Preface

All That the Rain Promises, and More is a pocket-sized field guide to the most distinctive wild mushrooms of western North America. Stretching from the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific Coast and from the deserts of northern Mexico to Alaska, this vast and varied region harbors several thousand kinds of mushrooms. The approximately 200 depicted here are those most likely to pique the interest of the average wonderer and wanderer. A more comprehensive treatment isn’t practical in a book this size. Witness my joy and pride, the comprehensive guide Mushrooms Demystified. It is eminently quotable but not notable for being totable. The only pocket it will fit in is a kangaroo’s!

The design of this book is simple: each mushroom is illustrated with one or more color photographs accompanied by a concise, easy-to-understand list of identifying features plus information on edibility and habitat. In other words, it is a completely self-contained field guide for beginners. But it will also appeal to more experienced hunters as a field companion to Mushrooms Demystified, and is cross-referenced for that purpose. Even the jaded mushroom junkie whose cupboard runneth over with mushroom memorabilia will find something new: several species are depicted in color for the first time, and unusual uses of mushrooms are documented.

In a fungophobic (mushroom-loathing) society such as ours, it takes a certain boldness and curiosity to seek out mushrooms, and creativity to put them to good use. As a result, North American mushroom hunters are an unusually bold, curious, creative, even iconoclastic and bizarre bunch that have nourished and enhanced my life immeasurably. I have attempted to introduce some of them to readers by lacing this book with a generous helping of first-person accounts, novel cooking suggestions, stories, limericks, and photographs of them “caught in the act” of doing things with or to their favorite mushrooms. I am grateful to each and every one of them for their contributions and camaraderie. Few of us get to write books. Even fewer get to write books about mushrooms. As one who does both, sharing the insights and experiences of those who don’t is a fitting way to record a small but significant part of our future history and cultural heritage.

One final note to readers unfamiliar with Mushrooms Demystified: I firmly believe in stressing the fun in fungi. In leafing through these pages, you may wonder what all the “fanciful,” “foolish,” or (shudder) “extraneous” material is doing in a factual guide. After all, it is the practical, hands-on, how-to-identify information that makes this book useful and gives it substance. But I ask: is it any stranger or less desirable to sprinkle the facts with flakes of fancy than it is to liven up solemn, substantial fare like potatoes with something fancier and more flavorful, like wild mushrooms?

I say: thank goodness for the potatoes, but thank God for mushrooms!

—David Arora

Santa Cruz, California