by Greg Marley
Mushrooms also are featured in the writings of a number of Slavic authors, both contemporary and classic. Pushkin, Tolstoy, and Nabokov all created characters who were mushroom hunters. In his memoir, Speak Memory, V. I. Nabokov reminisces about his mother’s infatuation with mushroom picking. “One of her greatest pleasures in summer was the very Russian sport of hodit’ po griby (looking for mushrooms). Fried in butter and thickened with sour cream, her delicious finds appeared regularly on the dinner table. Not that the gustatory moment mattered much. Her main delight was in the quest, and this quest had its rules.”7 The Russian author Sergei T. Aksakov referred to mushrooming as the “third hunt” to describe the qualities of experience as perceived by the hunter. “Although it cannot be compared with the more lively forms of hunting for the obvious reason that these are concerned with living creatures . . . here is an element of the unknown, of the accidental, there is success or failure, and all these things together arouse the hunting instinct in man and constitute its particular interest.”8
Indeed, as any mushroom hunter readily knows, there is a strong primitive element of the hunt to any mushroom outing. The decision of where to hunt for mushrooms is based on past experience of the quarry’s preferred habitat, knowledge of current and recent weather conditions, awareness of the patterns of other mushroom hunters, and a healthy dose of intuition, which all combine to shape the hunt and predict the outcome. In the forest, no hunters will share the locations of their spots or even divulge optimism regarding the possibility of finding any mushrooms at all. This primitive, instinctual behavior of the hunt is as true in Russia and all Slavic lands as it is in our own backyards. In fact, people become so intent on the collection that, at times, they throw caution to the wind.
In 2000, a great wet mushroom year across northern Europe, citizens in the far north Russian town of Krasnoselkup risked life and limb to gather mushrooms. The local airfield was known as the best mushroom site in this region with a very short season, and mushroom gatherers were so intent on their harvest that they placed themselves in the path of incoming air traffic, causing several aborted landings. Concerned local officials established a fine, equivalent to $1,000 (equal to three months’ average wages) for anyone caught mushrooming on airport property. One air traffic controller acknowledged that only the threat of fines was effective in ending the high-risk mushrooming practice.9
Though popularly referred to as the “quiet hunt,” mushrooming in Eastern Europe is often a social gathering as whole families or groups of friends head out into their favored territory. At the end of the day, or the end of the weekend for those lucky to have a dacha in the country in which to stay the night, the weary mushroom hunters head back toward the city. They troop onto trains packed with other mushroom hunters wet from dew or rain, speckled with soil, leaf, and needle from the forest, and deliriously happy if their hunt has gone well.
Once the mushrooms are transported safely back home and into the kitchen, the work of preserving the harvest begins, though it may wait until after a meal of fresh mushrooms. The mushroom most esteemed by Russians is beliy grib, the white mushroom or Boletus edulis. In years when they are plentiful, this mushroom fills the baskets and they are eaten fresh, as are the lisichki or chanterelle, Cantharellus cibarius, either boiled or boiled and fried. These and many other species also are preserved for winter use by drying or perhaps by boiling followed by marinating, pickling, or salting. Some species in the genera of Russula and Lactarius (milk-caps) are soaked in water or boiled to rid them of their acrid peppery taste before final cooking or preservation in brine. These species would make people sick without such preparation.
Because much of the mushroom harvest coincides with the farm harvest, historically mushrooming has been an activity for the very old, the very young, and women. For this reason, and perhaps others, it is common for the family mushroom expertise to rest in the capable hands of a grandmother who passes it down to a daughter or granddaughter.
There may be many historic factors combining to nurture the current nationalistic passion for mushrooming that ignites Slavic people. A recent poll in Russia estimated that 60 percent of adults go mushroom hunting each year and only 18 percent report having never collected wild mushrooms. In the neighboring Czech Republic and Slovakia, mushroom hunting is seen as a national pastime. There, up to 80 percent of the Czechs and Slovaks spend at least one day per year searching for mushrooms, according to Slavic scholar Craig Cravens. He reports that the activity began during times of famine, especially during the devastating Thirty Years War and the two world wars.10 Families foraged the fungi as an emergency food supply. Now it has become a national hobby.
For all these northern peoples, mushrooms, with their relatively high protein content and vitamins, are a good source of food. Russians began referring to them as “Lenten Meat” when the Tsarist-era Russian Orthodox Church required believers to fast more than 175 days per year.11 This meant no meat or meat fats were to be consumed on fast days. (It makes the meatless Fridays of my own Catholic youth seem mild.) And the church’s prohibition against the use of meat fats during fasting may be a basis for the Slavic practice of boiling many of the mushrooms as a method of cooking.
With the breakdown of the Soviet Union, the food production and distribution system in place during Soviet times was seriously disrupted. In many areas of the former USSR, food shortages became common and food prices rose sharply as subsidies ended and the fear of famine emerged. For many people during the 1990s, this meant shortages of food, and often, a disruption in income as government workers and pensioners went unpaid. Access to wild mushrooms again became vital for many as a no-cost, basic subsistence food. Many rural Russians also used wild mushrooms as a source of income, collecting them in the forest and selling them in towns and cities.
This re-emergent reliance on mushrooms as a staple food source came at a time when some people, especially those in cities, had not collected mushrooms on a regular basis for years, and the knowledge they had as youths had begun to fade. Unfortunately, there was no diminishment in self-confidence and, as a result, during the 1990s and into the new millennium, the incidence of serious mushroom poisoning increased throughout the former USSR. Many medical providers and public health officials have attributed this increase to the lack of familiarity that many city dwellers have in distinguishing between edible and toxic species.
Many regional mushroom guides are available for Russians and other Slavs who are interested in consulting a formal resource, but unfortunately, many Slavic people don’t use them for identification even when they are easily available. They learn their mushrooms as children and rely on family and other informal teachers for assistance. More than one resource I consulted mentioned that many collectors resent the implication that they might not know enough to avoid poisonous species and will resist offers for help in confirming the edibility of their collections. Those who have a history of collecting edibles from a specific location may rely more on their past success at that location than on knowledge of the mushrooms themselves. When they get sick, people may attribute toxicity to environmental contamination, mushrooms taken from the wrong location, or edible mushrooms that somehow had mutated into poisonous ones.12 Health officials in the southern Russian city of Voronezh have collected and tested suspect mushrooms and found that they generally contained toxins typical of known poisonous mushrooms and none were determined to have mutated. Voronezh, a city of about one million, made headlines several times over the past decade as an area with one of the highest incidences of mushroom poisonings in Russia. It is located in the part of Russia and Ukraine known as the Black Soil region, known as a fine mushrooming area. Mikhail Zubirko, MD, of the local sanitary and epidemiological department, reported on some of the people he sees sickened by mushrooms, “These are city people who do not know their mushrooms very well: 74 of the patients being treated for poisoning did not know what mushroom they had eaten.”13 This sense of confidence not supported by adequate kn
owledge is perhaps the shadow side of a strongly mycophilic culture. It is particularly problematic when city dwellers revisit their mushrooming roots without the support of the family matriarchs to go through the collection basket and discard the bad mushrooms.
Each year a large number of people are poisoned by mushrooms in Russia, Ukraine, and other Slavic countries. It is difficult to gather accurate numbers, but in 2000, a particularly good year for mushrooms and a bad year for mushroom poisonings, there were an estimated 200 deaths attributed to mushroom poisoning in Russia and Ukraine alone. (In contrast, an average of one or two people are killed by poisonous mushrooms each year in the United States.) In both regions, deaths are overwhelmingly attributed to consumption of Amanita phalloides (see Chapter 8 for more information). Health authorities in Russia became so alarmed about the sharp rise in serious poisonings that, in the middle of the 2000 season, they closed off broad areas of the country to mushroom picking and had police patrolling the local markets and forest edges to encourage caution or enforce the ban on sales of wild mushrooms. Several large regional hospitals, including the one in Voronezh, reported being overwhelmed with severe poisonings and having to transfer mild cases to other hospitals for treatment. Apparently, even medical personnel are not immune from mushroom poisoning. Two doctors from the regional hospital in Voronezh were hospitalized for mushroom poisoning in 2005, sickened by mushrooms they collected and ate on their days off.14
In Ukraine, the regional medical center in Kiev reports dealing with so many mushroom poisonings during the short season that it has prompted a team of doctors to look upon their work with mushroom poisoning victims in terms of disaster response.15 The director of the medical center reported that their Ukrainian Center of Emergency and Disaster Medicine might have as many as twenty victims of amatoxin poisoning simultaneously and treat up to 1,000 mushroom-poisoned patients per year. They cared for 196 victims of Amanita phalloides poisoning in 2000 alone!
In mainstream America and other mycophobic cultures, the twin myths— that most wild mushrooms are poisonous and if you eat one you will likely die—keep most people from experimenting with eating mushrooms unless they are absolutely certain of the identity and safety. These myths and the assumption of the generally malign nature of mushrooms act as a barrier to people who might otherwise look to them as a potential food source. These same myths also act as a protective shield, however, ensuring that few people will foolishly experiment with eating wild mushrooms and end up poisoned. In Slavic culture, the assumption is that mushrooms are good and the gods placed them on earth for people to collect, eat, and enjoy. Children learn 100 common mushrooms in school as adolescents. Collecting and eating mushrooms is considered normal and most of the time is safely done, otherwise the number of people poisoned would be far higher. But for the small percentage of Slavic citizens who possess inadequate knowledge to distinguish edible from toxic species and do not realize it, these assumptions combine to place them at high risk for being seriously sickened. This is the dark side of a region passionate about mushrooms. I also have little doubt that, as the number of Americans collecting and eating wild mushrooms increases, there will be a corresponding increase in the incidence of poisoning here.
The light side of Slavic mushrooming outshines the dark by far. The new mushroomer in Eastern Europe will find himself surrounded by a broad encouraging support system. The number of role models out collecting on a regular basis and the extensive history of mushrooming all combine to ease the path to learning and building confidence. Now if our novice mushroomer can get anyone to show him where they find beliy gribs, he will be all set.
2
OVERCOMING DISTRUST
Mushrooming in America
If only one could tell true love from false love as one can tell mushrooms from toadstools. With mushrooms it is so simple—you salt them well, put them aside and have patience.
KATHERINE MANSFIELD, 19171
The individual who desires to engage in the study [of wild mushrooms] must face a good deal of scorn. He is laughed at for his strange taste among the better classes, and is actually regarded as a sort of idiot among the lower orders. No fad or hobby is esteemed so contemptible as that of the “fungus-hunter” or “toadstool-eater.”
W. D. HAY, British Fungi, 18872
I discovered the world of wild mushrooms as a teenager. It was June of 1971 when, at age fifteen, I climbed onto a Greyhound bus in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and traveled the 2,000 miles to Rhinebeck, New York, in order to spend two months at Camp Rising Sun. Before that I hadn’t been further east than El Paso, Texas. I left behind a climate of high desert with an average annual rainfall of less than 9 inches and spent the summer in the woods of the mid-Hudson River valley, in the foothills of the Catskill Mountains. New York State averages almost five times the annual precipitation of New Mexico. I knew I was in a different world when, early on the third morning of the bus trip, I opened my eyes to the green hillsides of western Pennsylvania and sleepily wondered who watered all those trees. The dense vegetation obscuring the ground was a new and fascinating universe to someone accustomed to walking dry hills with little but dust to impede the view of distant mountains and mesas. Though the lush landscape initially captured me, over time the subtle beauty of mushrooms perched on moss or festooning a moist log is what held my attention. I spent five summers in New York State between 1971 and 1980. During the second year I bought my first mushroom field guide, a Dover reprint of Louis Krieger’s 1936 The Mushroom Handbook, and began in earnest to untangle the stories of these fascinating and mysterious forest dwellers. More than thirty-five years later, I find several lifetimes of untangling still ahead.
Following my initial summer in the Northeast, I spent hours back in New Mexico foraging in the woods and mesas with my Euell Gibbons guide, Stalking the Wild Asparagus, looking for anything that seemed remotely edible. It comes as no surprise then that my initial interest in the beauty and mystery of wild mushrooms broadened into their potential as food. In the mid-1970s, I lacked mentors who could guide me and, being a cautious adventurer, I slowly began to learn the common groups of mushrooms, both edible and poisonous. The first mushroom I ate was a puffball (Calvatia sp.) that I found growing under the apple trees in my parents’ yard in Albuquerque. I consulted my one field guide, and followed Krieger’s wisdom about the genus Calvatia. “The beginner is advised to start with these puffballs in risking his life in the cause of mycophagy. But there is no risk, for they are all both safe and good to eat so long as the flesh is white, dry and compact.”3
I wish I could say I had the confidence and support of my family as I sliced the firm white globes into rounds and fried them in margarine with salt and pepper. My own eager confidence was part adolescent bluff as I ignored the whispered doubts in my head regarding my identification skills. In spite of my fears, it tasted good and no one got sick. The low casualty rate was assured, as only I was willing to indulge in the small feast.
The following year I added the meadow mushroom (Agaricus campestris; see #4 in the color insert) to my list of edibles, first collecting these from the sprinkler-watered, manure-enriched ball fields at the University of New Mexico (UNM) campus. In 1977, I took my first organized class in mycology at UNM, and that autumn found a massive flush of shaggy manes (Coprinus comatus, #4) fruiting from the dead buried roots of a massive cottonwood tree that had been removed on campus several years earlier. For three successive years I collected large quantities of the young firm buttons of the shaggy mane and learned just how delicate and tasty they are sautéed in butter or as the main ingredient in a simple cream soup. The incredible abundance of this particular site also motivated me to learn how to cook and freeze mushrooms for use through the winter.
Looking back to those days, it’s easy, in hindsight, to appreciate the slow process of adding new mushrooms to my list of edibles. In the late 1970s, New Mexico did not have an organized mushrooming club. I was not aware of anyone else out collecting mushroom
s for food and fun, so my practice developed slowly, in a vacuum. Only after moving to Maine in 1981 did I begin to connect with other mushroom hunters to compare notes and share information and excitement. Though I was comfortable learning from field guides, nothing can boost confidence better than seeing a mushroom in the hands of a knowledgeable person.
In America, the eager newcomer setting out to learn mushrooms is both at an advantage and a terrible disadvantage. The advantage lies in the number of good field guides available to assist the tenderfoot hunter in learning the hobby. The typical mushroom field guide is organized by family groups, spore color, or other easily followed themes and always includes background material to help develop identification skills. It’s a bit like going to a grocery store in another country and finding, to your relief, that although the labels are in a foreign language, the pictures show what everything is, and all the similar foods are grouped together in easily navigable aisles. If, in this foreign market, you could find a knowledgeable local guide familiar with the foods and the layout of the store, your anxiety would be markedly reduced. That’s where experienced mushroomers come in. They can give novices the confirmation that they know what they’re doing—or the opposite, if they need to develop more competence to balance misplaced confidence. And therein lies the disadvantage for the novice mushroomer in the United States: It’s often hard to find a knowledgeable guide. Although many people learn to identify mushrooms with a good field guide, the confidence needed to trust eating the first few mushrooms is not easily acquired from a book.
