The word from the mushroom hunters was good. That was enough to get my mouth watering for those tasty morels which briefly show their faces just as spring shows hers. And it was enough to inspire me to make my annual trek to the woods in search of those prizes.

Bad.

Yep, you guessed it. My annual trek was bad. “Badder than usual,” I would say.

Usually I find a few of those spongy goodies, but this year things were as bad as Barry Bonds’ visit with a jury. I struck out.

I’ve never had very good luck at spotting morels. I have gone traipsing through the woods with others andhave stumbled, stepped and scrambled over some of the nicest specimens available.

One year, with a friend who is still a friend, I decided to get down and dirty. I broke down and asked him just how he was able to spot ‘em when all I could come up with was a goodly number of ticks. Not the big end-ofseason ticks but those tiny just-a-speck-bigger-than-aseed ticks.

That so-and-so (yep, he’s still my friend) sort of snorted, got one of those far-off stares in his eyes, wrinkled his brow and twitched his nose and said, “...You just gotta smell ‘em.”

That did it for that trip. We’ve gone hunting againsince that hunt a decade or so ago and, yep, you guessed it, my smeller never has been able to kick in. But the good old boy recognized my problem and has often shared his haul with me. Unfortunately, he didn’t make it to the spore hunting ground this spring.

This year I made the trek alone. It was going to be different and as I stomped through the briars to get to that favorite morel spot, I could almost taste those crunchy morsels.

Well, that’s enough morel madness for 2011. I’ll just have to wait a year, work on my smeller and plot a more tangible course for a new search area ... and try to remember just how good those goodies are.

Unless....

Dodie Evans is the editor emeritus of the Westside Eagle Observer and may be contacted by e-mail at [email protected].

Opinion, Pages 6 on 04/20/2011