Golden Hills
Deep summer days in Vermont are defined by several distinct characteristics. The heat of still-long days allows ample time for daydreaming, walks through the hills of my childhood forest, and plunges off the cliffs into the cool waters of the White River here in Stockbridge. And then there is the emergence of the golden chanterelle, which arrives as a reminder to make the most of the slowly diminishing warm summer days.
I always seem to find my first chanterelles a week or so out from my father’s birthday, which falls on the 24thof July. My mind has organized time and seasons by the availability of certain wild foods almost like a great biological clock, though I know that term can mean many other things. This is the thing that is so amazing about having a relationship with nature. Our measuring instrument for time revolves more around the emergence of certain species than it does the days on the calendar, though the two continue, of course, to coexist.
Chanterelles hold a special place in my pantheon of wild foods. Perhaps it’s because of their proximity to my father’s birthday, but I suspect it has a bit more to do with my introduction to them as my first existential experience with foraging. Not to mention, they are absolutely delicious and Vermont chanterelles are considered by many chefs to be some of the best in the world.
Memories of the Mountains
Maybe even more abstractly, the sequence of setting myself into late summer typically looks something like this: I find my first chanterelles, which remind me of my father’s birthday. This usually leads me to some of my favorite hunting grounds deep in the Stonybrook Valley. And this, in turn, leads me past Homer Perkins’ old farm, where my father used to work as a boy. Then the stories I was raised on aren’t long to follow.
Homer was already old when my father worked the farm and by the time I was old enough to remember, he was ancient. We always had some reason to swing by, whether buying hay for the horse or checking in on local politics; I suspect my father wanted to expose me to some of the old ways and how Vermont used to look when he was growing up. Homer still worked the same piece of land he purchased when he was a young man, raising or trading for most of his needs. When you raise most of your own food, there is little need for money save the bit he earned selling hay, eggs, butter and vegetables to locals throughout the valley. Homer seemed like the wisest person that ever lived, in those days, which may not have been far from the truth. And his deep knowledge was reflected in that non-assuming way possessed only by someone who makes their living off the land.
Typically, a quick trip up the valley for hay would turn into an hour or two of story time with Homer, and I delighted in his tales of times long ago, when there were only a handful of farmers working the valley and a strange group of people still holed out deep in the Chateguay, the sprawling wildland of 100,000 acres that began at the terminus of Stonybrook Road. My favorite of these old legends was of the old gold mine hidden somewhere deep in the wilderness.
Legends of Long Ago
As the legend went, there had been an old mine used by some of the early settlers in the area which proved to be quite prolific. Now a story like that on its own is enough to spark a 10-year-old’s imagination, but couple it with the occasional fleck or two of gold in the brook and Homer’s insistence on changing the subject every time he was pressed on its location, and you have a recipe to drive any young man to adventure.
My insistence that I would find that old mine drove me deeper and deeper into the woods in my youth. My journey ever farther afield led me to develop strong orienteering and bushcraft skills. These gave me a deeper sense of security when venturing even further, and my love of wild foods quickly developed out of that skillset – though, most of my early exposure to wild foods was as a means for survival, not culinary delight. Eating birch bark and drinking white pine tea may keep you alive, but you weren’t living high on the hog.
The Gold Rush
This is about the time that I discovered chanterelles for the first time. I had always been warned off of mushrooms by my father, who said they had little nutritional value and you never know which ones will hurt or help you. I think this perspective was influenced considerably by the poisoning of one of his close friends on a bad batch of morels (likely Gyromitra esculenta), a mistake that nearly claimed his friend’s life. And I think that was the widespread sentiment back then: that wild mushrooms were merely for gourmands and foodies adventurous enough to risk their necks simply for a meager helping of a slimy fungus. As we have learned more recently, mushrooms have all sorts of nutritional and medicinal value. But for me, the allure was more spiritual than about survival.
As we continue to map out the organizational and cognitive parts of the brain, scientists have discovered our inherent biological ability to recognize distinctive shapes and colors in the environment, a behavior that most likely developed during our ancestors’ days as hunter-gatherers. With respect to finding food, certain chemicals in the brain (oxytocin and serotonin) are released that give us a sense of euphoria when we find things that will sustain us. This experience can feel distinctly spiritual. I know it does for me. Foragers often refer to this phenomenon as “Getting On” to a certain forgeable where the mind becomes so focused on the pattern of a particular target species that it begins to appear – seemingly out of thin air.
For me, that happened one humid afternoon wandering through a grove of white birch and softwood in a part of the Chateguay we always referred to as Chin Whiskers. I had only just begun my love affair with chanterelles that summer after having worked up the nerve to actually ingest one of them. Mind you, this was after considerable research and consternation. I was met with a flavor profile so unique, a bit like subtle apricot with a peppery finish, that it made me understand at once why one would risk their life. The fact that mother nature could provide something that flavorful all by herself left me wondering what else I might have been missing. There was also, no doubt, the allure of forbidden fruit that exacerbated my curiosity. And in that brief moment I began my new relationship with wild foods, not only as a means of survival, but as a lifelong pursuit of nature’s bounty as an enjoyable and essential part of being intimately connected to my food.
I came across a small flourish of the golden mushrooms pressing up through the leaf-litter near a toppled old white birch, my view nearly obscured by the sheathing bark that had begun pulling away from the trunk. As I placed the six or seven tender mushrooms in my pack, I stole a moment to enjoy the tranquility and peace of the surrounding area and a sense of pride at my discovery. The dappled light showing through the late summer canopy illuminated the quilted patterns of mature ferns growing in the glen. In the next moment my eyes fixed on one of these beams outlining a small patch of exposed ground. To my great joy, there rose another flourish of chanterelles, illuminated in the light from above. As if being guided by some divinity or mother nature herself, all at once, pinpricks of the bright orange mushrooms began dancing up through the understory like the arrival of evening stars upon the settling of night. I was surrounded by chanterelles dancing in the light. Maybe I had a hundred times before. But for the first time I could see them and the endorphins filled by body more quickly than I could fill my bag.
I spent the next hour or so collecting these beauties, pulsating slightly with every new find and filling my pack with several pounds before I was done. The elation and sense of purpose was so distinctive and fulfilling that I don’t think I shared it with anyone for a long while, afraid that even giving breath to the experience would somehow trivialize the memory.
So perhaps the legends of gold in the Chateguay were, in fact, true. Those hills are full of gold, for those that can see it. And for a young boy just starting his love affair with wild foods, I’m not sure any amount of ore could have replaced the experience.
