The rain has returned after a nice warm week: hopefully this is the right combination for morel hunting. We have some “secret” places where we go (they aren’t all that secret and are all on public lands), but the past few years we have managed to get out into the woods too late. Or else the morel hunting simply was not all that great. Who knows? Morels are capricious.

I am hoping for a good harvest, but am also a tad bit reluctant this year: I managed to have a tooth become inflammed. Yep, that good old abcess thing is going on that means, ultimately, root canal. I called the dentist and am on vicodin and antibiotics until Tuesday morning when he can drill into the bothersome tooth – the root of which goes into my sinus cavity. I’m not in a pleasant mood at the moment. A bit uncomfortable, even.

Still – it isn’t just the hunt for the elusive morel that draws me: I want to be in the woods, away from the noise of traffic and the smell of diesel fuel. We sometimes have to deal with the noise of ATVs when we are hunting morels, but most ATV’ers are polite (just noisy).

I started this blog last night, but the abcessed tooth got to me and I retired early. Awoke this morning with a fat face: darn. Now it is swollen. Not too painful unless I smile. Rather uncomfortable, too. Still, Don and I threw some things into the Explorer and headed east of Mt Hood to see if we had the right combination of warm weather and light rain to produce a decent harvest of the elusive morel.

Finding morels is like a game. Between the fir cones, the mosses, broken limbs, and anything else that might vaguely resemble a morel – you sometimes find morels. Once someone has spotted the first one, it gets easier. We call it “getting your mushroom eyes.” I found the first one today, not far from where we parked. We’ve hunted this place before with varying luck and today started out decent. The morels were fresh and dark and larger. But as the morning wore on, we found fewer and fewer and the ones we did find were old. We gathered about a gallon and a half. Not bad for a walk through the woods.

There were other fungi: false morels and coral mushrooms, little orange fungi ‘cups’ and a conk here or there. There were also a variety of wildflowers in bloom, especially the delicate Lady’s Slipper orchid and a few fading trilliums. I saw a powder blue butterfly no more than an inch in wingspan and a few early dragonflies. The weather was not too bad, either: warm in the sun but cool under the cloud cover and the only rain we saw was on the drive over the mountain. It would have been a fine day if my face wasn’t swollen and I hadn’t twisted my knee somehow.

So now I am sitting here with a sore knee and a still-swollen face. I’ve taken a day’s worth of amoxycillin (double dosage) and started on the second day’s dosage (single dosage) and my face is still miserable, fat, and funny feeling. I’m too young to feel this old.

I cleaned the morels by soaking them in salt water, slicing them in half (to check for bugs and worms) and then draining them. I only threw away five or six. Most of them will be dried for future use in stews and the like. A small portion were sauteéd and mixed into scrambled eggs for dinner tonight (yum)!