It’s April, it’s spring time, it’s RAINING! To bring May flowers, of course. So, I jumped head first into an April 1968 edition of Blackwood’s Magazine, more specifically, Roy Neal Williams’ Mushroom Weather.
I’ve never heard of Roy Neal Williams before today, but I definitely can say I’ll remember him. His memoir about his grandmother and their adventures foraging in the woods for mushrooms with his german shepherd mix, Shep, is right up my alley. His prose is nice and playful, easy to get right in step with the spring time atmosphere he is describing from his childhood.
The time spent in the woods and the property with his grandmother is looked back upon so fondly. I hope that my daughter remembers her time with me in the woods as well. And I like his grandmother,
“She stopped and looked at the flowers. All was quiet. There was only the sound of the water as it rushed along its way, cutting round stones and making miniature waterfalls from a flat rock or a fallen limb. An occasional bird would chime in and, in the distance, we could hear Shep yelp now and then.”
He explains how they collected mushrooms, morel mushrooms, and then took them home and soaked them in preparation to eat the next day. As he slept that night he would dream of the delicious dish that awaited him the following day.
The forager in me couldn’t help but come home and search the web for images of these tasty treats. Below is a picture of morel mushrooms that serves as a link to the Morel Mushroom Hunting Club. How exciting – and odd – is that?
