This is Chris’s own foray, and the reason it produces when other people’s don’t is that he’s out on the ground in the days beforehand, working out what’s up and where. So the destination depends entirely on what he finds, and he won’t decide until close to your date. It might be Jackson forest, it might be private land he has permission on.
We’ll start at camp with coffee while he lays out what we’re after, then drive out and walk a slow transect with everybody spread across the duff and eyes down. There’s a particular pleasure to this that’s hard to describe until you’ve had it, the moment the ground stops being a brown blur and starts being full of things. After an hour or so we’ll regroup, put everything out on a tarp, and sort it into what you’ll eat, what’s worth a closer look, and what to leave well alone. Then a second walk on a different slope, because the north side holds different things than the south, and a final sort with cleaning, storing, and what to do with the lot of them tonight.
You’ll go home with mushrooms and a decent idea of how to find them again without him.
