A staunch member of the Asheville Mushroom Club, he’s one of the few that hunts in this area, so he doesn’t precisely have to keep his best spots secret. But even though he’s shown any number of newcomers around, he does keep some spots to himself. “I just speak in general terms,” he says with a ready laugh.
When the deep cold sets in, or he’s struck out for a few days consecutively, Hitchcock might spend some time painting watercolors of mushrooms, or dying silk with natural dyes—some of them made from mushrooms—or cultivating oyster mushrooms at his house using straw and plastic.
All these routines, what he calls “other kinds of oddball things,” yield some pay, but it’s not a break-even proposition. “I enjoy it, I make a little money, enough to pay for the gas and materials,” he says.
He’s also been writing a book, called the Soul of a Teacher, that he hopes comes out before Christmas. “It’s about those 15 years, when I took all my interests, put them together and tried to put them in the classroom, to inspire kids to learn.”
In the cold months, he also dreams. Of morels.
“They are a rite of passage in Appalachia—all over the nation, but particularly in Appalachia. When spring came, the mountain people got morels and ramps, and these were the first fresh foods after a long winter for a lot of people. Sitting around in the winter, I really start counting the days to when the morels come up,” he says.
But the cold is a ways off, weeks or maybe a month. And Hitchcock is ready to stop talking and head back to the place where he was yesterday, to collect two mushrooms he left behind.
And to look for a Hen In the Woods.
“It grows on mature oak trees, right at ground level,” he says. “I’ve looked at thousands of trees and walked many miles to find one, but I never have. But if I’m going to find one, before frost—now is the time.”
Mushroom Foraging: Safety First
It’s a wonderful hobby, but foraging for wild mushrooms can be deadly, says Whitey Hitchcock. “There are some bad ones out there.” The biggest problem in our general vicinity is newcomers confusing small Jack O’Lantern mushrooms with chanterelles.
“Two like that have happened this year,” Hitchcock says. “They’re really sick—they ain’t going to die but they may wish they would.”
It is possible to avoid the poisonous mushrooms—and those that will merely cause gastric distress—while enjoying the good ones, by following a few simple guidelines from Hitchcock:
1. Hunt alongside someone who is trained and knowledgeable.
2. Study to learn the 15 or 20 readily identifiable local mushrooms, and then hunt and enjoy them. “You’ll have plenty of opportunity and variety without much risk,” he says.
3. As a rule, avoid all mushrooms from the deadly genus Amanita; you can easily do without the few edible varieties within the generally toxic genus.
4. Don’t eat mushrooms with brown spores.
5. When you eat what you’ve found, never eat more than one species at a time and leave a little bit of what you’re eating in the freezer. That way, if your stomach gets upset you’ll have a piece for reference.
6. Follow the 100 percent rule. “If you’re not 100 percent sure, don’t pick it or eat it. It’s a pass-fail test, and you need to be 100 percent right,” says Hitchcock. “I’ve left a lot of mushrooms behind I was pretty sure I knew to be safe. I’ve never been sick, and I’m trying to stay that way.”
