Hunting for Morels

Springtime ritual, reward loops, a primer on the when, the where, and the how of finding morels

A handful of yellow morels discovered in an aspen grove during a hike late in the season last year

The end of April through the end of May is my second favorite time of year. This time of spring is more full of life and potentiality than perhaps any time else. When I look out my window at the new growth on the trees and the animals gorging and transforming themselves and the decaying dead things that have been left behind by winter, I am reminded of that Werner Herzog quote about the jungle:

“It is the harmony of overwhelming and collective murder…we have to become humble in front of this overwhelming misery and overwhelming fornication, overwhelming growth, and overwhelming lack of order.”

As does Herzog, I love it very much.

Unlike Herzog, I would stress the birth aspect of this time of year, rather than the death aspect, but he was talking about the jungle, not the spring, and anyway birth is not without a lot of violence and suffering so in a sense it is all just one thing.

At a more narrow level, this is my second favorite time of year because it is the prime season for one of my favorite activities, foraging for morel mushrooms.

Foraging for morels is a lot like my favorite activity, fly fishing for trout. They both happen in many of the same kinds of places, scenic and secretive, and follow a similar pattern of frustration and discovery. Anyone who has been following me long enough has seen me post about these things. If I were autistic, these activities would be my trains.

Many years ago I read an evo-psych¹ paper showing that brain activity in fishermen almost perfectly matches the brain activity in gamblers playing slot-machines. The argument in the paper was that both activities share the same basic reward schedule. Each pull of the slot-machine lever is analogous to casting for a fish: most attempts yield nothing, but the intermittent and more or less randomized windfall of successful attempts creates addictive anticipation that sustains the whole enterprise. (I have also observed, perhaps not incidentally, that fishermen and gamblers lie about their exploits in pretty much exactly the same manner, especially with regards to their trophy catches/jackpots, and near, tragic misses thereof. Make of this what you will.)

The underlying theory is that our brains, over tens of thousands of years of evolutionary pressure, found a creative way to induce us to fish, by making it inherently addictive. Modern recreational interest in fishing is an artifact of this evolutionary programming, so, too, I suspect, are slot-machines.

Hunting for morels, like its seasonal cousin, hunting for Easter eggs, taps into this same primal reward loop. A lot of nothing, and then, all of a sudden… something. Importantly, it is fun. It gets you outside. It is something to do with kids of all ages and teaches them to be resourceful and observant, and to appreciate nature’s bounty.

It also teaches them vigilance. Before going any further, it is probably prudent to warn you about false morels. False morels are less common than the edible kind, but common enough that you have to watch out for them. False morels (gyromitra) contain a toxic poison called gyromitrin, which, when ingested, metabolizes into monomethylhydrazine, a volatile chemical compound used in rocket fuel, no kidding. Within hours the poison will begin to attack your vital organs, especially your liver, and after the vomiting, internal bleeding, neurological dysfunction, and jaundice can eventually be fatal.

Death and birth. It is all just one thing. That is the lesson of the season.

But we need not worry about that. Identifying false morels is not terribly difficult. See the picture below. False morels have a kind of dark reddish tint. They are easy to spot. They are even easier to identify once you cut them open. Unlike true morels their stems are not hollow and extend all the way up through the cap. If you were to eat them, you will likely have a few very bad days, but probably won’t die, despite the graphic description above.

(True morel on the right. (Your right or screen right? Choose wisely!))

Little is worth doing that doesn’t entail a bit of danger. Still, be careful.

The trick with addictive reward schedules is that success––whether it is landing a fish, or hitting the bonus feature on a slot machine, or stumbling on a patch of morels in a dense thicket of deadfall––is that the reward has to matter. It has to mean something. In the case of morels, they matter because they are, to my taste, the very best mushrooms for eating that you can get anywhere. I prefer them to truffles, even. They have an incredibly rich flavor, suitable to all kinds of culinary purposes,² and because they are so seasonally dependent, fresh morels are only accessible for a limited window of time. You only get a couple of months of good morel eating every year, so the value of the hunt is enhanced by this urgency.

When, Where, and How to Forage for the Elusive Morel

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