I was seven or eight when my favorite aunt, Rose Wallman, who often borrowed me from my parents, came to take me for an afternoon mushrooming expedition in Forest Park, in the borough of Queens. Aunt Rose was equipped with a basket from Woolworth’s and a copy of The Little Golden Book of Mushrooms. Forest Park was as close as you could come to a real forest in Queens. Aunt Rose, as much a neophyte mycologist as I was, delighted me by appearing to rely on my judgment in matters of life and death. We would spot a mushroom and consult The Little Golden Book, searching for a matching illustration. Mushroom or toadstool? (Years later, I would find myself on a blind date with a dour tax attorney, who interrupted my story at this point with a withering pronouncement: “There are no toadstools—only toxic mushrooms.” “To me, at eight, they were toadstools,” I said firmly, and shortly afterward left, alone.)
Anything Aunt Rose and I both designated “mushroom” was promptly picked. By the end of the afternoon we had gathered quite a variety; some were golden, the rest in various shades of brown. They lay nestled in Aunt Rose’s basket with clinging bits of moss and pine needles. My aunt was planning to sauté the whole lot in parsley butter but said she could not take the responsibility of inviting me to share the feast. All evening I worried about her, until the phone rang. Not only had Aunt Rose survived, she reported to me that the mushrooms were delicious, and ever since I have regretted not sampling that dish, seasoned as it was with a bit of danger.
I thought of Aunt Rose often after I bought a small cabin in Vermont on the edge of the woods. She would have been pleased that I finally had my own Forest Park, complete with deer, moose, porcupines, and a bear or two. Where my lawn ends, there are wild apple trees and blackberry brambles. In the fall after it rains, I’m likely to find boletes in the garden. My friends and neighbors up there are experienced mushroom hunters who wisely collect only what they’re absolutely sure of and eat everything they gather. Strings of dried mushrooms hang from the rafters of their kitchens. If you’re out driving with them, they’re likely to stop the car to harvest giant speckled pheasant’s backs jutting from dead elms along the roadside or the slightly phosphorescent shaggy manes that show up at night, luminous in the headlights. I’ve heard tales of giant puffballs, big enough to serve six, and of certain outcroppings of morels in hillside cow pastures. If you ask, “But where exactly do you find your morels?” you won’t get an answer—such secrets are respected by all—but you will get an invitation to come to dinner and try some.
I bought an enormous illustrated tome on mushrooms, full of Latin names and stern warnings and symbols representing degrees of edibility. I studied the picture of the lovely white mushroom known as the angel of death, learned how to make spore prints on paper towels, and felt properly nervous but still eager to proceed. Finally I went off to the woods without my mushroom bible, which was far too heavy to carry. I was a middle-aged city dweller still unaccustomed to being alone in the woods, and sometimes I thought I had to be crazy as I scrambled down the ravines and over fallen tree trunks and wrenched my sneakers out of oozing mud. If I broke my leg, who would find me? Perhaps days would pass before my friends worried. After my rescue they’d ask, “What were you thinking?!” The truth would be somewhat ridiculous: “I wanted chanterelles.”
I’d been told they grew everywhere in Vermont, and even for a beginner like me, the delicious little saffron trumpets were easily identifiable. I found only three or four that first day, growing out of rotted logs, but still it was a victory. I put them in an omelet. I liked the way the urge to seek them cleared out my mind, brought purpose and suspense to my rambles; I thought of nothing in the woods but of spotting a few dots of cadmium yellow. One day, wandering contentedly in circles, I lost my way. I headed toward the sunlight and found myself in a strangely familiar place that turned out to be my neighbor’s yard. There was a lone chanterelle growing in his driveway. With a twinge of guilt, I picked it.
My city cat had come to Vermont with me; I’d kept her in the house but finally she made her escape through some torn screening. I ran after her, tearfully calling her name, but she melted into the woods. As I walked back to the house, I found myself in a stand of birches near the road, only a few yards from my door. The ground was covered with small yellow trumpets, more than I’d ever hoped to see in one spot. They’d been hiding in plain sight—like the cat, as it turned out. She materialized on the porch at five the next morning, ravenously hungry and full of fleas.
So thanks to her I have my own secret place. I can only guess at what makes the chanterelles so abundant there. Is it the particular amount of sunlight filtering through the trees, the birch bark and decaying limbs on the ground mixed with just the right proportions of maple leaves and pine needles? My chanterelles keep coming back year after year, and I gather them, reveling in the mystery of their bounty.