Black Trumpets
The best mushrooms in the forest are little known, little seen, and can’t be cultivated.
Four things to know about black trumpets (Craterellus cornucopioides):
1. It’s the best mushroom in our woods. The dark horse of the chanterelle family, hearty and savory, and what’s the trending word? Umami.
2. They are tough and hardy. Easy to preserve and taste great for years. Most mushrooms have a short window. Yesterday I picked more in an hour than I ever have. Today it is raining, which would destroy all other blooming brands. But trumpets endure, get black and wet, then dry out grey, like cloth or leather.
We’ve filled jars with dried trumpets that have lasted three years and more. Soak them in water for 15 minutes and they are good as new. Or better: dehydration simplifies the amino acids and intensifies the flavor.
3. The best tasting mushrooms in the woods are the hardest to spot. They’re out there but you can’t see them. Near perfect camouflage, the color of old oak leaves, mixing invisibly with the random forest floor. Until you’ve seen them, you don’t know what you’re looking for. So how did we find the first ones? We didn’t. My sister Jessica spotted them.
4. Impossible to cultivate. The way I find them is the only way to get them. Increases the value of the haul in my eyes. No black trumpet was tasted other than via a forager. There is a business growing mushrooms, selling to supermarkets and farmers markets, selling spores and medium to home growers. Not with BTs. Big Mushroom has no advantage here. What other product can you say that about?
Why can’t you farm black trumpet? Because they are mycorrhizal, which means their mycelium weave into the roots of oak and beech trees, sharing water, minerals and sugar. A complex system of cooperation between two living kingdoms, plants and fungi. We, the foraging animals, are the third kingdom.
We started mushroom hunting soon after we moved up here, bought two picture books to cross reference anything we put in our mouths. We’ve gotten to know about 4–5 varieties that come up regularly in the same spots.
Most are obvious, the orange milkys, the red and yellow boletes. We taught our kids, “Red and white, never bite/Red and yellow, that’s your fellow.” A foolproof system. We pointed out the Destroying Angels and Deadly Galerinas, and trusted they needed no further introduction.
Whether we found a jarful or just a few, they were always a speciality. This summer, after two years of drought, we had a large and rewarding bloom. Two feet of snow sitting out all winter had something to do with this year’s flourish.
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Our stocks were low, and I felt obliged, compelled, to get in as much of the crop as possible. For five straight days following our return from Spain, August 21, I gathered mushrooms every day. Long walks, two hours, most mornings. I came home most days the happy hunter with bags full. Free food.
For me, there is something instinctive about mushroom hunting. I connect with the hunter-gatherer I have been. This was my skill, what gave me value in the tribe: what I brought to the table. A hawk-eye, intuitive, scanning and discovering something useful from the forest floor.
In these moments I am in contact with purpose. I’m responsible and rewarded. If they aren’t out there, potentially, I risk ostracism. Ultimately, with success, I gain status and sex. No pressure, and not to overstate it. They’re just mushrooms, and we’re just taking a walk.
I’m searching sometimes in familiar spots, and sometimes, unconsciously, where my sense memory takes me. They require different eyes, and once you spot one, many more may come into focus. The pace is meditative and time dilates. If it’s a job, it’s the kind I’m built for.
Some days I found more cinnabar red chanterelles than BTs. They are smaller, but bigger this year and more than ever. They are the same family, but they sure present differently. Black Trumpets are almost impossible to see; red chanterelles are impossible to miss. Hidden vs. flamboyant, they take opposite tacks to survival. Reds are the color of traffic cones, and protected by the animal instinct which says anything this color is poison. Trumpets don’t look great, they are dark and almost leathery. No sign that anything eats them, not slugs or bugs or deer. The molecules that for us are umami, flavor and smell, are a natural protection that repels pests and competitors.
The black trumpets seem to appear on paths — ours and the deer paths. Do they show up here because that’s where we are or that’s where we’re looking? The number one spot for them is next to the small cabin we built in the woods, where we most disturbed the woods with tools and tracks and radios. Is the appearance of mushrooms affected by our step and our gaze? The chicken and the egg of the Heisenberg uncertainty principle.
Did they come up in more places this year, or were we just paying attention? Are they following us, are they leading us?
There is intelligence inherent in any network. Dig up the first inch of dirt in the forest, it’s woven like a thick blanket, an inextricable mesh of roots and mycelium. I believe in the consciousness of the complex network running through soil. In the mycorrhizal, we see an indissoluble connection and communication among the species of plants, and between kingdoms of fungi and vegetation. An interplay we can detect electrochemically, a conversation we can only imagine.
Paul Stamets (who I’ve discussed this with, stoned, in our woods) says mycelium is an underground neural network like a brain and synapses. Mycelium senses and responds to impressions on the landscape, making it an active, listening intelligence. If a tree falls in the woods, it knows. Hawks and eagles always see you first; do mushrooms also know our presence and decide when to reveal themselves?
It is still magical to find them. Sometimes they take my time, sometimes they lead me deeper with new discoveries. It’s satisfying and addictive: Partial Intermittent Reinforcement. When you find something–not all the time, not never…but occasionally. Finding one more, in one new place, makes it hard to know where to stop.
I’ve had the sense of being led by mushrooms. This year they were closer to the house than ever. Do they want to be found? We spread their spores, they give us protein and fiber. And an aesthetic gift: flavor and savor. Their smell enhances their taste, this synchrony happens in the brain. Smell is our least mediated sense; pheromones are also on the smell spectrum, they influence our most important choices, often unconsciously. The far edge of the smell-spectrum is close to intuition. Perhaps that’s why it feels magical, they are leading me with the undetectable, insensible smell that is the borderline of intuition.
What is this kingdom, this consciousness trying to tell me? What is it asking me to behold? They train you for a certain kind of behavior. Slowing in the direction of stillness. They force you to take your time, to move at a meditative pace, to scan slowly for patternless patterns. Instinct: the body knows where it’s been, where it has been positively reinforced by discovery. Mycelium calling.
A message from the moss: the way you acquire something affects its real value; to find something different, you have to change how you’re looking for it.
