Back in the car, I started a drive to a much different part of the park but noticed a tall yellow mushroom under a row of spruces. I stopped at the next lot, loaded up the pack and returned on the off chance that this had been a Porcini.
Read more "The Peak of the Season"It’s actually easy to have miles of woodland trail to yourself in any of the eastern states.
Read more "Off the Beaten Track"Ownership of some of the land we’d just passed through had changed since we’d last visited and we were now barred from entry. This favorite stretch, first described by me in my book The Dying Fish, was now part of someone’s private preserve and we aren’t allowed in.
Read more "Embrace The Wild – Keep the Change"Through it all though, I’ve become much less fearful of these fruits of the forest floor (or decaying logs, or trees…) That’s what knowledge is good for – conquering fear and inspiring more curiosity.
Read more "Maturing With Mushrooms"When I talk to novices about getting into the woods, I ordinarily downplay the role of gear in preparedness, persuading instead that the emphasis should be placed on mental and physical preparedness.
Read more "Deep Woods"Our companion shook his head with some certainty. “No, I haven’t seen any. People found out about the trout and came down and kept them all. It just got fished out.”
Read more "Columbine Creek"The muskellunge resembles the more common pike (no minnow itself) but greatly outclasses it in size and sometimes simply eats pike for breakfast.
Read more "Muskies Eleven"The river that lay out on the western horizon was still an unknown to me – a long, mysterious meandering flow. The slow, deep, turbid waters of this flow seemed meant to irrigate croplands here in Crawford County, not to accommodate extraordinarily large spawning trout. But I was here to expand my horizons, to do radical new things and probe mysterious waters, here to challenge another frontier.
Read more "Call of the Frontier"The following is given as a starting guide for the recreational forager, not for hard-core woodland survival.
Read more "Just the Basics: Foraging"My opinions on all this stuff have changed and matured over the last thirty years or so and I now know what works for me and I don’t worry about the cold too much anymore. This isn’t to say the danger posed by hypothermia and frostbite aren’t real though.
Read more "Just the Basics: Winter Warmth"
the dying fish 