October 18, 2024
Nothing draws people to our farmers’ market booth like a table filled with orange and yellow edible mushrooms. The brightly colored “Chicken of the Woods” fungi stops people in their tracks, and most can’t resist coming up and asking what it is. Some want to know “How do I know it’s not poisonous?” I explain that killing our customers is a very poor business model, so we only sell items we are quite sure are okay. It’s a conversation starter and even if I can’t convince them that not all mushrooms are deadly, we have a chance at least of interesting them in something a little more mundane like a dozen eggs or a scarf made from our sheep’s wool.
Our last batch of Chicken of the Woods was beginning to lose its vibrant color, so last night I decided to find a replacement. The sun was low on the horizon, but I knew if I hurried, I could at least go check out a log just below the ridgeline that always produces a nice crop in early fall. Just about the time I got to the log, though, and heard the rustling of dry leaves and snapping of twigs around the corner, I realized, belatedly, that there were two significant flaws to my plan. The first was that we haven’t had a good soaking rain in weeks so the log I was checking out was too dry - I needed to look along the shaded edges of the brook where the logs would still be damp. The second realization was that in my hurry to get out the door, I’d forgotten my bear spray and that the sound of rustling leaves and snapping twigs was definitely heading my way.
I climbed up on the log hoping that, if I was about to meet a bear, that the additional three feet of height might make me look slightly less edible. I waited and much to my relief a flock of wild turkeys came into view. They were southbound and I had been headed north, each of us following the path along the talus slope below the ridge line.
I have a foraging map stored in some recess of my brain, and I imagine the turkeys do as well. I usually know where different mushrooms fruit at various times of the year - I also know the pattern of the animals I prefer to avoid. I stay out of the swampy areas in the spring so as to avoid the bears eating skunk cabbage and I avoid the young hemlock grove so as to not disturb the deer that bed down there at dusk. I’m sure the turkeys know where all the acorns can be found this time of year -and when daylight begins to fade, they start foraging their way up the ridge line where the added elevation enables them to easily access and roost in the tops of the trees below them. I’m sure they also know how best to avoid bears and coyotes, and somewhere in their brain, they were trying to recall if they’d ever encountered a human staring at them while standing on a log in the fading daylight and if it posed any danger.
“No, you’re good” I said out loud, hopping off the log– “I’ll go this way - you go that way.” I turned downhill and headed to the brook where I did, in fact, find an enormous chicken of the woods and made it home with plenty of light.
I left the turkeys happily scratching up the leaf litter and swallowing their acorns whole. I made a mental note to look for chanterelles in that spot next summer as the disturbance in the soil often encourages the mycelium to fruit. On some level, I’m sure the turkeys were updating their database to include me as well. Pretty much a non-entity, neither good nor bad - just momentarily in the way.