By Dave Layton
Note: I wrote this story shortly after our visit in October 2023 hence my referring to Charlie in present tense.
My sister moved to Oregon over a year ago so my brother Charlie and I took Amtrak from Winona MN to visit her this fall. Taking the Empire Builder train out West had long been on my bucket list. I learned that bucket might have been a little leaky on the way out. We left at night, so both the Mississippi and the western mountains were also at night. We got a good look at North Dakota and most of Montana though. It was great card playing scenery, broken up only by amazingly tagged train cars in the switchyards.
Charlie and I shared a sleeperette. He’s four inches taller and one hundred pounds heavier than me so I had the honor of the top berth. That’s the best place to experience the full swaying motion of the train and the roughest track, which we always seemed to be traveling on at night. It either rocked me to sleep or jolted me awake throughout the night. Since this was first class, tasty meals were included and a car attendant took care of all our needs – or not. Our car attendant was much better at excoriating passengers over the intercom who complained that their room was either a steam bath or a refrigerator, depending on where they resided in the car. So everyone on the train got to hear over the intercom, “You people in sleeper #10 and Roomette 2 need to leave me alone! There’s nothing I can do about the temperature in your rooms!”
Charlie and I pretty much avoided her wrath, but we made the mistake of putting up our own beds. The next morning when we headed to breakfast we told her we were heading to the dining car if she wanted to do our beds. “You think it’s some kind of privilege for me to do your beds? I saw you do your own last night so you just do your own this morning!”
At breakfast polite conversation was suspended when a man yelled in a hideous voice at the waiter for not giving him a free second helping of French toast. When the conductor asked him to lower his voice he yelled, “This is my normal voice.” When he was told to leave the dining car he shrieked, “I’m being polite. You’re discriminating against me because of a condition in my vocal cords!” As he stood to leave a woman with him started saying the f–word over and over rapidly. I realized that in some sense he was probably telling the truth. Once the couple was gone, polite conversation could resume. The gentleman across our table started it with “So what do you think we should do with all these illegal immigrants flooding our borders?” “Well um — Oh look the Columbia river!”
The Columbia River was not only a timely intervention, it was majestically peeking through the fog creeping up the mountainsides in the early morning light. The mountains were all different shades of green with occasional bright fall colors on hardwoods. Soon the white summit of Mt Hood came into view. We would see it often during our visit. I watched the diverse habitat going up that mountainside. I could only imagine the variety of fungi beneath such forest diversity. I was pleased that I brought Stamet’s Hallucinogenic Fungi of the World. I had a feeling I might need it.
It turned out that I really could only imagine the fungi and I’d never need that book. When I commented to my sister, Nancy, that the Willamette Valley (pronounced Iowa style) seemed dry, she replied, “It’s Willamette dammit! And yes it’s been warm and dry for a few weeks out here, but rain’s coming.” Though it was now October the weather was just like the August dog days between summer and fall mushroom seasons. My first Salem city walk yielded only L. naucina, and non descript Mycenae and Collybia. The trees held the promise of much more however. Towering spruce, pine, fir and cedar held court along with massive walnuts, sycamores, big leaf maples and ancient Oregon white oaks. The tree lines in town were punctuated with shiny madrones displaying their clusters of bright orange berries. This was definitely not Iowa anymore! Although the farms in the fertile soil of the Willamette valley had some similarity to Iowa’s, these farms grew mostly grapes, orchards and hay.
For my first two days out there I was blanked when looking for fungi; meanwhile, back in Iowa, my wife Sally and her friend were finding Grifola (hen of the woods), Ischnoderma, puff balls, and other interesting fungi. In fact I harvested and froze 8 lbs. of Grifola the day before I left, so I looked hard around the base of every white oak I came across in Oregon. I’d learn later that Grifola isn’t even in any Northwest mushroom guides. Maybe it was better for me that I wasn’t finding fungi because I had plenty of family visiting to do. However my family also made it plain that their mushroom know-it-all brother better come up with something tasty from this supposed fungi wonderland.
On the third day, after a shower the evening before, mushrooms started popping up everywhere, even in Nancy’s yard. Unfortunately they were ink smelling poisonous Agaricus, slippery Suillus, which I can’t even touch without getting dermatitis, and poisonous sulphur tuft Hypholoma. I harvested one purple-spored puffball (Calvatia cyathiformis) for breakfast. It was well received but far below expectations. We had plans to visit the coast at Newport and Nancy was going on back roads through the coastal range. She was willing to pull over wherever I wanted as long as it was safe and legal, so I’d better find something good.
Nancy pulled off, as promised, into a cathedral forest with towering evergreens, giant ferns and a soft loamy floor. The woods pulled me like a magnet. I dared not lose sight of the car for fear I’d never want to return. This ancient woods was exactly what I’d imagined of the Northwest rainforest except for no strange or edible fungi. I felt that I was losing fungal credibility. Fortunately the gorgeous scene of fishing trawlers with a cacophony of barking seals and endless diving gulls diverted everyone’s attention. The scene was accompanied by a delicious meal of Dungeness crab, raw oysters and scallops right off the boats. None of us cared about mushrooms after that, but Nancy stopped on the way back for me. I was skunked again. My credibility with my siblings was now almost as low as it often is with Sally during morel season.
My mushroom credibility was already stretched with my niece Laura’s boyfriend Don, who is head winemaker at Hawks View Winery near Sherwood. He hoped to engage in a learned conversation with me about American truffles versus European and the merits of Matsutake in the Northwest. I admitted I didn’t know diddlysquat about any of those other than that they’re overvalued. Fortunately, I fared much better with him when the conversation turned to late Twentieth Century rock.
We visited Don at Hawks View during harvest time. I commented on the beautiful red grape leaves on a few plants. “Actually that’s a disease, he explained, “We don’t harvest from vines with too much of that. It makes the grapes less sweet. We talked about mold that affected the lowest clumps of grapes on many plants. Those clumps were lying all over the place after harvest. Don said it does no good to try to remove them from the field, the spores would just spread further. Charlie noticed all the still good grapes on many of the clumps. He made it his mission to eat dozens of them. This may have been fortuitous for him since Don drew wine off several kegs for us to sample before we even got to the official wine tasting. Afterward, Charlie was the least squirrelly of the three siblings. Nancy’s husband Rick was our driver and he wasn’t squirrelly at all – at least not from wine. However, he may have been a little squirrelly from putting up with three tipsy Laytons all the way home. FYI: Hawks View wine is REALLY good!
The next day we visited Silver Falls State Park. Nancy gave me1.5 hours to hike the trails. I had to zoom to make the 2.6 miles and 400 ft. vertical drop of a trail of upper and lower falls. I was glad for my Kanuga (Appalacia) hikes and subsequent foraging on Mississippi bluffs. It had been nearly 50 years since I was behind a waterfall in upstate New York and now I went behind two of them. On the trail I found oyster mushrooms, honey mushrooms and shellfish Russulas, though no Russulas were fresh enough to harvest. I passed a middle-aged couple several times while zooming along only to have them pass me again while I was crawling around on the forest floor. They expressed some interest in my actions but made sure to give me a wide berth when I was zooming. I can’t blame them. It was a bit muddy, and I was starting to look like a character from the movie Deliverance. While I was hiking, Charlie bought all the mushroom books at the park’s nature store for me including the new Aurora book and Trudell’s new book. It was my reward for taking the top bunk, and I was well pleased with him.
On our last full day out there Charlie and I wanted to make wild mushroom spaghetti, but all we had were some honey mushrooms and oyster mushrooms that would turn out to be wormy. I chose two trails near Salem that looked promising. As soon as we entered the woods – cha-ching we scored! Shaggy parasols surrounded an ancient spruce tree. We took only the best and plenty of them for our meal. My new books proved useful. I’d found shaggy parasols decades ago, but these appeared to be C. olivieri not L. rachodes. Plus, the books mentioned them causing some people intestinal problems. I had us all eat a couple bites a few hours before adding them to the spaghetti. No one seemed to have problems. After the meal I seemed to display excessive flatulence. I didn’t consider it a problem, but apparently everyone else around me did. Despite that, my siblings, who love to dine out, thought our home cooked spaghetti was one of the best meals of all. Of course, Charlie’s meatballs had as much to do with that as the fungi.
On the trip home the mountains were in full daylight, the car attendant was courteous and helpful, and mealtimes presented no danger. It was a much more bucket list worthy trip! The Mississippi was in full autumn splendor, and I couldn’t wait to be home. It was my first visit to the Pacific Northwest, but I hope for many more, starting with next year when the big NAMA foray is in the Olympic Peninsula!
