A couple carrying rough bags are walking down the railroad tracks in front of my house in Jeremiah, Kentucky. Thin and young, they are dressed like they live around here, wearing long-sleeved T-shirts with muddy jeans and heavy boots. “Howdy!” my partner Randy hollers from our viewing seats on the porch. “Whatch’yall got there?”
“Been dry land fishin’!” the young man replies in a heavy local accent as he grins and holds up his sack. “Got some good ones this morning!”
“Out looking for more?”
“Yep,” the young man replies. That one word explains why he’s not stopping to chat.
Yet I have questions to ask. Specifically: what is this couple doing? Are they poking fish on the dry banks of creeks? Pulling up fish to dry in the sun, as one does back home in Japan? Silently, I ponder while Randy and I sit some more, watching the birds and smelling the scented air. As the spring sun hides behind clouds, I ask Randy the obvious question: “Dry land fishing. What’s that about?”
He responds with a confused squint, as if he thought I already knew. With the tiniest smile, he explains: “They’re foraging mushrooms.”
But not just any wild mushrooms. In Kentucky, the Dry Land Fish is a wild morel, an edible fungus I have successfully foraged many times. I just didn’t realize I was also looking for a fish tale.
*****
It was ages ago that Randy and I had gone out on our first ‘fishing’ trip for this delicacy. Because the cultivation of morels has proven tricky, a characteristic it shares with the much-coveted truffle, foraging remains the primary way to obtain them.
Our backyard hills are dense and steep, ornery traits good for the dry land fishes that we seek. Much of the land has been tainted from mining, so foragers must climb to places where industrial pollutants have not reached. Eventually, we reach a flat portion with untended gravestones and a gazebo with camouflage net draped across the entrance. The scribbly handwriting says, Do Not Enter, but I walk up and peek in. It is empty except for empty cans of beer and Mountain Dew. It’s a deer hunting blind and better stay away, Randy warns. Indeed, I find a salt lick on the top of the grassy hill above by another set of old gravestones. I imagine young hunters hunkering down for a naive buck coming for a lick of salt–then boom, dead.
As if all of this did not make it clear we were not nearly high enough for good dry land fishing, the sound of bells floats up. Earlier, we’d seen those bells hanging around the necks of goats. Looking down the mountain, we see no goats but cars zooming by on Route 7. We are still too far too close to the beasts of civilization.
We keep climbing, going higher and deeper until we reach an old hemlock fallen years ago. Half of it has turned into mulch as soft as pie crust and as pungent as turpentine. It’s feeding tiny and translucent mushrooms with shining white caps; other mushrooms are red and bead-like and slimy. If you look closely, you might spot bite marks in them made by box turtles.
And we are looking closely because of the steepness of these hills, a steepness that puts us on all fours while we are standing. This brings our noses into the ground and forces us to look at the surface at eye level. I document as much as possible with my phone; later, we will dive into the mushroom book to learn their scientific names as well as their capacity to kill the gluttonous, the foolish, and the colour-blind. For example, Crown Tipped Coral and Yellow Tipped Coral mushrooms grow in abundance, and though they look very similar only the Yellow is poisonous. Their common names are warnings, should you care to heed them: Lion’s Mane, Dead Man’s Fingers, Dog Vomit Slime Mold, Parasol and Death (or Destroying) Angel.
By contrast, the Dry Land Fish is safe to eat…if you find it, and then identify it correctly.
The true morel–which is delicious–can be easily confused with the false morel, which is delicious but also poisonous. Perhaps this is why locals started calling the non-poisonous morels ‘Dry Land Fish’ instead. It’s an efficient way of assuring you that the forager knows the difference between good food and bad sickness, even when they look and taste the same. So far, I have only seen a few edible mushrooms of any variety.
“Hey, Randy,” I call out. “Found another Oyster here!”
The oyster is another wild mushroom that references things-that-live-in-the-water, so maybe there is a pattern emerging.
Randy doesn’t answer. I don’t hear his rustles anymore. Pulling out my cell phone, I text him: Where are you?
As if he can tell me and I would know.
Over yonder to your right, he texts back.
Oh. Where is yonder, exactly?
Shrugging, I let it go. He’s not lost and we’re both fine because I’ve just stumbled onto mushroom metropolis. Inside this big fallen tree, a giant white mushroom is glowing with smaller ones glittering in the shadows. I desperately want to show him but—
—Pow pow!
Gunshots?
—Pow pow pow!
Gunshots.
My fingers are already texting.
Up or down the hill Randy? Did you hear that?
–Yes
We better get going.
–OK
I begin to backtrack, searching now for him instead of wild fungi and shy beasts. I’m not worried about either of us being lost. No, my worries circle around the unexpected, like serial killers on the loose or racoons with a grudge. I’m looking without finding and on the messy edge of panic when, finally, I spot his head floating amid a brambly sort of thicket.
“Randy!” I yell in relief, and he turns around and smiles.
I feel silly for having worried, yet glad this fish story remained gloriously mundane.
*****
At this point, a part of me wants to hurry off the mountain, even if our sacks are still largely empty. Foraging is not shopping, and failure is part of the process. Together again, we resume the steep descent by following a rocky path made muddy by the previous night’s rain. The unofficial trail leads us to another cemetery, where we find a glowing field of orange chanterelles. Fantastic! Greedily, we fill a netted bag and then relocate again, constantly moving away from where we heard the gunshots. So what if we didn’t find any dry land fish? By avoiding danger we ended up stumbling on a scrumptious find perfect for sharing with friends. Could we be any luckier?
Clutching contentment to our chests, we keep trudging home. It has been a good day made better by an unexpected find. And just when we least expect it, the Dry Land Fish pops up in our path. It is a growth of ugly glory.
Just one?
No.
There’s another. And another.
“See how many!” I exclaim each time we return to this secret spot.
Yelping with excitement, Randy and I cut the wrinkly, thumb-like growths out of the ground. The stem is completely hollow like a plastic cup. This hollowness means that it is safe to eat. He coats them in egg and cornmeal, then fries them in a cast iron pan with a good amount of fat. I think everything tastes the same when cooked this way. Randy knows this, so the next morning he adds a slab of bacon, some hoe cakes, a couple of fried eggs from our chickens and fresh chickweeds from the yard.
It is now a big Kentucky mountain breakfast, so we have to say “Itadaki masu!” in Japanese to give thanks to the land that provided us with abundance this spring, and we are still on the porch, digesting this abundance, when Randy hollers “Howdy!” to the young couple going by. “Whatch’yall got in that bag!?”
