Muscling Up

"You start losing muscle mass in your 30s," the senior-yoga-class instructor told our class, "and lose 10 percent more every year." I called out, "That's not fair."

The instructor ignored me and advised us all to work with weights and to up the poundage every time we got good at it. Don't get old, get strong.

She's right, but strength, I secretly think, is secondary. Priority goes to keeping a somewhat youthful shape, and especially knees not draped with crepe-y flesh. So, telling myself it's about knee strength, I started with the "quad" weight machine and related exercises. The "quads" are the long, tough vertical muscles in front of the thighs.

Two weeks, three weeks: The crepe went away! Now that's motivation!

Coincidentally, this is the season the quite common and ordinary Russula mushrooms, such as the one pictured (about 3" in diameter),  muscle their way out of the soil, displacing it if they have to. It takes Russulas about two days to fight their way to standing and you can watch their progress. They lift with their stems and caps more earth than I can with a shovel from this tough, packed, weed-choked soil. They get scarred. They don't quit. What inspires them? Maybe they wanted to be up in time for the autumn equinox. Happy equinox today!

Hope Springs

Maybe I told you that two or three years ago a huge tractor ran over and churned to mud a rich and generous chanterelle mushroom temple I had cultivated near a juncture between woods and fields so that it was hardly necessary to step into the woods to harvest pounds of cheddar-yellow ruffly lovelies good to eat and share. Also crushed was the fallen tree that was my oyster mushroom gold mine, and logs that brought forth Bearded Tooth, which tastes like lobster. As I surveyed the ruins, shocked and saddened, only religious language came to mind: God is not mocked.

Last summer I tramped over there and saw two or three small chanterelles trying to make it through the mud and wished them the best. This year they are definitely bouncing back, and after a rain I picked a meal's worth and left the rest to reproduce and once again (I hope) cover the earth.

Amanita Crocea

Let's talk about why it's not easy to identify mushrooms, even with a field manual, because the manual will show a photo of a mushroom at its prime, but they aren't all or always at their prime, just as people aren't. Here's a prime example from my mowed area of three different phases of the same species. Seeing the one on the right by itself, we'd say "It has a conical, bright-orange, wet-looking cap with a medium-thick stalk" and seek an I.D. for that; the center one we'd say has a "toadstool" shape and a dark orange-brown "nipple" in the center of its Creamsicle-orange cap. The one on the left, the most mature, we'd call flat-topped with a slender stalk and because most 'shroom guides begin identification with the mushroom's shape, we might I.D. or equally we might misidentify. But they're all the same species in different developmental phases. Only field experience will teach you the phases.

The "peely" or "shaggy" stems indicate the Amanita family, and many amanitas are poisonous and different species look alike so I never eat any; my guess is Amanita crocea, or the "orange grisette." Amanitas often have fleshy "rings" around the stems, but Amanita crocea does not. Another Amanita crocea identifier is the "teeth marks" around the cap's edge when mature. Seeing the underside and taking a cap and making a spore print would help prove whether my guess is right.

Puff and Blow

I was raking while barefoot because barefoot links us with Earth energies and all that, when I saw puffballs: One fresh (beige, about 3 inches in diameter) and one blown (the brown, tattered one on top) and rejoiced because I had thought the season was over. Promptly I obtained a paring knife and bag and harvested my dinner, provided that when I sliced it lengthwise it was pure white inside. It was. Puffers (in this case, Calvatia gigantea) barely have stems at all. When dried-out and brown their heads explode volcanically, sending spores far and wide.

Put on my hunter-orange cap and scoured the nearest quarter of the Divine Woods, all gold-leaf and black hieroglyph, for the same sort of prize, not finding a darned thing, and then I looked down and in the crevices of a log were whole colonies of puffers, little ones, also fresh.

These I scooped up not to eat but to propagate. All along the walk home I crumbled, threw and dropped the pieces, hoping for more puffers next fall. Not tired enough, I tried another trail and found another large puffer, not so fresh. This too I crumbled up and tossed hither and yon. May there be puffballs, a lot, next year. Tomorrow, after the hunters leave the area, hike into deeper woods to seek  more. To cook, slice them lengthwise, always making sure they're pure solid white inside, and saute in butter.

Judas' Ear

Rain brings for one day these delicate and translucent wood ear mushrooms, usually velvety brown, growing on thoroughly dead branches. They pop up at all times of year after a soaking. You'll find these in Chinese cuisine, but they are so light and flavorless -- really, they're jelled water -- they are not worth cooking and eating any other way, except for their 9 grams of protein per 100 grams of mushroom.

You have to, must, are required to cook them or they are not edible at all. They and the water they are cooked in are folk remedies for sore throats.

Latin name Auricularia auricula-judae tells a story: These are often called Judas's Ears, because Judas hanged himself from a tree.

Elfin Saddles

Shoveling beneath some rotted wood exposed some unusual mushrooms plump as cooked macaroni and about the same size and pallor, mushrooms I'd never seen before. They had elegant saddle-shaped caps with white piping, and grew in neighborly little clumps. They are casually called "elfin saddles." It's said that bugs and millipedes can hide between the lobes for a while, freeloading.

Turns out these mushrooms belong to the Helvella family, whose saddle-shaped caps are characteristic, and specifically the ones I dug up are Helvella leucopus. Quite common, and formerly considered edible, they have since been downgraded to "suspect" or "unknown," probably because there's no one left to tell us that when eaten they have no ill effects. Interesting discovery, though.

A Star in My Hand

Not often seen. . . the Earthstar (Geastrum saccatum) mushroom, with a spherical spore case about 1" in diameter that blows its top like a volcano and shoots brown powdery spores everywhere. The spore case sits on top of a lily pad of "leaves," once a covering, that split open and peeled back to form five or six rays. Edible? No. Earthstars dry well and as keepsakes are said to "make good conversation pieces" -- if you're really hard up for topics to talk about.

DaVinci Said

Varieties gathered during a 90-minute foray, Rockwoods Reservation

"To such an extent does nature delight and abound in variety that among her trees there is not one plant to be found which is exactly like another; and not only among the plants, but among the boughs, the leaves and the fruits, you will not find one which is exactly similar to another."

-Leonardo da Vinci

Mushroom People

A mushroom foray is a trip into the woods -- off the trail -- to find fungi and maybe pick some (by cutting, not uprooting!) for study or for cooking at home. Note the carrying basket, the socks up over the pant legs, and the enthusiasm of two of my foray companions on this gorgeous June morning. Between the twelve of us, ages 6 to 80, we brought back 22 species. The kids were the best mushroom spotters. Our leader, age 80, explained 1) they're closer to the ground and 2) they've got sharper eyes than older folk. I myself took only photographs. Here's some Jellied False Coral (Tremellodendron pallidum). It's edible, but according to an expert, cooking it isn't worth the effort.

Frankly Scarlet

Below the cliffs is -- well, I call it "the secret pond," but it's a swamp. Before greenery and thorns and mosquitoes emerge from its muck I always visit seeking signs of spring. Today I saw neon-red scraps among the downed oak leaves. Thought it was Coca-Cola cans; instead, it was a mushroom I've never seen before. Found mainly on the East Coast and in the Pacific Northwest, and "on fallen hardwood branches in wet places" according to the Audubon Field Guide, this is the Scarlet Cup (Sarcoscypha coccinea), "one of the first mushrooms to look for in spring." Check! Now it's spring here for sure.

Happy birthday, Demetrius; you would have turned 65 today. I wish I had seen the baby picture you said was taken at age 1 with your hair in long dark curls and posed with an Easter basket.

How to Stay Alive in the Woods

Rarely do I get lost in strange woods but it was 4 p.m. and the sun was low in the naked trees with darkness scheduled to fall within the hour. A trail I'd followed had petered out, tempting me to bushwhack to my goal: the riverfront. All my tricks to get back (such as retracing my steps, or walking at an angle where I'd surely cut across the trail -- sure I would! -- didn't help me. A book I like called How to Stay Alive in the Woods says that most lost people, at worst, miss a meal, and that's nothing. I walked toward the sun, because on my way in it had been behind me.

Fortunately I had some drinking water, a hiking stick, and a small firearm, and knew that if one is lost at nightfall one stays put, hopes the cellphone is working, and when the searchers are searching, fires three shots into the air to guide them. "Be prepared" is great wisdom; I felt lucky and calm. Too bad I'll miss a meal, I thought. And then I was presented with this cluster of mushrooms growing at eye level on a live tree. I said thanks but no thanks; I'm no expert, won't put wild mushrooms in my mouth without proper I.D. I got back to my car before dark and at home looked these up because they seemed so familiar. They are oyster mushrooms (Pleurotus ostreatus) like you buy in the market, graded  "choice" for eating. So I want you to know, if you're ever lost, look around, and you'll probably see you've been provided for.

Tiny Orange Fungi

To the best of my research ability, the electric-orange embroidery on this fallen branch of dead, wet oak is fresh Phlebia radiata, in its rarely-seen early phase. Usually we see Phlebia after it has all spread and grown together, dried out, and formed a greenish-brownish-white crust or medallion that I always took for lichen. Found this branch lying by the garage while I had my eyes pensively downcast. You can't stay downcast long in the country, where marvels upon marvels are everywhere, including beneath your feet, and death is just a phase in the cycle of life. I heart the mysterious and colorful world of fungi and might have become a mycologist had I known it was an option.

Chicken of the Woods

This is "Chicken of the Woods" or "Sulfur Shelf" (Laetiporus sulphureus) seen today on a dead oak in the Divine woods. This meaty wild mushroom according to Mushrooms of North America is "the most popular edible polypore. Fresh young specimens are delicious..." However, I enjoy wild mushrooms solely as works of art. Chicken of the Woods (not to be confused with "Hen of the Woods" (Grifola frondosa)), is parasitical, and in its early stages, attacks a tree's heartwood, and by the time the "chickens" you see here appear on the tree bark, "they are definitely coming home to roost, as far as the tree's health is concerned," says Mushroomexpert.com. You can see that the undersides of this tree fungus are sulfur yellow. Looking into joining the local mycological society, I found its homepage plastered with dozens of warnings: They are NOT RESPONSIBLE if you go hunting mushrooms with them, then eat one and croak! I didn't feel the love. For comparison, here's the spectacular 24-ounce Grifola frondosa I found in the woods in October 2008.