Because of the season, we focused our efforts on finding morels, long, cylindrical mushrooms with wrinkled tops known for their rich, earthy and creamy taste; and boletes, which can be identified by a wide white stalk, flat, brown hamburger bun-shaped caps and vertical tubes where their gills would be. You may know this second type of mushroom by its Italian name: porcini.
once we got to our first hunting spot, I spent about 15 minutes wandering through the forest with the Hamiltons before we went in different directions looking for the elevated clusters of leaves and shockingly out-of-place color patterns that mark the presence of wild mushrooms. That's when I came across the clearing with the brown mushroom clusters.
But unfortunately I'd forgotten a few of the physical characteristics that separate boletes from wild mushrooms that could kill me or at least cause my kidneys to fail, and figured it was time to rejoin the Hamiltons, who had the mushroom guidebooks. So I left the tree branch in the ground to mark my spot in hopes I could find the clearing and, if they were edible, throw the mushrooms I'd discovered in my bag.
But the branch quickly blended in to the dense pine and fir trees as I searched for my companions, and I quickly lost it.
None of us were having much luck in our search, so we decided it was time to head back to the car and drive someplace else. We had just gotten back to the vehicle when Julie Hamilton saw a chipmunk dart across the road. She said it was nibbling on something before it took off, and dashed across the road to see what it was.
“We've got a bolete,” she said, signalling that she found a slightly chewed mushroom that could be salvaged with a little bit of knife work. She held it up in her hand and said there had to be more mushrooms like it out there.
Buoyed by this success, we continued scanning the forest floor and came across not one but two morel mushrooms popping up out of the ground a few yards away from that first bolete. A few minutes later, Jim Hamilton found another bolete.
Finding these mushrooms was invigorating, but the excitement quickly waned after other stops proved fruitless and it started raining, if not snowing, as we continued the drive through the woods.
When the Hamiltons learned I hadn't been in town long enough to see the Metolius River's headwaters, our mushroom-hunting trip became a sightseeing one and we visited that portion of the forest and a historical marker showing the site of an old tollbooth on the Old Santiam Wagon Road.
Halfway through this tour, my wife called and told me she was picking out a nice bottle of Oregon pinot noir to drink with the fabulous mushroom dinner I had promised to make her at the end of my trip. With only three mushrooms in my paper bag, I knew I needed to get some more, and told the Hamiltons we had to stop by Karnecki's stand before it closed.
“There's just nothing growing this season,” said Karnecki, who wasn't surprised by the fact we only found a handful of mushrooms on our trip. “Most of the mushroom pickers have already gone home — that is, except for the ones who can't afford the gas.”
