I spent this Saturday hunting mushrooms on a College
Outdoors trip. Fourteen of us loaded up
in their vans to drive a little over an hour to Tillamook State Forest. The goal of the trip was to help everyone
learn some mycology as well as be able to identify a certain species of edible
mushroom, the chanterelle. Chanterelles
are easy to identify and hard to mix up with poisonous species so they’re the
perfect mushroom to teach beginners. The
vans pulled into a gravel patch on the side of the road and from there we hiked
through dense brush to an ATV track.
After following the track for a bit, we split off into groups to travel
through the woods. Pretty soon you could
hear people 
exclaiming “I got one!” or “chanterelles!” to let their groupmates
know to come closer and hunt that area for more. The species of chanterelle that we were
hunting is orange so they stand out well when you can see them, but they have a
habit of growing inside brush and under logs so it’s a lot like an Easter egg
hunt. 
The weather was fantastic, especially for a mushroom
trip. Normally mushroom hunts are poured
on just because the rainy season is the best time for mushrooms and we have bad
luck. It was sunny out, a bit cool, but
we were in the mountains so that much should be expected. We were quite successful and managed to bring
out two buckets of edible mushrooms, plus a few inedible
specimens we wanted to
identify. After arriving back on campus
we had a cooking party. We sautéed mushrooms, roasted them, grilled them,
cooked them with rice, sugared them, and made cream of mushroom soup. It was a great way to end a day in the woods.
Feel free to contact me at ameliaberle@lclark.edu if you have any
questions.