I recall one foray with my local mushroom club in which the group of us stopped by a large, sparsely-wooded lot to look for morels. One of the senior members of the group, Tom, kept insisting that we were wasting our time there. But us neophytes proceeded to check - just in case. After half an hour we came out empty-handed. Tom declared with a stern face, "This place has nothing to do with morels!" And so we left.

With experience, as Tom obviously had, you develop a keen sense of where you will or won't be successful in the hunt. It's all about observing and interpreting the complex relationships that exist between the habitat, ecosystem, and environmental conditions, until you eventually get to a point of just knowing where to look.

© Eileen K. Seto

Morchella esculenta

British Columbia, Canada - May, 1996

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