Morel Cherry Poppin'

"I found my first morel!" Derek said excitedly, grinning from ear to ear as he bent over to retrieve his camera from his kayak. "I'm going to take a picture before I pick it."

D's first Morel

We'd put in at Hughes Crossing on Fall River an hour or so before, and had been talking morels much of the time... well, I had anyway. After months of learning about morels from reading everything possible on the nets it's safe to say I was obssessed, and after last year's morel busting drought we'd both been determined to find some. Though I'd already managed to find a few in Oklahoma near the Kansas border the week before and some in Kansas, I wanted to find enough to stuff ourselves to the gills that night. We'd had plenty of rain, the temps were around record levels for late March, and it was an absolutely beautiful day.

I paddled over to where Derek had stopped, and ran with Trout up the bank where Derek was bending over taking a picture of a perfectly ripe morel growing from the side of the bank. I peered into the area above the morel and spotted several more growing mere feet away. "Holy shit!" I exclaimed, "Did you see those?!" Derek looked up and after staring into the grass for a few seconds affirmed that indeed he did! I climbed up into the weeds and saw even more, and we both got even more excited and began picking. We covered the area for 15 or 20 minutes and ended up with maybe a pound or so of lovely morels. "We'll be eating good tonight!" I said, and discovered I'd been infected with Derek's permagrin.

Were we happy? Damned straight we were!

Our morels

As I mentioned, I'd looked in Oklahoma the week before but had come up nearly empty. I had pulled up to a likely looking area where a woman and 6 or 7 kids were loading full plastic grocery bags into the back of her truck. I waved at them as they drove away, and realized with some dismay they'd probably cleaned them out. I decided to have a look anyway, and within minutes began seeing dozens of morel stumps where they had been cut off at the ground. After 30 minutes of walking I saw a dead elm tree and walked towards it, expecting only to find more stumps, when I saw my first ever morel hiding under a blanket of leaves. It was 8 or 9 inches tall and hunched over from the weight of the leaves on top of it, and as I cleared the area around it and snapped a few pics I saw another smaller one growing several feet away. They'd missed them because they were growing between two trees and were hard to see.

My first morel

Morel stumps

I went again the next day and found a few more several miles from that spot amidst scores of beer bottles and literally tons of trash. (WTF is wrong with people!) A few days later I discovered a spot very near my house that yielded nearly a pound of grays and blonds, and several more big blond ones a few days later.

The season for morels is almost over now, but I'm not quite finished yet. I'll be heading out today to try my luck in a few different spots, and probably to revisit a few of the "old" spots.


Wish me luck!