Doug makes his living as a full-time, year-round mushroom picker. He picks the Washington Coast near his Westport home in the fall, travels south to pick California in the winter, and marches back up the east slope of the Cascades following the spring pick, sometimes up into British Columbia if the pick is good.
The other day I tagged along with Doug to see how it was done.
To say Doug is an interesting character is to make a broad understatement. He’s been a logger, served in the military, and captained a crab boat. When you drive around the Olympic Peninsula’s down-at-the-heels timber communities with Doug in his $500 Buick Century sedan, you spend a lot of time waving to the people you pass, all friends or former colleagues: shake rats*, long-liners, other pickers, and those three old codgers jawing around the tailgate at the general store.
More important, at least in terms of Doug’s livelihood, you also spend a lot of time visiting trees that might as well be personal friends. Within a mile or two of our meeting place we pulled over beside a fork of the Hoquiam River. A single sitka spruce of less than 100 years age was busy cranking out porcini buttons. Doug has known this tree a long time and he’ll stop by for a visit every now and again to say hello and load up on the porcini that spring from its roots like Athena out of Zeus’s head.
After that we visited a hedgehog patch. I found myself struggling to keep up. Doug knows exactly where the mushrooms are. He has patches up and down the West Coast, has in fact forgotten more patches than most pickers will ever know. When you follow Doug through the salal and huckleberry and old cedar slash, you’re following a man who has created little trails through the forest just like the deer and elk and bears. These trails lead directly to mushrooms, which end up in his bucket by the pound, and are later emptied into baskets to be weighed by the buyer.
Doug prides himself on providing good product. His mushrooms are fresh, clean, and unblemished.
After picking hedgehogs we visited a chanterelle patch and another porcini patch. A good portion of Doug’s day is spent scouting. The chanterelle patch needed another week and he figured his early porcini patch was about to pop. He predicted a 30-pound haul for the following day, and when I talked to him on the phone the next night he said it put out 35 pounds—and that was just the beginning. He’ll be visiting that patch every other day for the next week or two until the patch peters out.
Meanwhile the hedgehogs were just coming on and there were always chanterelles to pick. Plenty of chanterelles. When I asked Doug why he picked, he didn’t talk about the money or the virtue of hard work or the allure of being your own boss. It was all about the woods. To pick mushrooms on a daily basis is to be intimately involved in the web of life. Doug knows which salmon streams still have decent runs of wild fish, where to find the best berries, and how to lose himself in the forest’s grandeur without getting lost.
Writers have an expression: a writer’s writer might be unknown to the critics and taste-makers, but earning the admiration of fellow scribes is the highest honor. Doug is a picker’s picker.
* A shake rat is a logger who specializes in cutting cedar shakes, or shingles.
Outstanding blog post. Respectful all the way. Bravo!
Wonderful post, leaves me wanting more.
good job in describing him lang. i knew he was someone you needed to hang with. i certainly havent dealt with all his shenanigans over the years for nothing. if only he was a businessman hed be a millionaire, though then he wouldnt be who he was.
Fine post, thanks. I’m just trying to get my head round the UK mushroom possibilities so this is fascinating.
HH
Wonderful story. Will there be some basic picker lessons handed down? Perhaps in book #2?
What a gorgeous post! Love the writing – simple but paints a strong portrait of both Doug’s connection to the woods and your respect and admiration of him. And I wish I could have tagged along!
Your descriptions of Doug and the world he lives in are pure poetry. Reading your post, I only wanted to know more about these men and women like Doug who make a living bringing the forest’s bounty to our local and sustainable tables.
great post! i am just getting into mushroom foraging and enjoying it so far. do you have any tips for how to cook cauliflower mushrooms? i found a big one today, and thought to just saute it with butter and some chanterelles i also have, but if you have other suggestions i’d love to hear it. thanks.
Great post! I wish I could talk my husband into dropping everything and doing the same thing. Alas, he is a people person, and I am a tree person. I would love to see more about this guy.
Thanks for the comments everyone. I enjoyed writing this post.
Mike – Thank you. Respect was an important part of this post.
Bikejuju – Stay tuned. Doug will return…
Jeremy – Wait til next post…
Hubert Hubert – I’ll look forward to reading about the UK angle.
Matt – I’m working on it!
Kirsten – Thanks. Anyone who tags along needs to be able to move FAST through the brush.
Martha – My interest is piqued. I want to learn more about the pickers too.
K – Click on the mushroom labels in the navbar or use the search box. If you enter “cauliflower” you’ll find a couple recipes. I’ve braised cauliflower shrooms in a beef stew and then used them in place of egg noodles. They’re wonderful simply sauteed in butter. Also pickled.
Berly – Doug will make another appearance–and others…
Love to here about local pickers, most are as elusive as the mushrooms we seek. There probably the least acknowledged purveyor, that can make a restaurant shine. PS if you ever need any company picking…
good post; love this stuff. my fantasy image of the commercial picker community comes from that Guterson book that came out a few yrs ago