Morel mushrooms: We scour the woods for the elusive fungi

It’s easy to lose track of time in the woods while hunting for morel mushrooms. We hiked uphill and wriggled our way through dense brush and prolific thorn bushes for what felt like several hours before we found our first fungi.

“Do you see it?” asked Ron Cook, my guide for the afternoon. He has been hunting mushrooms in the Kansas City area for more than 30 years. “It’s right there, glowing in the sun.”

“Right where?” I asked. My untrained eyes couldn’t spot the morel.

Then Cook gave me the same advice that he gives his 13-year-old son: Look about 10 feet out and scan the ground from left to right until your eyes meet your feet.

Raking the terrain with my eyes, I found the mushroom, golden and shining, sprouting from a pile of brush. It looked like a crooked, shriveled finger — a kind of thumbs-up from Mother Earth.

“Holy shit, it’s beautiful,” I said. For a moment I forgot there were thorns in my shoes and twigs in my bra.

“You just experienced what everyone does on their first find of the year,” Cook said.

The reason for the excitement: These mystical fungi are elusive. Morels grow for only a few weeks each spring, usually starting in April. Considered a delicacy, they can sell for more than $50 a pound at farmers markets.

A couple of years ago, in response to what Cook calls the “friendly competition” among morel hunters, he started the Missouri Morel Hunters Facebook page, so that people could share tips, confirm finds and post photos of freakishly large ’shrooms.

Cook’s biggest discovery this year was 12 inches tall.

After I contacted Cook online, he agreed to take me to a location that he frequents under one condition: I promised not to tell a soul where we went.

So I will say our hunting ground was in the Kansas City area and nothing more. I will also say this: Morel hunting isn’t for wimps. If you’re out of shape, scared of bugs or claustrophobic, forget about it.

“If you want to hunt in the city, you’ve got to go where no one else is willing to go,” Cook warned me at the beginning of our hike.

He wasn’t kidding. There were no well-worn trails in these woods. We ducked beneath tree branches that snatched the orange knit cap off my head. We crossed wide, muddy ravines. Occasionally, we stopped to check for ticks, which Cook said are “always trying to hitch a ride.”

Sometimes all the effort is for naught. Ryan Garnett, another experienced mushroom hunter who joined our hike, said he has searched several times for hours, only to go home empty-handed.

But that day, we got lucky. Occasionally, we split up to cover more ground. The woods grew thick and quiet around me. Convinced that I was lost, I stood silently, listening to cars rush up and down a distant highway. Then Cook’s voice, confirming a find, boomed through the trees: “Booyah.”

Cook let me use his pocketknife to cut each mushroom, leaving a portion of the stem intact near the ground. This, he said, allows the mycelium, similar to an underground root system, to remain undisturbed in the soil. Garnett described the mycelium as “nature’s Internet,” which explains why finding one morel often leads to discovering another lurking close by.

Giving nature a hand also meant hauling our stash in a mesh sack, allowing the mushrooms to spread spores as we walked.

“We’re like nature’s human honeybees,” Cook said. “We’re reseeding for the future.”

Visitors had been good to these woods. We never went too long without uncovering another morel — and the daunting hike made each score feel earned. As we stopped to get our bearings, Cook and Garnett discussed how the earthy smell of fresh morels stuck with them at night and drew them back into the woods each week.

Then, Cook spotted another morel peeking through the leaves near a fallen tree.

“I hope we get into a big, nasty mess of them,” Cook said, explaining that he and his son had filled an entire potato sack just a week before.

But with the season winding down, we never found the big haul that would have had us on our hands and knees harvesting until our backs ached. By the time the sun arced toward its zenith, we had managed to gather what Garnett called “a nice snack.”

The next night, my boyfriend and I cooked my stash, sautéing half of them in olive oil and deep-frying the rest. Nutty and fresh, the mushrooms were so delicious that I wanted to scoop them all in the palm of my hand and devour them at once.

Instead, I reminded myself to savor them. Morels should be eaten the way they are found: slowly and with awareness. Never mind the time.