Miracles in the mist

The sport utility vehicle of Luca Paschina, winemaker for Barboursville Vineyards, climbs easily up the gravel road, splashing the puddled remains of last night's rain. Up ahead, the fog, which from the bottom had appeared as a thin mist, thickened into a certifiable cloud and visibility dropped to a dozen trees deep. The modest Orange County hillside looked more like a foreign jungle than an Appalachian steppingstone.
"Now, you don't have to describe where we are too exactly," said a concerned Paschina, seemingly unaware that almost anyone else except him would have been blindfolded by the fog.
On this late April morning Paschina was in search of morel mushrooms for perhaps the last time this year. His paranoia and protectiveness is natural for a mushroom hunter and comes out of the fact that productive morel spots are as rare as the mushrooms themselves. Suffice it to say that his spot, one of them, is in Orange County.
Paschina has been hunting mushrooms since he was a child in Italy, when he would hunt with his father and grandfather.
"My father would sit on the ground and complain, 'There's something hitting my back,'" said Paschina. "Then I would know there was a mushroom right there."
Mushroom hunting is something that must first be seen through the eyes of an experienced hunter or a guide willing to point. Amidst the fresh spring growth and the decaying fall leaves, spring morels reveal themselves to the patient eye and offer a rewarding flavor that tastes of the earth itself. At first, though, it can be hard to see anything but noise and then slowly, very slowly, as if dull lights begin glowing from inside the scattered fungi, they appear.
Paschina, perhaps reprising the role of his father, begins at first to pick the few morels found just off the road in the woods. Then at times later in the morning he will stop and say simply, "There's a morel around here," waiting for it to be found without his help.
Morels are one of the most popular wild mushrooms found in Virginia and appear for only a few weeks in late March and into April. They're also called dry-land fish, because of their shape and merkels, or miracles, because that's what it is when you find them.  There are three species, characterized by their color: black, yellow and white, with all three wearing the same conical, honeycombed head. Black morels, the most prized of the three, appear earlier in the season when the temperatures are lower and yellow and white morels appear towards the end. Morels should always be hollow, which sets them apart from the false morel, which has a dense, brain-like cap and can be fatal if ingested. On this day in April, Paschina said the remaining season could be measured in hours rather than days.
Finding an open and forthcoming mushroom guide can also be as elusive as the morels. The subculture of hunters is fiercely passionate about protecting their favorite foraging spots and tips and secrets are seen as potentially harming one's own bounty. When introducing the reporter to a room of people at Barboursville Vineyards, Paschina joked, hopefully, "He's doing us a disservice."
That weekend Barboursville would host a dinner at its Palladio Restaurant centering on morels. Jeff Long, an attorney based in Bethesda, MD and a mushroom hunting expert, spoke on the spring mushroom during the event. In a phone interview, Long declined to offer any specific tips for beginning mushroom hunters, but did speak to the territorial nature that can exist among mushroom hunters.
"There are only so many of them out there," said Long. "Some certain types fruit in the same place every year and if they're not harvested carefully the mycelium that exists under the soil could be killed."
Paschina said that, although the exact areas morels will grow can't be predicted, the morel does have a few common places it calls home. Dead elm trees are likely spots to find morels, as are old, possibly defunct apple orchards, or burned areas a year after a fire, although that is a one-and-done scenario. Long said that in his experience, the areas around tulip poplars are the most common morel spots in Virginia.
An hour into the woods has yielded a little more than a dozen yellow and white morels, a major success for what could be the last day of the season. Paschina attributes the unexpected abundance to the cooling nighttime rain that broke up a succession of unseasonably warm days. Deep in the woods, the road and SUV hidden somewhere behind the thick, settled fog and trees, Paschina comes upon the bounty of the day. Four good sized yellow morels have sprung up in the saturated flat area in front of a mossy log. Paschina said the log has trapped the moisture from running down the hillside and supplied the web-like mycelium the water it needed to sprout its fruit.
"When you see one, it's important not to rush right to it," said Paschina. "Wait and look around and you're likely to find others that you would have trampled if you rushed right to the first one."
Long said that his most memorable moment of abundance came when hunting chanterelles, a fleshy and yellow summer mushroom, in Maryland.
"One time in a forest in northern Maryland and southern Pennslyvania, I went hunting after a serious thunderstorm," said Long. "I was by myself in 95-degree heat all day long gathering chanterelles. In every direction I could see yellow, but I eventually had to walk away and leave them there."
It would be naïve to omit the potential value of wild mushrooms, especially morels. Fresh and in season or dried, morels are very valuable and are perhaps one of the most valuable things that can be found on the forest floor. In season, morels can fetch up to $30 or more a pound, with premium prices going for the black species. Dried, they can go for more than $100 a pound, said Paschina. Restaurants don't even have to bother seeking out sellers, as the mushroom-laden will stop in looking to sell their wares.
"My experience is limited to guys showing up at the back door of the Clifton Inn with bags of 'merkels' to sell," said Sarah Deigl of Real Food.
For Paschina and Long, though, foraging for mushrooms is mostly for personal gain.
"I pick primarily for my own table and then give to friends and family," said Long.
Paschina claims to not particularly like hiking for hiking's sake, but that the singular purpose of hunting mushrooms gets him out into the woods. Once there, though, he is a man in his element. Paschina can see with the focused eye needed to find the edible needles in the haystack, but also has the broader view not to miss everything in between. Ducking under branches and climbing up hillsides, he will occasionally stoop down and point out a particular wild flower or dig up an unusual tuber, being sure to wash his hands on some dew-drenched leaves afterwards. Long goes as far to say that the trips where he returns empty-handed are some of his favorites.
"Sometimes when we don't find any mushrooms I'm not at all upset," said Long. "I just enjoy being out in the woods and being in nature."
The watchful mist surrounds the forest, making it impossible to track one's path from beginning to end. It's like being ushered in and out of someplace secret, with the trip consisting of images with no context: a single white morel half a foot tall, a gel-like mushroom smeared across a tree and a blown off turkey wing being devoured by beetles. Mushroom hunting appears to be something private and personal not just for the foragers, but for the forest.