—big enough for a meal. You oooh and ahhh. You fall to your knees. You note the firmness and blackness of the honeycombed flesh. Sooo perfect. Rejoicing, you tuck an offering of sweet grass around its feet and murmur prayers of mighty thanks to the Morchella gods, before moving on, yes leaving it, in all its glory, only to begin your sacred gathering with the next find.
And were you out searching for “naturals”—the fewer-and-farther-between morels, sprouting every year without a burn—you could expect such a blissful sojourn. But with burn areas, Think again. The lures of fortunes-to-be-made host a strange and scary modern version of the Wild West, a melting pot of faces and out-of-state plates belonging to the cheap hire-ees and gunslingers of commercial buyers. For locals, it’s a disheartening wilderness experience.
Still and all, the fanciful dreams of a freezerful of shrooms for snowed-in winter dinners spurs you to call a friend and pack the truck for an overnight.
A quick stop at the ranger station, to purchase an official picking map, also services to alert you to an altercation having just required the sheriff and his troops, twenty miles in from the end of the pavement, at the primitive hot springs you’d thought would make the perfect base camp. Something about commercial pickers not letting a local man make camp, or not letting him pass on through. Sounds too crowded and hot for your blood, so you change course, picking out another drainage on the map, and then finding cars pulled off all along the road. At one bend, you get out to stretch your legs and BANG a shot zings by—“This place taken!
Finally, you come upon a lonely stretch of landscape—barren, charred, bombed out—where you heave a sigh of gratitude, and screech to a halt. You grab your basket and your mushroom knife (with the brush on one end), and lock up the truck. It’s already five o’clock but you’re cheered by the thought that there will be picking light until 10:00 p.m. But then ten feet off the road, it becomes evident the hordes have been there before you, pounding further hell out of the scorched earth and clear-cutting, leaving nothing but stumps, obvious stumps of mammoth morels that might have been destined for your basket. Now all has gone up in smoke again, this time the smoke of human madness. In three hours, you’ve scoured, at most, a couple meals worth of baby morels—they surely poked through the burnt surface within the last hour— and you and your pal have taken on the smudged look of two chimney sweeps after a hard day’s work. The very last straw is your night-under-the-stars accompanied by the drunken target practice of neighbors much too close.
Did I say “leaving nothing but stumps”? Well, add to that a carpeting of shiney spent shells, and then wads and tails of toilet paper, and all that goes with it.
This sort of abuse of our high country makes a person want to whip up a campaign to outlaw commercial picking; although, banning it would probably drive everything underground, create a black market rife with the greater violence that’s typical of prohibition. Thus, I offer one starter suggestion toward an altered approach. Because commercial pickers must buy a permit, it would be simple to crank up the price to included fecal pack-it-out systems—individual double-bagging products with cosmic poo powder that can be carted home and tossed in the regular trash (see Poo & Pee Products on this site). Then a big black number written on the bag and on each permit registered at the ranger station tells authorities whose bags are those gone astray, and just whom to fine big-time. Or perhaps higher permit fees might cover establishing checkpoints like we have at river put-ins to make sure portable toilets are part of the camping gear.
And now I must go, because my own bathroom is in need of attention. The old commode, which has almost rotted through the floor, is sprouting—all around its base—weird translucent mushrooms. One can only hope they are psychedelic and will spirit me away from this M&B mayhem.
This sort of abuse of our high country makes a person want to whip up a campaign to outlaw commercial picking; although, banning it would probably drive everything underground, create a black market rife with the greater violence that’s typical of prohibition. Thus, I offer one starter suggestion toward an altered approach. Because commercial pickers must buy a permit, it would be simple to crank up the price to included fecal pack-it-out systems—individual double-bagging products with cosmic poo powder that can be carted home and tossed in the regular trash (see Poo & Pee Products on this site). Then a big black number written on the bag and on each permit registered at the ranger station tells authorities whose bags are those gone astray, and just whom to fine big-time. Or perhaps higher permit fees might cover establishing checkpoints like we have at river put-ins to make sure portable toilets are part of the camping gear.
And now I must go, because my own bathroom is in need of attention. The old commode, which has almost rotted through the floor, is sprouting—all around its base—weird translucent mushrooms. One can only hope they are psychedelic and will spirit me away from this M&B mayhem.
Addendum: At our backyard table—an old shed door propped on weathered sawhorses—we just enjoyed a dinner of morel ragout over pasta. The floor show in the creekside meadow below included a doe with her week-old fawn, nursing and romping, a chorus of raspberry calls from the red-winged blackbirds that nest in the cattails, and a pheasant cruising in on a long, low landing.
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Mushrooms & Bathrooms
by Kathleen Meyer
June 2012
June 2012
Western Montana’s June rains are performing their miracle, popping millions of morel mushrooms through the sooty soil of last year’s big burns. One summer’s terrifying forest fires are the birth of another’s bounty. And everyone’s off on the hunt.
Now you might be imagining a spiritually uplifting walk in the woods, with wildflowers smiling, the music and dazzle of a kicking creek, frequent glimpses of woodland fairies, and then the sudden discovery of a giant morel—big enough for a meal. You oooh and ahhh. You fall to your knees. You note the firmness and blackness of the honeycombed flesh. Sooo perfect. Rejoicing, you tuck an offering of sweet grass around its feet and murmur prayers of mighty thanks to the Morchella gods, before moving on, yes leaving it, in all its glory, only to begin your sacred gathering with the next find.
And were you out searching for “naturals”—the fewer-and-farther-between morels, sprouting every year without a burn—you could expect such a blissful sojourn. But with burn areas, Think again. The lures of fortunes-to-be-made host a strange and scary modern version of the Wild West, a melting pot of faces and out-of-state plates belonging to the cheap hire-ees and gunslingers of commercial buyers. For locals, it’s a disheartening wilderness experience.
Still and all, the fanciful dreams of a freezerful of shrooms for snowed-in winter dinners spurs you to call a friend and pack the truck for an overnight.
A quick stop at the ranger station, to purchase an official picking map, also services to alert you to an altercation having just required the sheriff and his troops, twenty miles in from the end of the pavement, at the primitive hot springs you’d thought would make the perfect base camp. Something about commercial pickers not letting a local man make camp, or not letting him pass on through. Sounds too crowded and hot for your blood, so you change course, picking out another drainage on the map, and then finding cars pulled off all along the road. At one bend, you get out to stretch your legs and BANG a shot zings by—“This place taken!
Finally, you come upon a lonely stretch of landscape—barren, charred, bombed out—where you heave a sigh of gratitude, and screech to a halt. You grab your basket and your mushroom knife (with the brush on one end), and lock up the truck. It’s already five o’clock but you’re cheered by the thought that there will be picking light until 10:00 p.m. But then ten feet off the road, it becomes evident the hordes have been there before you, pounding further hell out of the scorched earth and clear-cutting, leaving nothing but stumps, obvious stumps of mammoth morels that might have been destined for your basket. Now all has gone up in smoke again, this time the smoke of human madness. In three hours, you’ve scoured, at most, a couple meals worth of baby morels—they surely poked through the burnt surface within the last hour— and you and your pal have taken on the smudged look of two chimney sweeps after a hard day’s work. The very last straw is your night-under-the-stars accompanied by the drunken target practice of neighbors much too close.
Now you might be imagining a spiritually uplifting walk in the woods, with wildflowers smiling, the music and dazzle of a kicking creek, frequent glimpses of woodland fairies, and then the sudden discovery of a giant morel—big enough for a meal. You oooh and ahhh. You fall to your knees. You note the firmness and blackness of the honeycombed flesh. Sooo perfect. Rejoicing, you tuck an offering of sweet grass around its feet and murmur prayers of mighty thanks to the Morchella gods, before moving on, yes leaving it, in all its glory, only to begin your sacred gathering with the next find.
And were you out searching for “naturals”—the fewer-and-farther-between morels, sprouting every year without a burn—you could expect such a blissful sojourn. But with burn areas, Think again. The lures of fortunes-to-be-made host a strange and scary modern version of the Wild West, a melting pot of faces and out-of-state plates belonging to the cheap hire-ees and gunslingers of commercial buyers. For locals, it’s a disheartening wilderness experience.
Still and all, the fanciful dreams of a freezerful of shrooms for snowed-in winter dinners spurs you to call a friend and pack the truck for an overnight.
A quick stop at the ranger station, to purchase an official picking map, also services to alert you to an altercation having just required the sheriff and his troops, twenty miles in from the end of the pavement, at the primitive hot springs you’d thought would make the perfect base camp. Something about commercial pickers not letting a local man make camp, or not letting him pass on through. Sounds too crowded and hot for your blood, so you change course, picking out another drainage on the map, and then finding cars pulled off all along the road. At one bend, you get out to stretch your legs and BANG a shot zings by—“This place taken!
Finally, you come upon a lonely stretch of landscape—barren, charred, bombed out—where you heave a sigh of gratitude, and screech to a halt. You grab your basket and your mushroom knife (with the brush on one end), and lock up the truck. It’s already five o’clock but you’re cheered by the thought that there will be picking light until 10:00 p.m. But then ten feet off the road, it becomes evident the hordes have been there before you, pounding further hell out of the scorched earth and clear-cutting, leaving nothing but stumps, obvious stumps of mammoth morels that might have been destined for your basket. Now all has gone up in smoke again, this time the smoke of human madness. In three hours, you’ve scoured, at most, a couple meals worth of baby morels—they surely poked through the burnt surface within the last hour— and you and your pal have taken on the smudged look of two chimney sweeps after a hard day’s work. The very last straw is your night-under-the-stars accompanied by the drunken target practice of neighbors much too close.
Did I say “leaving nothing but stumps”? Well, add to that a carpeting of shiney spent shells, and then wads and tails of toilet paper, and all that goes with it.
This sort of abuse of our high country makes a person want to whip up a campaign to outlaw commercial picking; although, banning it would probably drive everything underground, create a black market rife with the greater violence that’s typical of prohibition. Thus, I offer one starter suggestion toward an altered approach. Because commercial pickers must buy a permit, it would be simple to crank up the price to included fecal pack-it-out systems—individual double-bagging products with cosmic poo powder that can be carted home and tossed in the regular trash (see Poo & Pee Products on this site). Then a big black number written on the bag and on each permit registered at the ranger station tells authorities whose bags are those gone astray, and just whom to fine big-time. Or perhaps higher permit fees might cover establishing checkpoints like we have at river put-ins to make sure portable toilets are part of the camping gear.
And now I must go, because my own bathroom is in need of attention. The old commode, which has almost rotted through the floor, is sprouting—all around its base—weird translucent mushrooms. One can only hope they are psychedelic and will spirit me away from this M&B mayhem.
This sort of abuse of our high country makes a person want to whip up a campaign to outlaw commercial picking; although, banning it would probably drive everything underground, create a black market rife with the greater violence that’s typical of prohibition. Thus, I offer one starter suggestion toward an altered approach. Because commercial pickers must buy a permit, it would be simple to crank up the price to included fecal pack-it-out systems—individual double-bagging products with cosmic poo powder that can be carted home and tossed in the regular trash (see Poo & Pee Products on this site). Then a big black number written on the bag and on each permit registered at the ranger station tells authorities whose bags are those gone astray, and just whom to fine big-time. Or perhaps higher permit fees might cover establishing checkpoints like we have at river put-ins to make sure portable toilets are part of the camping gear.
And now I must go, because my own bathroom is in need of attention. The old commode, which has almost rotted through the floor, is sprouting—all around its base—weird translucent mushrooms. One can only hope they are psychedelic and will spirit me away from this M&B mayhem.
Addendum: At our back yard table—an old shed door propped on weathered sawhorses—we just enjoyed a dinner of morel ragout over pasta. The floor show in the creekside meadow below included a doe with her week-old fawn, nursing and romping, a chorus of raspberry calls from the red-winged blackbirds that nest in the cattails, and a pheasant cruising in on a long, low landing.
© 2011 by Author Kathleen Meyer • All Rights Reserved
Web site design by RapidRiver.us
© 2011 by Author Kathleen Meyer • All Rights Reserved
Web site design by RapidRiver.us