When the weather is rainy and the woods become damp and funky, I hear the siren song of the mushrooms. They beseech me to venture deep into the understory on a thrilling quest full of promise. A good day means they are everywhere, in so many guises—popping up alongside the path, jutting out from tree trunks, spreading on the underside of rotting logs. They are red and brown and purple and neon yellow. I've always been a good spotter, known for my eagle eye, but I chock it up to a very simple technique: I seek out anomalies in the landscape. I soften or almost blur my vision, allowing my eye to catch upon whatever sticks out as different in the vast sameness. Along this journey, I absorb the deep stillness of the trees; hear the melancholy song of the wood lark; follow old trails and trace new ones; and feel a rich peace settle over me, a profound sense of contentment to be out in the natural world, where beauty knows no bounds.

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It's been a strange and wonderful transition from spring to summer this year, with recent nights dipping down into the 40s again. It almost feels like fall. Good for sleeping but not so good for the tomatoes, eggplant and cucumbers trying to make headway in the garden. This constitutes glorious hiking weather, the air so impossibly fresh that you are instantly energized. The woods are cool and damp, carpeted with moss and overrun with ferns so green they are almost neon. Pileated woodpeckers and yellow-bellied sapsuckers hammer away in the treetops; baby bunnies are living under our honeysuckle bushes; tiny freckled fawns gambol in the tall grass; great blue herons careen over the marsh; and at night the barred owl calls out "who-cooks-for-you? who-cooks-for-you-now?" It's pretty magical to be a creature among so many other creatures. I identified the one above as a Rosy Maple Moth (Dryocampa rubicunda). Its fuzzy orange body and lavender-tipped wings give it sort of a bridge-&-tunnel look, don't you think?
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I'm not one of those people who's at a loss for what to cook. I have a repertoire of favorites and a list as long as my arm of new things I want to try. This is not bragging. There are plenty of things I do not have: Children. A Pulitzer Prize. Thin thighs. Yet on some nights even I don't have it in me to start whirling around the kitchen like a culinary dervish. On those nights, I just want something delicious to appear on my plate. But there's no takeout up here, remember? So I like to store a few tricks up my sleeve. Nothing wrong with a little help from your friends, though I can't recommend fast food. Nor canned food, for that matter. Not to harsh your mellow, but do you know about the epoxy liners in most cans? They're made with Bisphenol A (BPA), a chemical that can mimic human estrogen and is linked to breast cancer and early puberty in women. (The horror, the horror.) The Environmental Working Group tested canned food bought across America and found BPA in more than half, at levels they call "200 times the government's traditional safe level of exposure for industrial chemicals." So much for those canned beans, my darlings.
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I've caught the bug. My latest obsession is foraging for wild mushrooms. At this point, it's really not about eating them. I need to know much more about these fascinating fungi before I bring them to the dinner table. For starters, there are thousands upon thousands of different varieties! And you have to learn all the finer points of identification to be truly certain before popping one in your mouth. As the saying goes, "When in doubt, throw it out!" But with all the rain we've been having, the woods are fairly teeming with shrooms of all shapes and sizes and, after a recent gift of wild black trumpet mushrooms foraged by my friend Tomo in the woods near her house, I am hell-bent on finding my own mother lode of something, somewhere, sometime. In the meantime, let me just share with you a few of the gorgeous specimens I collected after (and during) the recent downpours.
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