There must have been something in the air this weekend, something other than the highest pollen count in years. Something fresh and sweet and enticing. Perhaps, even, something a bit intoxicating. Something that led me to suggest we go down to Bluff Woods and look for mushrooms. It was not a suggestion that I have made very often. And, I added a totally unfair clincher to the proposition: “We can go by Hardee’s and get breakfast.” If there’s a better biscuit in the fast food industry, I haven’t found it yet. Randa was so stunned that she must have thought for at least several nanoseconds before agreeing to the idea.

And so, as I finished up the last of my double sausage, egg and cheese biscuit, we drove to Bluff Woods on a beautiful April morning. Sweet Williams were in the prime of their blooming as we made our way up through the woods. An occasional white bloom accented beds of May Apples. Virginia creeper sprouts seemed to cover the forest floor while Jack-in-the-Pulpits added their interest.

We searched for an hour, working our way up the hill. Based on everything that Randa had told me about the tells of rotting logs and May Apples, it did not seem possible that we found nothing. “Maybe we need to find a place that gets more sun; maybe it hasn’t been warm enough yet,” Randa wondered aloud. I suggested we try a south slope instead of a north one. We crossed an old logging trail running along the ridge and continued the search.

After another thirty minutes, Randa yelled, “I found some!! I found some!” Sure enough, she had. Small and virtually identical in color to some of the leaves on the ground, a few golden morels had sprouted. I looked around and found a couple more. So, there actually were mushrooms in the woods! Randa was ecstatic and I was convinced she had not been taking me on daytime versions of the snipe hunt for the past twenty years. But I had still not found any mushrooms on my own.

Twenty minutes later, that changed. As I stood, looking around through filtered sunlight at the impossible blend of leaves and stems, vines and branches, I saw a spongy cone sticking up amidst the leaves. I had found, on my own, my first native gray morel mushroom. It only took twenty years from the time I was first told they actually do grow around here. Twenty years. It was profoundly satisfying and in the ensuing thirty minutes, I found another sixteen or so. Of course, Randa found more than twenty, but that was OK; I had finally made the transition from skeptic to believer.

Nothing had changed in the reality of the mushroom. The change was that I went from “hearing about” to actually experiencing. Though it was profound, indeed, it was nothing to compare with a somehow similar transformation I underwent decades ago in regard to salvation and the Holy Spirit. Something more real than mushrooms.

H. Arnett
4/20/10