UTICA, Ill.–I loosed an exclamation with colorful expletives prefacing it to Mark Brown.
“I found some,” I said loudly enough to penetrate the thicket we were navigating. “I’m not moving.”
Then I waited for him to make his way over. Too often when hunting morel mushrooms I’ve taken another step and crush some I don’t see.
Brown checked out the two yellow morels in front of me. After scoping out the area around them, he remarked matter-of-factly, “Get eight more and you’ll have a meal.”
Ouch.
The day felt perfect for hunting morels, except that the rain originally forecast for overnight did not hit. It was drier than what I would have liked and the earth didn’t smell as fecund as it should when morels are prime.
Otherwise, signs were good.
Redbuds splashed color. Red-bellied woodpeckers called, sounding like someone rolling their Rs. Mayapples pushed stalks high in multiple seas of dark green. The distinctive bloody butcher or prairie trillium (even though it’s a woods plant) blotted the forest floor. Virginia bluebells grew thick enough to look like Betsy Ross got carried away with blue in making the flag.
For years, Brown, the retired Sun-Times political reporter, and I have tried to meet for hunting morels, a foraging rite of spring. This year we finally did Tuesday afternoon.
He suggested Starved Rock State Park, a place where he and his older brother had found the mother lode a few years ago. Growing up around Downstate Washington, they learned morel hunting around there and along the Illinois River from their father. Which may explain why Brown routinely does much better at finding morels than I do.
He picked out a spot for us and had scouted some before I arrived. It was easy to spot him standing in a blaze-orange safety vest and a multi-colored Montreal Expos cap by the parking lot. He got the safety vest years ago when covering some story for the Sun-Times and has found it useful when hunting morels with others. You don’t lose contact with each other. That’s far different than what I usually wear, normally earth tones (brown or green) or camouflage. We’ll get to his cap.
He had seen nothing encouraging on the side by the parking lot, so he suggested we cross the road. We spread out and worked along a steep dry ravine. Then we climbed and rather oddly, in open spots in a thicket of mostly invasive buckthorn and honeysuckle, the earth was damper.
Apparently the water pooled slightly on the level top of the hill. An hour in I noticed two yellow splashes in the sunlit green of an opening. So at least we weren’t skunked and I had a morel picture. But that was it, though we gave it another hour and half. We worked both sides of a smaller tributary ravine and followed our instincts back to the parking lot. We filled the time with life check-ins, family talk and some newspaper and Sun-Times talk (though less general gossiping than I would have expected). As Brown said when we set this up, at least we would have a good walk in the woods.
It was time.
At the parking lot, I finally asked why he wore a Montreal Expos cap, since he grew up a Cardinals fan and lives on the North Side. Well, that is in part why. The Expos are kind of neutral and their caps are cool. And, as I had just proved, they are great conversation starters.
I went to climb Starved Rock, as I always do when nearby. It’s where my wife and I married. Brown went to hike one more area, then texted a photo of a Dryad’s Saddle, a bracket fungus. It was old, well past eating stage.
I moseyed home along backways (Dee Bennett Road, Route 6, Pine Bluff/Lorenzo Road).
At home, I cleaned my paltry find of morels and figured I better extend it somehow. So I cut some homegrown spinach, then sauteed the sliced morels briefly in olive oil and chopped garlic, adding the spinach in the final seconds. I plated it with a garnish of a halved seasoned hard-boiled egg and paired it with Malbec (I simply enjoy Malbec).
It was worth three-plus hours of hiking.
A couple reminders: Morel picking is prohibited at area forest preserves, park districts and dedicated nature preserves. It is allowed at many Illinois Department of Natural Resources sites (state parks, state fish and wildlife areas, etc.), but restricted until after 1 p.m. at sites with spring turkey hunting during the season.