The Most Dangerous Game

There are two places, mid-Appalachia and the mitten of Michigan, in which I have lived long enough and have been sufficiently at leisure to know what the countryside is up to. In both of these places there are three occasions each year when the land itself—not the promoters of tulip festivals, drumbeaters for caves with electric organs or advance men for state parks—draws big crowds. These are the times when it is hard to find parking space along certain back roads and when the usually empty boondocks are alive with sporting types from far away. In the fall there is the deer hunting season, and in the spring, through a somewhat overlapping period, there is the attraction you guessed—trout fishing—and the one you did not—wild-mushroom collecting.

All three of these enthusiasms are similar, in that they are ostensible exercises in food gathering. However, the pursuit of deer and trout has been elevated (or should it be degenerated?) to sport. There is an army of publicists, philosophers, manufacturers and merchants who have a considerable stake in seeing that these pursuits become bigger and better sports. On the other hand, mushroom hunting, when it is regarded at all by outsiders—which is not often, because it is difficult to make a buck out of a mushroom hunter, since all he needs by way of equipment is a paper bag or tin can—strikes them as some sort of a creepy cross between black magic and truck farming. What follows is a minority vote in favor of the proposition that it is sportier and requires more energy, woodcraft and nerve to pick and eat a mess of wild mushrooms than it does to pull a little fish out of a stream or blow a hole in a deer at a hundred yards.

Take this matter of derring-do. Nobody can deny that it is a gutsy thing to walk through the woods in the fall when every crunched leaf stirs violent hallucinations in the buck-fevered imaginations of Nimrods, or to wade a stream in April when the hooks are flying like hornets. However, these dangers are not technically part of the sport of hunting or fishing, any more than being struck down by lightning is a planned hazard on a golf course. Being felled by a 30-30 or garroted with a length of monofilament are better examples of the fickleness of fate than they are of sportsmen knowingly challenging it.

Not so with mushroom hunting, where the risks are, so to speak, structured and openly courted. There are at least 5,000 species of fungus growing in this country, and their properties, vis-à-vis the human digestive system, vary wildly and mysteriously. Many of them are good to eat. Good, in fact, is a pale word. Delicious, delectable, divine is the way people have been describing the savoriness of these vegetables since the beginning of history. In imperial Rome, by way of example, what we know as the Amanita caesarea, or Caesar's mushroom, was called cibus deorum—the food of the gods. So valued was it that neither plebeians nor slaves were allowed to do the cooking. Special amber knives were used to slice them, and the preparation was reserved for noble hands. This custom was probably regarded as something of a blessing by the regular kitchen help, since the Amanita caesarea is a close relative of Amanita phalloides, whose common name, destroying angel, gives a rather broad hint as to its character.

Despite the fact that a good mushroom is very, very good indeed, a bad one can be worse than horrid. Among our native fungi there are species that cause nausea, cramps, spasms, horrendous hangovers or hallucinations, and others that can kill you dead. Even so, it might seem to the uninitiated that there is no particular problem. After all, we regularly sprinkle sodium chloride on our steak and avoid cyanide crystals without making a moment of truth out of the decision. It would seem that, depending upon whether he was seeking a good meal, a vision or suicide, a reasonable man could select the proper mushroom and let the rest alone. However, the choice is not that simple, for mushrooms are like women—one man's passion is another's poison. There seems to be great variance in what might be daintily called "individual tolerance" to some of the fungi. Species generally regarded as edible can cause strong and bizarre allergic reactions in an unhappy minority. The early morel, a widely sought and admired table delicacy, is in this category, causing a few of its fans to suffer an abrupt and noticeable impairment of muscular control.

Not only are some mushrooms tricky, but many of them are unknown quantities as far as toxicity goes. All over the country it is possible to find fungi upon which there is wildly conflicting testimony from experts (living) as to edibility, or no testimony at all. Faced with this confusion, the real mushroom buff does not, as common sense might indicate, turn to potato chips or spiced shrimp for his gastronomical kicks. Upon encountering a fungus of doubtful character, the dyed-in-the-woods mushroomer eats a bit of it and then watches for and records any resulting infirmities for future—he hopes—reference. This guinea-pig syndrome is at the heart of the mushroom mystique. It makes mushroom hunting a thrill sport that separates the gourmets from the grunts, and occasionally the quick from the dead. Alexander H. Smith, in his authoritative and vastly entertaining The Mushroom Hunter's Field Guide, underscores the adventuresome side of the game. A University of Michigan professor, he writes of Helvella esculenta, one of the so-called false morels:

"Dangerous, but edible and choice if you do not have a sensitivity to it.... Each person must try it for himself or herself, and it follows that this species should never be sold as an edible fungus on markets or at mushroom festivals." Louis C.C. Krieger, in his Popular Guide to the Higher Fungi (Mushrooms) of New York State, says that 160 people are known to have died from eating the Gyromitra esculenta, another false morel. I am not prepared to accept these figures, but the fact remains that those who use fungi for food are taking their chances. In the central part of Michigan the Helvella esculenta ranks with the morels in the number of pounds collected for human consumption.

It is this kind of spirit, I contend, that entitles a really gung-ho mushroomer to look down upon not only deerstalkers and fly-fishermen, but also mountain climbers, karate experts, drag racers and bullfighters as timid, cautious fellows.

My own mushroom-hunting problem is that I suffer from two conflicting character flaws: cowardice and gluttony. I have attempted to resolve this dilemma by restricting my mushrooming to several relatively "safe" species, notably the true morels. These morels have certain things going for them which make them a favorite of us hungry nervous Nellies. To begin with, no fungus is quite so toothsome, an assessment that even the hairy-chested savorers of muscarine and phallin (the principal toxic agents in sporty mushrooms) will agree with. There are several kinds of true morels and, barring the spastic condition produced in some by the early morels, all appear to be safe eating. Also—and here you see the crux of my thinking—morels are difficult to confuse with any other kind of mushroom. Growing up through the leaves on pale, buffy hollow stalks, the caps of the morels are strongly pitted and ridged, looking much like small brown sponges. Morels are commonly called corncobs, and in the Appalachian region there is another nickname which, unfortunately, is indelicate.

Even though morels are about as safe to identify and eat as mushrooms can be, I am the type who, if I could, would be willing to buy them in large supermarkets where they presumably would be identified by experts whom my heirs could sue if they mistakenly stuffed a destroying angel into the Septiseal plastic bag. However, except occasionally in country markets and certain gourmet groceries that prosper by bringing the country to the rich, morels cannot be bought. Like most other wild mushrooms, they do not lend themselves to agricultural production. The Agaricus bisporus that can be grown, sold and canned commercially is good enough, but it compares to the morel and the other feral species as does a frozen piece of haddock to a fresh-caught trout. There is nothing to do, once one has become addicted to morels, but to go out into the bosky glades and hunt for them. This is not as easy as it sounds. Not only are morels hard to come by, but one must compete with other hunters who will go to considerable lengths to confuse and mislead their fellows. For the sake of both health and success, a tenderfoot on his first hunts is advised to follow at the heels of a veteran.