The MOREL of the Story

First of all, I think he was lying about the gunshot scaring them into showing themselves.

I think he was.

I think...

Still to this day, I'm not positive. I mean, I wanted to believe him. Because I trusted his judgement on so many things, I wanted to trust it on this. After all, he'd been doing it for years. He must know what he's talking about, right? So, it kinda made sense, in a way.

I know that for myself though, if someone fired a pistol around me, I'd want to hide. Not show myself.

But he assured me that it would work. The gunshot would scare them into showing themselves.

So he fired the pistol...
and later that night, while we ate, I wondered at his practices...but enjoyed the result.

I learned a lot that day, in the woods.

And mushroom hunting has never been the same...

You see, my friends, several years ago my father-in-law Gordon took me mushroom hunting for the first time. In fact, the whole family went along. The more folks, the merrier! The more folks, the more mushrooms!

Do you like mushrooms? I like mushrooms. But they're not an "in between" food, are they? I mean, you either like them...or you don't.

And as I said, I like them. So the idea of hunting for them was intriguing. I'd never done it before. How hard could it be, right?

We headed out one fine morning in April to this patch of trees that belonged to a friend of Gordon's. He'd let him hunt on the property. I don't know if Gordon paid his friend back in mushrooms or what, but this had been going on for a while, because Gordon was very familiar with the land.

However, it was not easy to get to the land of 'shrooms. We had to hike along a fenceline for what felt like 12.7 miles. It wasn't like there was a sidewalk there; it was work to get over those big ol' dirt clods! And those big ol' dirtclods were really more like mud...so I was hot and a little sweaty before we even started to actually hunt. I began to wish I had some sort of native guide...or a pack mule or something...

Eventually we entered the woods. It was like another world. Dark, quiet. Gordon gave me some tips on hunting.

"Kick the logs first. Then step over them." Gordon directed.

"Does that help with finding mushrooms?" I asked.

"Scares the snakes!"

Great.

I'm not going to find mushrooms now. I'm going to find some snake neighborhood! Um, maybe mushroom hunting is not for me after all.

"Once you find the first one," Gordon continued. "You'll see 'em all over the place!"

SNAKES? Once I find my first SNAKE? EEEEEK!

But he was talking about the mushrooms.

"And be careful. Some mushrooms look like Morels, but they're poisonous."

Great. As if I wasn't worried enough about the snakes...now there are 'bad' mushrooms to be on the look out for!

I can't really explain the joy and excitement I felt when I found my first Morel. It wasn't very big. And I could've sworn that I'd looked in that same spot about 27 times...but there it was!
"Is this one?" I asked, gingerly holding it up.

"Yep!" Gordon clapped me on the shoulder. "You found one! Now let's scare the rest of 'em out of the ground!"

And he fired his pistol into the air.

And I about wet myself.

It was almost too much excitement for one person to experience.

I'll never forget that day in the woods. You know what? We found enough mushrooms to make one meal. Just one. It was a lot of work and effort for what seemed like very little payoff...but they were SO delicious!

There's something, my friends, to be said for working hard towards a goal. There's a delicious reward at the end of the day. What we have the hard time with, however...is the job itself. Because the job can be muddy, lengthy, and possibly full of snakes and gun shots. It can make us weary, and we can discourage easily...because sometimes all of our hard work doesn't look like much.

Stay strong, though. Here, have a Morel. I just picked it.