Field & Forager Magazine

THE SECRET LIVES OF
MUSHROOM HUNTERS
BY NICK DAVIDSON
Langdon Cook’s new book seeks to demystify the strange,
and sometime dangerous, world of mushroom hunting
Foraged mushrooms
are among a chef's very
most prized and coveted
ingredients. But they are
also the fruit of a secretive
and sometimes dangerous
subculture. In The Mushroom
Hunters: On the
Trail of an Underground
America, the author
Langdon Cook sets
out to shed light on this facinatingly
modern mushroom trade,
tracking fungi from patch to picker
to buyer and, ultimately, the finest
New York City restaurants.
Informed by a decade of hobby
mushroom picking, and fueled by
legends of territorial gun battles,
Cook makes for the woods to hunt
mushrooms, live and dine with
pickers, and discover a hidden way
of life in some of the country's most
beautiful and wild places. We asked
him to share a little of what he found.
HOW DID YOU
GET INTERESTED
IN MUSHROOMS?
I've been a recreational
mushroom
hunter and an avid
outdoorsman for little over a decade.
I was in the North Cascades hunting
morels in the woods with a friend.
We started hearing these strange
sounds around us—yips and hollers.
We backed off a little and emerged
into a meadow just as these other two
guys popped into it on the other side.
They were commercial mushroom
pickers with these huge packs on that
towered over them, with probably 80
pounds each of morels. Here we were
with our little Guatemalan mushroom
basket holding maybe five pounds.
I'd heard rumors about mushroom
pickers, all the stories about how
they packed heat in the woods
and were running gun battles over
prized patches. With that lore out
there, we were a little concerned.
But nothing was said, and they
disappeared into the thick timber.
It stuck with me—how did they find
this many mushrooms in the bush? I
realized I had to get to know some of
these guys and answer that question.
It's very hard to find out the most
basic information. People tend to
be secretive about their patches.
DID YOU
GET INTO
ANY TOUGH
I just got ahold of the
number-one wholesaler
and called. The first
thing he asked was how
SCRAPES?
I'd gotten ahold of his number—he
was suspicious from the get-go. I said,
Look, I got your number from one
of your pickers, and I'm curious to
see how the business works. I don't
want to get in the way. He just said
no. "It's like the cops," he said. "We're
not interested." I would get that a lot.
To a large extent that view has been
mythologized. There was a period in
the mid-90s when there were all kinds
of media reports of wild-mushroom
hunting getting out of hand. There
was quite a bit of money changing
hands, and many of the mushroom
camps swelled with new initiates.
There were some incidenta couple of
shootings, a murder or two.
But if you look deeper, you find
that they didn't have anything to
do with the mushrooms themselves.
It was the usual story of inebriation
and relationship problems.
IS THAT SORT
OF HOSTILITY
I was hanging out with
the matsutake pickers
in Central Oregon,
COMMON?
many of whom are Lao. I was staying
at a mushroom camp where they
had a big Buddhist festival. They
slaughtered a steer and had a huge
barbecue. They commandeered this
Lao pop star who was on tour in the
U.S. and somehow brought him out
to the woods of Oregon and piped
in electricity from town, set up a
tent, and this guy sang his weirdly
mesmerizing songs to the crowd.
I remember turning to one of the
pickers whom I'd been following
around, and he said, "Nights like this
usually end in a fight." A few minutes
later, I'm sitting outside by the fire,
and there's this young kid—probably
early 20s—from Weed, California, or
somewhere. I was one of the few white
faces. I had my camera with me, and
I might have been interviewing some
people—obviously not one of the Lao
pickers. He looked at me from across
the fire, crushed a beer can, and asked
me what I was doing here. And I said,
"You know, I think I'm leaving." That
was the end of the night for me.
I had a few moments like that, where
I was perceived as an outsider who
didn't have any skin in the game. But
mostly I was met with enthusiasm by
people who were eager to share the
novelty of what they did– people
who recognized that picking wild
mushrooms for a job was unusual,
and they were eager to show me how
it was done and why it was cool.
And even though there is this veil
of secrecy, I was surprised at how
much folks were willing to share.
People took me to patches; showed
me places that had been handed
town from their parents to them; let
me camp with them and showed me
around; fed me and took me in.
HOW
SUSTAINABLE
IS MUSHROOM
HUNTING IN
ITS CURRENT
There have been a fair
number of studies, and
so far no one has been
able to link mushroom
harvest with a decline in
mushroom populations.
FORM?
Pickers often liken it to picking cherries
from a tree: as long as you don't
harm the cherry tree, you're always
going to have cherries to pick next
year. Same thing with mushrooms: as
long as you don't harm the mycelium,
you'll have mushrooms to pick.
You have environmentalists who are
concerned about sustainability, and I
consider myself an environmentalist.
But I think a lot of the people working
on these issues don't have a really good
sense of the natural history and biology
of the mushrooms that they're trying
to protect. It's the "museum under
glass" approach to the natural world.
From my perspective, I just want to
see people get outside, interacting with
their environment, and we're seeing
more and more barriers to that.
FAVORITE
MUSHROOM
Porcinis have this really
rich, deep earthiness
that goes great with
DISHES?
soups, stews, or sauces. Then there
are mushrooms like morels, a flavor
that's almost impossible to pin down.
When people ask me about morels,
I like to say we haven't invented the
words to describe what they taste
like. They're meaty, which is great for
vegetarians. I like to make a morel
sauce and put it over a veal chop or a
good steak. But for vegetarians, just
toss the steak and give them the morel
sauce, and they'll be very happy.
There's something about mushroom
cookery that inspires a kind of
camaraderie, gathering around the
hearth, sharing a bottle of red wine,
and having a feast with your friends.
FAVORITE
SPOT TO
HUNT? OR
IS THAT
How can I put this? The
Olympic peninsula is like
one big chanterelle factory.
So if you can't find
them, you're not looking
SECRET?
very hard. But I love to go to eastern
Washington in the spring to pick
morels and spring porcini when the
snow is melting off and the mountains
are greening up, and the birds are
singing. There's this whole reawakening
in the mountains, and I love to
be out there when it's unfolding. And
of course when you get home, you've
got this wonderful food to cook. 3
"THERE WERE SOME
INCIDENTS—A COUPLE OF
SHOOTINGS, A MURDER
OR T WO."
50 FIELD & FORAGER NOVEMBER 2015 51