Back From Vacation! (Of Grays and Graylings)

Wow. It's been awhile since I've posted. Sorry about that.

Stacey and I just got back from our annual trek to New Hampshire for a little fishing, canoeing, reading, cooking, leaf-peeping, and of course mushroom foraging.

As with past vacations, I brought along one of Stephen King's epics - Dreamcatcher. During past vacations I've read From A Buick 8, On Writing, the entire Dark Tower series, and Bag of Bones. Being in the woods and reading some of these titles certainly lends an element of immersion to the horrific happenings of the books... plus, as someone who grew up in Maine, it's kind of a required duty to officially consider yourself a Mainer.

What does Dreamcatcher have to do with mushrooms? Well it seems Northern Maine has been been infested with an alien invasion. I say infested, because one of the main "baddies" is a reddish, growing fungal species that produces fruiting bodies in the shape of "Grays" (those commonly recognized gray aliens with elongated limbs and saucer-like black eyes), and spreads through spore-like explosions. At least that's what I think happened. It's all a bit convoluted. The fungus is also capable of telepathy and producing one of the most gruesome, unpleasant invasion and... well, exit of the human body.

It doesn't exactly follow the hard science of fungi... the telepathy was the first giveaway, but it does create a formidable alien presence that I suppose could be a real threat. And it's probably no less strange than many life cycles that some mushrooms and slime molds go through here in our real world.

The culinary highlight of the trip were the bagful of Cantharellula umbonata (Graylings) that we found. Growing in the moss, near an old gravesite, we harvested quite a few. Being small, just inches high, you need to find a large bounty of them to really enjoy them. And that we did.

After properly ID'ing them in at least 2 guides, we cooked them up with a little salt and butter. They are an under-appreciated mushroom. You can see a few good pictures of them here. Notice the "umbo" (protrusion) on the cap which lends to their scientific name. The decurrent gills running down the stalk are also a key identifier, as well as its mossy habitat.

And like most mushrooms, they reappear year after year. So it looks like we'll be returning to our New Hampshire getaway in 09.