by Bill Heavey
Meanwhile, at the words of “ten bucks a pound,” the damn switch, the one that I was glad to have turned off for good, got thrown again. I was aware of it happening. I tried to step in, waving my arms at the train already speeding on its way to the amphetamine high that led me to do stupid things. I didn’t want to go there again. And if I needed more good reasons not to, there was this: I had decided early on in my foraging career not to mess with mushrooms. There were just too many lethal kinds. Too many of the names—destroying angel, death cap, dead man’s fingers, and, my favorite, poison pigskin puffball—sounded as if they’d been earned the hard way. I knew, however, there were two mushrooms that had the advantages of being “choice”—no serious mushroomer would use a word so pedestrian as “tasty”—large, easily recognized, and lacking in poisonous look-alikes. These were hen of the woods (Grifola frondosa, also known by its Japanese name, maitake) and chicken of the woods (Laetiporus sulphureus). Hens and chickens are completely different species, even though their names are similar. But the relevant points, now that the greed switch had been thrown, were that they were big, plentiful, and going for—hold this thought—ten bucks a pound.
Few people, when asked to name the first thing that comes to mind when they think of the word “big,” respond with “mushroom.” But individual chickens and hens in excess of 100 pounds have been recorded. A thousand-dollar mushroom, I mused, would be a nice find. Further, while many mushrooms require that you travel long distances to find their preferred habitats, I knew that these two grew locally. I also knew that they grew almost exclusively on trees, especially oak. Michelle was an experienced mushroom hunter. She told me that all the hen of the woods she had ever found had been on oak trees, despite the contention of some mushroom books that they also grew on other deciduous species. Chicken of the woods could grow on oak as well as a number of other trees, but—here’s the big thing—only on dead or dying trees. (This made it “saprophytic”—the term for an organism that lives on other dead organic matter.) The mushrooms’ growth habit plus their gaudy coloration, anything from orange to salmon pink to yellow, meant I could also find these and not confuse them with anything potentially lethal. In short, the peculiar characteristics of these two mushrooms—big, easily identifiable, growing on trees I could recognize—were such that I easily circumvented my vow not to mess with mushrooms. Ten bucks a pound!
As far as my abundance mania greed went, I felt like a man suffering from a severe hangover who had just received an invitation to a big party. I wanted to go but didn’t want to get hurt. I resolved to go about this rationally and with restraint. I began by asking myself where I could find a lot of oak trees.
Though there were oaks sprinkled throughout any of the woods within striking distance of my house, the trees could be few and far between. Then it hit me: cemeteries. I remembered seeing a great number of oaks in a nearby cemetery while prospecting its overgrown edges for edibles. The cemetery in question had nearly thirty-seven acres of manicured lawn, headstones, and ancient oaks. The place was more or less open to the public. I’d seen dog walkers and joggers using it, and a guy on a bicycle wouldn’t seem out of place. I biked over and within half an hour had ten pounds of hens in my backpack. A hundred bucks for half an hour’s work. I would spot the mushroom, wait until no one could see me, drop my bike, cut the thing from the base of the tree, and shove it into my backpack. I’d needed just three mushrooms to get the ten pounds and feared that putting any more in would crush what I already had. I took the scenic route on my way out, registering at least another ten pounds’ worth on other trees. I considered getting these and putting them in bags (a forager never leaves home without bags), but decided against it. It’s harder than it looks to ride a bike with bags hanging from the handlebars, especially through rush hour traffic. It throws your balance off significantly. Much better to come back with a bigger backpack.
I wanted to ride home, dump what I’d taken, and return for the others, but realized that it would be dark by the time I got back. I’d need a flashlight to find them again by that time, and it was likely that the cemetery had a night watchman. Looking for mushrooms by flashlight would probably be a good way to make his acquaintance. Then, inspired by greed, I had an idea. I dropped my bike and pack, cut and bagged the additional hens, and stashed the bags in a trash receptacle by a bench near the gate. I didn’t know how often or when the trash can was emptied, but it seemed unlikely that anyone would be coming around before morning. I returned by bicycle two hours later. It was dark but I found the trash can with no trouble. And the mushrooms were right where I’d left them. I went home and weighed my haul. My take tipped the scales at twenty-seven and a half pounds. I called the chef at the restaurant Michelle had mentioned, Clementine, and he summoned me to Baltimore. This time, I told him I couldn’t make it until the next day. Fine, he said. The next morning I drove up to the restaurant and, unable to find a parking place, left my car running in the alley behind the restaurant. The chef wasn’t there but had left instructions. I walked out five minutes later with a check for $275.
Moneywise, mushrooms were to pawpaws as hedge funds were to construction labor. They were faster, easier, and bigger money. On the drive home, I was already thinking about oaks again. And cemeteries. And then it hit me. Arlington National Cemetery, nearly a square mile of rolling hills and home to some of the biggest, oldest oaks in the D.C. area, was just down the road from me. I had taken out-of-town guests to see the Tomb of the Unknowns, as it’s now known. I’d ridden through the cemetery occasionally while biking to and from D.C. Bicycles were permitted, but only on a route that led from a gate inside Fort Myer directly to a gate by Memorial Bridge, which spanned the Potomac into D.C. And so, one crisp October day—it really was turning out to be a lovely autumn—I set out. At the gate, I showed my driver’s license to the guard and was waved inside. As I entered the cemetery, another guard told me that I had to stay on Megis Drive, the main road. I assented. Within 200 yards, I had seen six oaks with good clusters of mushrooms, both hens and chickens, at their bases. The effect of this, predictable as it was by this time, still hadn’t lost its punch. I was flying on dopamine, epinephrine, and a bunch of other neurotransmitters I desperately hope will soon be available in tablet form. Just then a cemetery patrol car, headed the other way, came to an abrupt stop opposite me. The uniformed driver pointed his finger at me. Shit, I thought as the blood drained from my face, I’m busted. My state of mind was such that I completely forgot that I had yet to commit a crime, that I hadn’t so much as touched a mushroom. All I knew was that I’d just been caught. “Helmets are required for all riders,” the man said sternly. Helmets? It took me a moment to realize what he was talking about. Then I realized my bicycle helmet had been dangling from the handlebars. At the speeds I was riding, slow enough to see everything I could, it hadn’t occurred to me to wear the helmet. The important thing, however, was that I wasn’t under arrest. I just needed to get with the dress code. I put my helmet on. I even thanked the officer for reminding me. He told me to have a nice day.
A few hundred yards later, I had verified more mushrooms on trees in three directions. Arlington Cemetery is not a public park. You can’t drive through in a private car without authorization. You can’t jog or picnic. It was, however, legal to walk pretty much anywhere. So that’s what I did. Once no one was looking, I dropped my bike and helmet behind a large headstone where they couldn’t be seen from the road and began walking.
As I walked, I tried assuming a contemplative look, as if I were meditating upon the sacrifice of the honored dead beneath the ground. Other times I tried walking as if I were in search of a specific grave, some forebear interred here. I made my way down a hill toward an especially promising row of oaks. As I got closer, it looked as if there were hens or chickens on nearly every tree. The problem—and it was a fairly big one—was that there was a funeral under way not seventy yards off. Whoever was being planted must have done we
ll in the military, because there were three large, wheeled cannons near the grave, each manned by a crew of three ramrod-straight soldiers in full dress uniform. There was also someone commanding the gun crews, as well as twenty or so civilians. The first cannon sounded. They were firing blanks, of course, but it was still one hell of a load of powder. The flame coming out of the muzzle alone was eight feet long, the accompanying plume of black smoke at least twice that. The ground shook at each blast. The firing continued. The plumes of smoke quickly turned into dark, ascending clouds as another cannon fired.
I faced the funeral and its guns even as I moved from tree to tree, assessing the mushrooms. I soon identified the moment immediately after each blast as the most opportune moment to drop, cut a mushroom, and shove it into my pack. I noticed that all the civilians winced then and, once they recovered, focused on the practiced, precise motions of the gun crew as they extracted the spent shell and loaded the next. The first bunch of mushrooms I checked was crawling with bugs, well past its prime. But two others looked good. As I crammed those into my pack, I tried to imagine how the people at the grave site stood the noise of what turned out to be a fifteen-gun salute. I knew I couldn’t have. (Later, I learned that fifteen guns were what a three-star general or a vice admiral received. A four-star general or an admiral got seventeen. Only presidents merited twenty-one.) The whole spectacle created so much black smoke that you wondered if the EPA knew about it.
An hour after entering, I left the cemetery with what turned out to be eighteen pounds of hens and chickens. I felt guilty about having collected mushrooms in a cemetery devoted to men and women who had honorably served their country. I decided not to compound that shame by selling them. At least not personally. I ended up giving the mushrooms to Michelle, who assured me she had chefs lined up to buy them. Did that lessen my crime? Not really.
And that was it. Only after I’d given Michelle the mushrooms did I realize the full extent of what foraging for profit had done to me. I had desecrated a national shrine, an action that, in addition to being unthinkably rude, carried potential legal consequences. (I have since found out that, according to Title 32, Chapter V, Subchapter D, Part 553, Section 553.22, Definition 7 (e) of the Code of Federal Regulations, “No person shall willfully destroy, damage, mutilate or remove any monument, gravestone, structure, tree, shrub, plant or other property located within the Cemetery grounds.” A lawyer might find a fungal loophole somewhere in that language, but the thrust of it is pretty clear. I was fairly sure that “abundance mania greed” was not a recognized disorder, let alone one on which a temporary-insanity defense could be based.) More generally, I simply didn’t like what I was willing to do to get sellable wild plants, or how it changed foraging and forager. Foraging for cash brought no lasting joy. The fun of foraging, clichéd as it may sound, really was in the process, the hunt. You found things or you didn’t; the stuff you found was ripe or not; you knew what to do with it or didn’t. But there were palpable satisfactions in those actions and that process, no matter what the outcome was. Once you injected money into it, the process went out the window. Nothing mattered but the results, measurable in pounds and ounces, dollars and cents.
I knew that Michelle sold edibles fairly regularly. She had chefs who wanted mushrooms, pawpaw, crabapples, cherries, wineberries, blackberries, stinging nettles, pokeweed, and more. As a not-yet-divorced mom who had to pay rent as well as feed and clothe two boys, she needed money a lot more than I did. And yet the money part never got its hooks into her the way it had with me. She kept her perspective. At least that’s how it seemed. I never brought the subject up directly, although we touched on it a few times in other conversations. I wondered if it had to do with the fact that Michelle had a lot of other things going on in her life: a wider circle of friends and social life, organizations like Food Makers, volunteering at her sons’ schools. I was much more of a loner. I never got a handle on which of us was the exception and which the rule. The truth was that I didn’t want to turn that rock over and look too deeply at it. I had a pretty good hunch which one of us had the more balanced life and outlook.
The more I thought about it, the more it seemed that Paula had the sanest attitude toward foraging. From what I know, she seemed to have two categories of foraging. Some edibles were staples, things she collected in quantity, processed, and stored for year-round use. These included black walnuts, chestnuts, hickory nuts, wineberries, apples, figs, pears, and peaches. But there were others—pawpaw, mushrooms, persimmons, sour cherries, most greens—that she didn’t preserve. She either collected these to eat that evening or simply grazed on them as she made her rounds about the woods. I still didn’t know whether selling foraged edibles simply never occurred to her or whether she avoided it because it went against her own code of ethics. And, as I noted, it was possible that even Paula might have been bought for the right price. But I did come to believe her two basic tenets on wild edibles. One was that once the public heard about something, they fucked it up, tore it down, and otherwise ruined it every time. So you never told where you found things. Second, if you were going to take things from the woods, you took only as much as you could eat, not as much as you could carry. It wasn’t really that complicated. It was mostly common sense. Why these lessons were so hard for me to learn is a question for which I have no answer. Except perhaps, as I had more than once overheard Paula telling people, “Heavey does some pretty stupid shit for a smart guy.”
KIRK (AND CAMILLA)’S MONKEYFACE EEL
Kirk writes, “I do very little cooking in this place. Except for breakfast and the occasional chili, Fishwife does it all. I’m mainly in charge of catching. Here is the recipe for Monkeyface Eel from the annals of Lombardia:
“Using high-quality American duct tape, affix unfurled wire hanger to the end of a bamboo stick, such that at least 14 inches of it protrude from the end. Make a loop at the tip of the wire, tie 2/0 Octopus hook to loop using 3 inches of 80-lb. test. Skewer small piece of squid on hook. Poke under rocks at low tide. Catch eel. Put in sack. Transport to cleaning station. Put eel out of misery (good luck with this). Fillet eel “off the skin.” Or skin first and then fillet. I prefer the former. If the filleted and skull-cracked carcass now crawls across the counter, you can either continue with your vain attempts to put it out of its misery or throw it in the garbage.
“Take your two elongated strips of eel fillet, cut them in half. Then follow these instructions, provided by Fishwife:”
1 cup each: chopped basil leaves and Italian parsley
2 large cloves of garlic, crushed
Zest and juice from half a lemon
¼ cup olive oil
Olive tapenade (or chopped olives)
4 monkeyface fillets (2 large fillets halved)
Asparagus
Summer squash
Salt & pepper
Combine basil, garlic, lemon zest and juice, and olive oil in a bowl and mix well. Whip out a sheet of tinfoil large enough to enclose one of your fillets. Place the fish in the center, smear some basil mixture on it, and wrap into a secure parcel with the foil. Repeat with all the fillets, dividing the mixture evenly. Place on a baking tray, set aside for a sec. (If the fillets crawl across the table at this point, you can attempt to bludgeon them until they are truly, truly dead . . . or you can just go ahead and cook them).
Turn on the broiler. Trim the bottom of your asparagus and chop your summer squash into thick slices. Toss with olive oil, spread out on a baking sheet and sprinkle with salt, pepper, the lemon zest from the second half of your lemon, and squeeze a little juice on there too. Broil until vegetables begin to color, shake the pan a little, toss, then move the veggie pan lower in the oven and reduce heat to 400 degrees.
Pop your fish tray into the oven in the middle rack, bake for 10 minutes (depending on the thickness of your fillets), or until the flesh flakes easily when tested with a fork. Place the opened par
cels on serving plates with the veggies, and serve! Mwah! Monkeyface never tasted so good.
Chapter Eight:
“You Don’t Want to Grab Anything
Has Red Eyes”
It was a screwy year for crawfish, Jody reported when I called in January about coming back down. “Water’s not there,” he said. Most years, the snowmelt from the rest of the country starts raising the water level in the Basin as early as the beginning of the calendar year. So far, that hadn’t happened. When I called in February, it still hadn’t happened. He’d passed the time “hunting and skinning gators.” This was the first I’d heard of this particular sideline. “Oh, yeah,” he said. “I do wild, farmed, whatever needs skinning. Usually in the winter. It’s piecework. I can do twenty-five farmed gators—they slaughter ’em when they’re between four and six feet—an hour. That’s faster than anybody I know except the ole boy that taught me, Richard Robin.” He pronounced the last name as a Frenchman would, Roh-ban. “Richard can do thirty. Watching that boy skin is like poetry, Bill. He doesn’t look like he’s going fast, you know? But he makes every motion count. That’s the secret to it. That and a sharp Dexter-Russell knife—got a white handle on it. And hand strength. You do need that.”