Rewilding

Finding Peace and Mushrooms in the Woods

There is a trailhead behind our house in the Poconos that leads into the woods. It is a narrow, winding, walking path at first, that eventually comes to a T. Every time on approach, we must choose from two possible routes which way we would like to go. 

Left leads uphill along a ridge that eventually turns into an old pine grove where a stand of tall trees line up along one side of the path like a massive fence for a giant. 

Turning right takes us deeper into woods thick with ferns and a stretch of trail that was once wet, muddy, and nearly impossible to navigate after winter rains. Now it is covered in a thick, green carpet. 

The trailhead is accessed by a wide path that cuts through the trees on one side of our cottage. Long ago it was a road, but now moss and “weeds” like wild garlic mustard grow where the wheels of vehicles once rolled. The forest resumes on the other side with a burst of ferns under the canopy of old oak trees. 

There has been talk among our neighbors of creating a new access path from the main road out to the network of trails. Brad proposed that if the use of the old road that passes through our lot is abandoned, perhaps we could rewild the path with native trees.

We have always loved flowering Dogwoods in the springtime. Now I see them in my imaginary view when I look out upon the woods that surround us. In this version of the future, the confining lines drawn by those that came before us have disappeared into wilderness and possibility. 

Foxgloves recently emerged throughout the forest. On an afternoon hike with our dog Penny, as we walked among the purple flowers, I mentioned to Brad that a milestone was passing. It has been one year since I closed my business and walked away from it. His response was, “that sounds like a good topic for a newsletter”, and I did consider this suggestion, but not in the way I believe he intended. 

Far less intense than the soundtrack of the city, where sirens often sing us to sleep, the quiet of the woods is not silent. It is full of riotous bird songs, the loud rustle of the wind through the trees, and so much more if you simply pause to listen. I can hear not only nature, but myself more clearly here. 

Removed from my dense, urban life, where I am surrounded by others that I can’t help but compare myself to, I care less about how I present myself to the world. And I’ve all but abandoned social media, which once kept me connected to the goings on in my community and beyond, subtly (or sometimes not so) suggesting that I keep up.

With the passing of time, I have finally begun to shed not only the obligations, but the expectations that used to guide me. In this new space, I can feel an inner peace growing. Perhaps I’m experiencing my own period of rewilding. 

A few days after a big rain, walking the path that leads to the waterfall, Brad and I came upon a cluster of wild mushrooms at the base of a tree. When he spotted them, identifying with the use of an app on his phone¹ that they were chicken of the woods (not to be confused with hen of the woods, despite Brad’s instance that “a hen is a chicken”), I confirmed, “those are most definitely edible!”

Without a knife on hand, I harvested them by gently breaking the fan-like caps off at the base where they connected to the tree. I carried the armful of shrooms like a newborn baby whose head needed extra care as we continued on, hiking the remaining miles of our route back home.

That night I tore the mushrooms into pieces and gently sauteed them, allowing the excess water held in the tender tips to release and the flavor to concentrate before I diced them up and folded their orange flesh, oddly reminiscent of lobster meat, or perhaps more like bits of tandoori chicken, into the fried rice we had previously planned to prepare for dinner. 

Of course I first tasted them right out of the pan, barely seasoned with a small pinch of salt, and they were extraordinary. 

Not two weeks later, hiking on that same path, Brad stopped to excitedly point out a fresh flush. Another big rain had passed through in recent days and we were staring at another bunch of velvety, orange chicken of the woods, double the size of the last harvest. The haul, which I carried back to our kitchen in a sack made from my t-shirt (it was too large and unruly as an armful), weighed in at 5lb and 8oz. The size of an actual newborn. 

While Brad went down an internet recipe rabbit hole for inspiration that evening, repeatedly suggesting preparations of pasta, I scoured various foraging blogs for advice on how I might coax out the excess moisture the mushrooms were holding like a sponge in order to achieve a desirable texture, rather than the mushy softness I knew was a possible fate. I found little help. 

Without further instruction for handling, I repeated my previous method of pre-sautéing larger pieces of mushrooms to a satisfying texture. Once cooked, I chopped them up to accompany tender-crisp pieces of asparagus and slivers of green garlic in a pasta united by a healthy lump of grass-fed butter, black pepper, and grated Pecorino Romano cheese. It tasted like spring feels in the woods, delicately green, with an underlying earthy richness.

I was tempted to dry and store some of the chicken of the woods for a future risotto, although I hesitated with this batch as some folks claim they don’t rehydrate well (I am eager to test this, hopeful that the woods will keep on giving after rain storms pass over). 

Instead, I decided to leave the remaining mushroom fans lying on the kitchen counter overnight, and arrived in the morning to discover that my instincts were correct—they had dried enough that I no longer feared storing them in the cold of the refrigerator. But first I chopped up a pound to toss with some olive oil and salt, roasting them to a golden brown. 

The roasty shrooms were folded into a frittata with spinach and an aged Upstate New York cheddar we had on hand. I served it to my parents and Aunt Carol, who came to visit for a late breakfast the next day. Later in the week the shrooms were an excellent addition to a mushroom and potato chowder that has become one of my go-to recipes from Tenderheart, one of my favorite cookbooks of the past year.

I have also been curious about this particular mushroom’s tendency to “pull” much like the protein of chicken, and while I’m not one for faking meat in recipes, I am considering trying my hand at a sort of BBQ pulled chicken of the woods. That’s an idea in the bag for the next harvest.

Does anyone have tips or suggestions for me? Are there any chef-foragers reading along with us? Any and all comments are welcome, friends!

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More Wild Reading

• If you're interested in mycology, or simply eating mushrooms like I am, I recommend checking out my pal Steve (also a butcher and former small business owner turned newsletter author), the

  Enlightened Omnivore
  . He recently published a three-part series on shrooms culminating in “Mushrooms in Space”, along with his inaugural podcast featuring guest Mycologist Rachel Linzer, PhD —a fascinating wealth of knowledge on the subject. 

• I recently stumbled upon the novel, Goodbye, Vitamin, by Rachel Khong and could not put it down. I eagerly followed the stream-of-conscious voice of the narrator, Ruth, a daughter who returns home for a year as her father is diagnosed with Alzheimer's, through the pages of this beautiful story. It is heart-breaking and heavy in its subject, but will also make you laugh out loud.

• It’s not my intention to fan the flames of paranoia that the media so often ignite, but I was intrigued by this New York Times opinion piece “Our Desire for Inexpensive Food Is Putting Us in Danger” about how industrial livestock farming creates opportunities for disease. There are so many reasons I want to encourage you all to really consider your relationship with meat and its source, and this is one of them.

“The point here is not to demonize cows…The point, on the contrary, is to remind us how humans treat cows, how we gather them in dense herds to achieve industrial-scale economies in supplying the dairy and meat products we crave.”

• Which reminds me, No Meat Required by

  Alicia Kennedy
  is now available in paperback, which I will be adding to my library (I first read this book on kindle when it was released last summer). I’ll continue to encourage this read for ethical eaters of all types, including us “Enlightened Omnivores” to borrow Steve’s phrase. 

As always, thanks for reading and for just being here.

XX,
Heather

1. Speaking of apps for the woods, I’m typically not a fan of mixing phones and time in nature. But if you are a hiker or a wanna be birder (both hands raised over here), I highly recommend you check out Merlin Bird ID, which identifies birds by their sounds.