Morels? I was much intrigued: while I had heard about them growing up – in German they are called “Morchel” – I hadn’t ever seen them except in pictures. I had eaten them, however, although nowhere in our northern climates, but in Patagonia at Gretel and Nikita’s. They, too, gather them in their beech forests in the spring and dry them for later use. Gretel, who could perform amazing feats on the wood-burning stove in their little cabin, had served them in a cream sauce with a huge trout caught in Lago Vintter, and I thought I had rarely tasted anything that good.
Busy with seeding at what I assumed to be prime morel time I had put them out of my mind: maybe next year I’d be able to go out and hunt for them. Then came Linda’s phone call: she wanted to let me know that they had just found a good supply of morels not far from their home, and she thought I might quite well have success finding them in our own poplar forest. What did I have to watch for, I asked her. Were they easy to see? Did I have to scrape away any leaf litter? No, I was thinking of truffles, of course, and oak forests, and pigs, underground mushrooms that bear a certain likeness to potatoes ... Morels, she said, are not hiding where they grow; they poke out of the ground, their hats dark grey or brownish, their stems cream coloured. They could be anywhere – or not.
Thus Carl and I struck out later that evening and made our way through the bush across the house, aided by Leo, our now four-month-old German Shepherd puppy who is always eager to embark on new adventures. It was near dark already, however, and our mission ended without finding one of the delicacies.
The next day I managed to escape Leo – he is not always helpful and tends to bring a certain element of unrest to any situation – and entered another piece of poplar forest, this time a little further away from the house. Hunting for morels, of course, is yet another excuse to walk through the tangled wilderness that goes as forest here, and I am very happy that not everything is ‘tamed’ for grain farming. While it would be nice to have walking paths like the ones I remember fondly from my childhood in Germany there is a certain attraction to bush left to its own devices.
I entered the bush following a narrow path coyotes and deer seemed to use, but soon it got lost among the thick underbrush. Climbing over tree trunks fallen so long ago that they were soft and spongy under my feet and sometimes didn't bear my weight anymore I tried to find another opening to continue my quest. Progress was slow, since I was scanning the forest floor for signs of the elusive fungus. I knew I had to look for something resembling an elongated honeycomb wrapped around a stem, and that morels love old leaf litter. There was a lot of that, admittedly, and it was wonderful to walk on that soft underground, so unlike the clods of earth in a newly cultivated field.
The sun slanted through the tender green canopy, a few lazy mosquitoes whined around my head, and a deeper hum drew my attention to a wild gooseberry bush covered in star-shaped blossoms: a big bumble bee clung upside down to one of them, obviously enjoying the sudden feast after the table set so meagerly for the first weeks after the long winter.
There was more to come: wild black currants, pale yellow clusters of blossoms just opening, joined by the darker gold of bracted honeysuckle, while the showier twining honeysuckle was still holding off. A purplish leaf, rolled tightly, caught my attention, and soon I found others open already, glossy, not quite green yet, a thin stem topped by a tight cluster of buds: wild sarsaparilla, a member of the ginseng family. The name, to me, seems to carry magic, evokes a good old wizard. It is quite prominent in spring, unlike its ‘evil’ relative, Devil’s Club, spiked with poisonous thorns and not frequent in our area.
The strong, glossy leaves of wintergreen kept company with sweet-scented northern bedstraw, its leaves arranged in loose whorls spaced along weak creeping stems. ‘Waldmeister’, it is called in German –Master of the Forest- and for many years I have thought to gather it and make a refreshing spring punch popular in Germany, the so-called ‘Waldmeisterbowle’.
Carefully I bent hazel twigs away from my path, set a shower of white petals falling when I tried to evade a Saskatoon bush, and, slipping off a big trunk I tried to use like a balancing beam, took hold of the first twig that stretched my way, which unfortunately happened to be a wild rose. I’d have to pull out the prickles later.
Dogwood bushes, too, were now fully covered in leaves, but that couldn’t hide the fact that many of them were neatly trimmed: moose love them, and ample amounts of moose droppings showed that they had given sustenance to these great beasts during the long, hard winter.
I was getting quite close now to the other side of the bush, and the mysterious half-light started to brighten as the sun could reach in better from the edge. And there it was, one of my favourite woodland sights in the spring: the delicate blue and pink bells of the lungwort nodding on long tender stems rising from hairy leaves.
In spite of careful searching I still had not found a single mushroom – but who cared! I had spent a wonderful hour in the forest. Who could ask for more?
As for the culinary delight we were going to have to do without: maybe I could replace it with another, and finally make a Waldmeisterbowle, now that I knew where to find the sweet-scented bedstraw. All I needed for that would be some dry white wine and a bottle of champagne, and I certainly wouldn’t have to look long and hard for that!
