The Omnivore's Dilemma - Michael Pollan [193]
3. WORKING THE BURN
After the first pig hunt Jean-Pierre had driven me home, and I used the captive car time to probe him once again on the subject of mushrooms. He yielded no ground, but did mention a mushroom hunter by the name of Anthony Tassinello, who had shown up at his restaurant earlier in the week with several pounds of morels. Jean-Pierre offered to put me in touch with Anthony. (It is amazing the lengths to which some people will go to deflect attention from their own mushroom spots.)
True to his word, Jean-Pierre sent an e-mail to Anthony, who expressed a willingness to take me morel hunting. I was surprised he’d let a complete stranger tag along, but after some back and forth by e-mail, it began to make more sense. The morels were “on,” and Anthony could use an extra pair of hands, especially ones that were asking for nothing in return. As for concerns I might compromise his spots (I swore my usual oaths), the secrecy issue is not nearly so touchy in the case of the “burn morels” we would be hunting. These are morels that fruit in profusion the spring following a pine forest fire. Even if I were to disclose classified information, it would have little value beyond this spring—indeed, beyond the next couple of weeks, since he fully expected the entire California mycological community to descend on this burn the moment the word got out.
Anthony e-mailed that I should meet him in front of his house Friday morning at 6:00 A.M. sharp, warning me to come prepared for a harsh and unpredictable environment. “We’ll go rain, snow, or shine. Don’t laugh: It has snowed once already this spring, and we managed to find morels poking through the accumulation. It wasn’t fun, but memorable.
“The weather where we’ll hunt can be very different from here, and even from the valley. We’ll be hiking nearly a mile above sea level, and it can be hot, cold, or wet, all in a matter of hours. Bring light layers and rain gear just in case. A solid pair of hiking boots with ankle support is a must: It is very steep, rocky terrain with huge, burned fallen trees and ground that is thoroughly soaked. Bring a hat, the sun is stronger at this elevation, plus it keeps cedar needles and spiderwebs out of your face and can double as a mushroom sack when your basket is full.” Anthony also advised me to bring sunscreen and bug spray (for mosquitoes), at least a gallon of water, ChapStick, and, if I owned one, a walkie-talkie.
Morel hunting didn’t sound like much fun, more like survival training than a walk in the woods. I crossed my fingers that Anthony was just trying to scare me, and set my alarm for 4:30 A.M., wondering why it is all these hunting-gathering expeditions had to begin at such ungodly hours in the morning. In the case of the pigs, I understood the need to be ready when the animals were still active early in the day, but it’s not as though these morels were going anywhere after lunch. Perhaps when you’re foraging you just want as much daylight as possible. Or maybe we wanted the early start to beat competing foragers to the best spots.
I pulled up to Anthony’s curb a little before six to find two thirtyish-looking men in rain slickers loading an SUV with enough matériel to provision a weeklong campaign in hostile territory. Anthony was a rail-thin, angular six-footer with a goatee in the style of Frank Zappa; his friend Ben Baily was a somewhat rounder and softer man with an easy laugh. I learned on the long ride across the Central Valley that Anthony and Ben were childhood friends from Piscataway, New Jersey; after college they’d both made the pilgrimage to the Bay Area to become chefs. Anthony had been working as a pastry chef at Chez Panisse when one afternoon a backwoodsy-looking fellow dressed in camouflage showed up at the kitchen door with crates of wild mushrooms.
“I love to eat mushrooms, so I put it in his ear that I wanted to go out with him some time, and eventually it happened. He took me up to Sonoma and we found boletes and chanterelles. We just went outside