Tag Archives: Langdon Cook

The Mushroom Hunters

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The Mushroom Hunters cover imageAs our days grow dark, dank, and dismal, I like to read books about people who work outdoors in all types of weather. Maybe it just makes me feel warm and snug as I sit inside reading.

If you are interested in foraged foods or just eating, The Mushroom Hunters by Langdon Cook takes you out into the woods with the people who make their livelihoods collecting the mushrooms that go to restaurants and stores for our eating pleasure. The woods where they find these mushrooms are deep and dark and lonely (and sometimes scary and dangerous and home to drug manufacturers). Most mushroom pickers are secretive and protective of “their” picking patches, even though most are on public lands. Langdon Cook makes a friend of one picker, Doug, who allows him to tag along and introduces him to their world.

We meet pickers, most of whom are not friendly to strangers, and some of whom are downright paranoid. They work year-round in the woods, traveling up and down the coast, as different varieties of mushrooms come into season. Over the years they have become very knowledgeable and intuitive about the growing habits of mushrooms.

The pickers sell the mushrooms to buyers. As you’d expect, there are some buyers who are less honest than others. Doug introduces Cook to one of his favorites, Jeremy Faber. Faber started as a picker and wholesaler and went on to become a buyer who now sells to upscale restaurants and grocery stores. He also sells from a booth in Pike Place Market. He is very ambitious and focused , working both to expand the market for mushrooms and wild foods, and to grow his business.

Cook works with pickers and buyers, many of whom are colorful characters you might not want moving in next door to you. We also get to tag along for visits to fancy restaurants and hear from some of the chefs who use the expensive mushrooms. This book allows us entry into a world and lifestyle most of us will not experience. I personally prefer to continue eating the mushrooms rather than searching the woods for them (I’m afraid of running into a zombie). I’m planning to seek out different varieties after reading this work.

If you’ve had a chance to read this excellent book and would like to discuss it further, you are in luck. On Monday February 24th, starting at 6 in the Northwest Room at the Main Library, you can join in a book discussion of The Mushroom Hunters lead by our northwest historians.

The Quest

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With the holiday season already far in the rear-view mirror, and the joys of summer still months off, I’m deep into winter escapist reading. This season I seem to be drawn to books about people on quests. Whether it’s for healing or wild edibles, each writer I’ve engaged with has taken me along on a fascinating journey of discovery. Here are three titles that will set your mind wandering:

The Mushroom Hunters cover imageThe Mushroom Hunters: On the Trail of Secrets, Eccentrics, and the American Dream  (Langdon Cook). This title is a great fit for foodies, hikers, lovers of the Pacific Northwest, and those who appreciate investigative journalism that takes you deep inside the story. I enjoyed traveling off the beaten path, literally and sometimes legally, with Cook and his group of wild food foraging contacts. This is a good book to pick up if you’re the type of consumer who is interested in where your food comes from and why it costs what it does. I found it remarkable that items that you can find at any upscale market reach the selling table as a result of so many moving (and potentially unreliable) parts.

Fairyland cover imageFairyland: A Memoir of My Father  (Alysia Abbott). In some cases, quests can be taken without traveling at all. In Fairyland, author Alysia Abbott journeys back into her unorthodox childhood using her father’s prodigious journal archive. Abbott’s path twists and turns through the complexities of being raised by an openly gay single father at a time when the nation was only first awakening to the gay rights movement. Along the way the author pulls no punches describing her father as loving though aloof and herself as too self-involved to be able to see that he needed her as much as she needed him. Despite these and other hurdles, this small family managed to create a home in improbable places. While readers are often left with a sense of regret for opportunities lost, the overall tone of the memoir is one of grace and acceptance.

Wild cover imageWild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail (Cheryl Strayed). Part of my own personal quest this January is to finish this book; I’m currently in the middle of it. Like Alysia Abbott, Cheryl Strayed had an unusual upbringing. After her abusive father exited the picture, her mother barely scraped by raising her small family. When she eventually remarried, the family moved to the wilds of northern Minnesota where they built their own tar-paper cabin and lived off the land. Though this lifestyle may sound difficult, the family was happy. Strayed goes on to marry shortly after high school and seems to have things on track until her mother suddenly dies of lung cancer. Unable to cope with her loss, Strayed spirals out of control and moves out on her own. In order to regain focus after her divorce, she picks up a guide to the Pacific Crest Trail and decides to set off on her own. One part travelogue for the curious traveler, and one part memoir for those working through their own loss, this book has a lot to offer to the questing reader.