Tales Of Adventure, Nature Love, And Money On The Globalocal Mushroom Trail

Whole Earth, Spring, 2000 by David Arora

I ran into Nancy and her family again two years later, camped outside the tiny town of Ukiah in eastern Oregon. Each spring the bountiful crop in the surrounding Blue Mountains helps to set the global price for fresh morels. As we fan out into a fir forest looking for "naturals" (morels that do not grow in timber burns), Nancy totes her youngest daughter, 2-year-old Caitlin, in a "crow's nest" on her back. Caitlin is already able to gurgle "murrrrl" when she spies one that her mother has missed. Consumed with the search, they soon disappear over a ridge, and I find myself walking alongside two of her older children and their father, Miles.

"We've bought an' sold mushrooms everywhere from California clear up into the Yukon an' Tok in Alaska," he says. "If there's something that the mushroom industry has done for these kids, it's taught them how to be self-reliant and take care of themselves with confidence. It's taught them how to work."

"We haven't actually learned how to work," protests 14-year-old David. "We've just learned how to play and make money at the same time!"

"And they learn a little about contributing to a household, which is something that no kids get anymore," adds his dad.

"Dad, you might want to keep an eye out while you're talkin'," interrupts 9-year-old Stacy. "You walked right past a whole bunch, so I had to pick `em!"

Not all of the permanent residents of Ukiah welcome the annual influx of mushroom pickers and buyers. But Doug Vincent, the owner of a small gas station/cafe/pool hall, points out that everyone welcomes the money that the so-called "trailer trash" have breathed into his tiny community and dozens like it.

"These people are doin' a helluva lot for our society because they're producin' something," says Vincent. "Many tons of these mushrooms go overseas, and that brings an income back into America that we otherwise wouldn't have.... These people work their butts off. And they're the last of the independent Americans that we've got. They're nonconformists. They're not on somebody else's payroll. And every dollar they make they spend in our economy.... Even the really good mushroom pickers seldom get home with any more than just barely enough to squeak through the winter with. The wealth is spread up and down the mushroom trail. It's done nothin' but good for everybody."

But the mushroom harvest has brought more than prosperity to isolated frontier outposts and timber towns like Ukiah. It has also generated a degree of genuine "mushroom consciousness" unimaginable a decade ago. One has only to wander into a rural bar or small cafe anywhere on the mushroom trail to witness the transformation. Everyday conversation is as likely to be peppered with terms like "flowers" and "flops" (mature and overripe mushrooms, respectively) as with "five-point racks" and "bull trout." "Pines" are not trees, but pine mushrooms (matsutake). Terms of endearment such as "matsies" (matsutake) and "naturals" (morels) are beginning to replace "hoot owls" and other expressions of bitterness so prevelant a few years ago. Now, bragging rights are as apt to be fought over "cauliflowers" and "lobsters" of the fungal variety as over deer and elk.