Gather Ye Mushrooms While Ye May

By Eugene Scheel

Sunday, May 3, 2009

For gatherers of mushrooms in the southeastern United States, the Blue Ridge region is the place to go in April and the first half of May. Only in that window does the morel, the toadstool family's harbinger of spring, peek through decaying leaves. Morels are among the tastiest of fungi.

Bernard Gallahan, a gatherer of mushrooms for more than 75 years, doesn't gauge the morel season by the calendar. He looks at the landscape. "When there's a [green] cast atop the poplars and the leaves get as big as a squirrel's ear," he said, that's when you find morels.

One day late last month, I joined Gallahan, a Purcellville resident, for my first morel hunt. We spent 261/27 hours on a Blue Ridge slope and garnered a gallon, which Gallahan called a small take. Mushroom gatherers each have a favorite "bank," their term for a section of the mountain. Collectors are reluctant to share locations, so I won't provide further geographical details about our hunting ground.

Photo: Eugene Scheel

Three pounds of morels collected on a recent hunt.

Gallahan first gathered morels and other edible mushrooms in 1931, when he was 5. He was a farm boy living near Neersville in Loudoun County. His teacher was George Cogle, a trapper and hunter who knew the mountain and its lore.

Gallahan remained attuned to the countryside, leaving Lovettsville High School when he was 14. "Dad made me stop and cut corn on the farm," he said. He later had a career in the construction industry.

Except for two years in Europe during World War II as a paratrooper in the 82nd Airborne Division, Gallahan has collected mushrooms every year. "I used to go every day, or at least every other day" from spring through fall, he said. "After work, I hunted at nighttime with a lantern. I knew where the mushrooms were. They like warm nights."

He recalled an evening in 1968 when he came across an unusual bank, "between two big poplar trees. Morels do favor poplars and old apple orchards — decaying rotten fruit trees. I filled up my shirt, sock and pants legs. My wife and I counted them that night, and I had 1,001." He had been out for two hours.

It was 40 degrees last month when we got out of my pickup at the end of one of those washboard dirt roads that dead-end well below the Blue Ridge's crest. Two stone chimneys remained of a house that Gallahan said was from "the 1800s."

We weren't the first visitors that morning; a pickup with Maryland plates had beaten us to it.

Photo: Eugene Scheel

Bernard Gallahan with morels in hand.

We passed the stone catchment of the home's spring, then crossed another streamlet. Two plastic soft-drink containers marked the path. "They're new. They came through here, all right," Gallahan said.

He talked as we walked on no more than a deer track, once a section of the Appalachian Trail. I followed, taking down lore. "Winds blow the spores, and they settle on the south and east slopes, in the same place" each season, he said. He pointed to a bank in the distance. "Orange morels will come out in May, but it's too rough in there for me anymore."

We left the track, and Gallahan pointed to some naked spots revealing black soil. "I can tell who's been here. Turkeys and pheasants scratching the leaves for mushrooms — deer, land terrapins, squirrels, all those things like mushrooms," he said. "Wild turkeys scratch in a straight line up the mountain. Pheasants scratch in a circle.

"When I was a young person, I could spot a mushroom 50 feet off," he said, as we cut uphill to an area of huge boulders below a high cliff of rock several hundred feet long. Always looking out for the name of a new geographical feature, I asked him what the cliff was called. "The ledge," he said. I had expected more.

"No rattlesnakes today," he said, after I brought up the subject. Some years ago, I had encountered a huge Eastern diamondback across the road that brought us up the mountain. "They'd freeze to death," Gallahan said. "Never saw a snake in April. In May they're out mating. Cougars or mountain lions, I'd keep my eyes open for those things."

Twenty minutes into our quest, he found three morels. They were easy to identify in his gloved hands. A whitish stem with a cone-shaped cup looking like a sponge, pitted like a honeycomb. Ridges of the comb were black. Because of the cold spring, they weren't more than five inches long.

"They're big enough to eat," Gallahan said, adding that "when the sun comes out tomorrow they'll be twice as big — choicey morels."

Ten minutes later, I found one, and soon a few others, most at the eastern edge of boulders or rotting logs. He reminded me that "patience pays off." After an hour and a half, we turned back, still hunting.

Photo: Eugene Scheel

Morel in leaves at lower left.

We spotted the three Marylanders well below the boulders. He called out to them, maybe people he knew. They yelled back, "No."

"Newcomers," Gallahan said.

When we reached the chimneys, Gallahan probed the downhill dump area and came back with a whiskey bottle that he said was from the 1930s. "I can tell by the seams," he said. Then he explained how in the 1860s, the seams were lower on the bottles, and how they got higher with each decade.

Back in the pickup and a few hundred yards downhill, he bid me to stop. "There are millions of mushrooms up here," he said, pointing to an uphill bank. We started climbing. "By that big poplar, that's as far as I'm going to go," he said. He climbed 100 feet farther.

Returning, Gallahan showed me the largest morel we had found that day; it was maybe six or seven inches long. "It was worth the while just to get that one," he said.

In his kitchen, we dumped our morels on some old newspapers. Gallahan reckoned we had more than three pounds. "You could sell them for $100; $30 a pound," he said, adding, "but I've never sold one."

"Split them in half to make sure there are no worms," he told me. "They're hollow. Put them in the refrigerator. Never eat them raw. They'll keep about a week. Saute or boil them, maybe fry in a light batter. Fry with lard and they get more crispy. They're good mixed with eggs."

He looked at me. "You think you'll get to the point where you'll like hunting them yourself?"

"Maybe," I answered, thinking of ways to tire grandchildren.

Eugene Scheel is a historian and mapmaker who lives in Waterford.

Tagged: history, nature, Purcellville

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