Foraging Part 2

A few years back my friend Dan invited me to go mushroom picking near Taos, NM.   It was the perfect time- we hit the mountains under ideal conditions and returned with pounds of delicious King Boletes mushrooms.   So when he invited me to go 'shrooming again recently how could I decline?!

Dan gets off the beaten track

So in to the forest it was!
Now- you really shouldn't do this on your own.  Always go with an experienced fungologist.  (I don't actually know what a mushroom dude is called)
You don't want to put anything in your mouth that you're not sure of..(at least that's what grandma always said)  You can always have a taste tester along to try things out first but it's kind of a quick way to loose friends and it does limit your hiking companions to people foolishly willing to stick odd organic matter in their mouth.  So.... that said.... go with someone you trust to know what they're doing.

As it turns out- you either hit the mushrooms exactly right or you don't- and ....
We Didn't.                                                                                                                                                                            We looked at a lot of other Boletes wanna-be type fungus

but in the end came home empty handed.

That's not 100% true.  We did each eat a handful of delicious wild raspberries (grown at over 9000' elevation)

Still- I don't know how our ancestors did it.. I would've come home with an empty stomach....
I don't think I passed 'Foraging 101'!  

But what's to complain about hiking in the mountains of Northern NM with a buddy?  We had a great picnic (after we worked up an appetite imagining all the things we'd be cooking with the mushrooms we didn't find!)