Illustration via vintageprintable. On Mushrooms This weekend I told a woman the story of my morel hunt. Morels are forest-growing mushrooms that some people become obsessed with, especially in a place like the midwest United States where there is very little to get excited about. The activity of going into the woods to find them is known as morel hunting, which lets its practitioners sound awesome without having to own a gun, a license, or bring home prodigious amounts of squirrel meat.   I hunted the wild morel once. I was in third or fourth grade, and at the time ran around with Luke Johnson who was awesome and listened to Guns N Roses and Poison. I only listened to Poison because I thought of myself as a “good boy” and felt Appetite for Destruction (with its robot-raping painting on the inside cover) would clash with that image. Luke also had a taste for fake guns, which I never had a taste for, and he showed me Predator, which I did have a taste for.  Luke’s dad took us and another adult to some private property outside of town—his friend’s, I think—to get these mushrooms. I happened to be the best at this activity and had an uncanny ability to pick them out from the woods’ litterings. (I also used to be able to catch four leaf clovers from my peripheral vision while riding my bike with my friends and I would always stop and turn around to catch them. I have a copy of CS Lewis’s Voyage of the Dawn Treader filled with four leaf clovers. This eventually became a contentious issue between me and one of my friends since he couldn’t deal with my luck (and his relative lack thereof.)) But even though I brought home the biggest morel catch, I relinquished all the shrooms to my friend and his dad. I didn’t even try them. I had this understanding from my parents that mushrooms were disgusting, and I thought it weird that these people were terrifically happy that I was going to hand them over to them and wasn’t even demanding a bowl of ice cream or a Ninja Turtle in exchange (both of which I did have tastes for.)  I have since eaten morels and all other kinds of mushrooms (including truffles, the king fungus). I will eat mushrooms now (I never did when I was young). I don’t love them, but I sometimes like them, and sometimes really like them. I did later tell this woman—the one I told this story to—, in a semi-dreamlike state brought on by watching The Fantastic Mr. Fox in the dark & drinking chamomile tea, that I would relinquish all my morels to her if I went mushroom hunting again. “All forty five of them,” I think I said. I wonder if I still have the mushroom talent or if it’s gone the way of my hairless legs and perfect vision. 

Illustration via vintageprintable.


On Mushrooms

This weekend I told a woman the story of my morel hunt. Morels are forest-growing mushrooms that some people become obsessed with, especially in a place like the midwest United States where there is very little to get excited about. The activity of going into the woods to find them is known as morel hunting, which lets its practitioners sound awesome without having to own a gun, a license, or bring home prodigious amounts of squirrel meat.  

I hunted the wild morel once. I was in third or fourth grade, and at the time ran around with Luke Johnson who was awesome and listened to Guns N Roses and Poison. I only listened to Poison because I thought of myself as a “good boy” and felt Appetite for Destruction (with its robot-raping painting on the inside cover) would clash with that image. Luke also had a taste for fake guns, which I never had a taste for, and he showed me Predator, which I did have a taste for. 

Luke’s dad took us and another adult to some private property outside of town—his friend’s, I think—to get these mushrooms. I happened to be the best at this activity and had an uncanny ability to pick them out from the woods’ litterings. (I also used to be able to catch four leaf clovers from my peripheral vision while riding my bike with my friends and I would always stop and turn around to catch them. I have a copy of CS Lewis’s Voyage of the Dawn Treader filled with four leaf clovers. This eventually became a contentious issue between me and one of my friends since he couldn’t deal with my luck (and his relative lack thereof.))

But even though I brought home the biggest morel catch, I relinquished all the shrooms to my friend and his dad. I didn’t even try them. I had this understanding from my parents that mushrooms were disgusting, and I thought it weird that these people were terrifically happy that I was going to hand them over to them and wasn’t even demanding a bowl of ice cream or a Ninja Turtle in exchange (both of which I did have tastes for.) 

I have since eaten morels and all other kinds of mushrooms (including truffles, the king fungus). I will eat mushrooms now (I never did when I was young). I don’t love them, but I sometimes like them, and sometimes really like them. I did later tell this woman—the one I told this story to—, in a semi-dreamlike state brought on by watching The Fantastic Mr. Fox in the dark & drinking chamomile tea, that I would relinquish all my morels to her if I went mushroom hunting again. “All forty five of them,” I think I said.

I wonder if I still have the mushroom talent or if it’s gone the way of my hairless legs and perfect vision. 

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