Until we moved here, I never lived where this was a thing—or if I did, I didn’t know it was a thing, because it wasn’t a thing for us. The only person in my family who liked mushrooms was my dad, and he pretty much only had them on pizza, so the idea of going out and actively looking for fungus was not on anyone’s bingo card.

I take after my dad. Want mushrooms? Go to a Japanese hibachi restaurant. They’ve got plenty of mushrooms and they do wonders in making them delicious.

My husband, on the other hand, apparently went mushroom hunting on the regular, albeit without much success.

“My mom and I would go out on Simpson’s Hill. She would find more than I would, but it was nice just walking through the woods. That’s probably where I learned to like doing that.

But we’d take these empty bread bags to carry what we found, and mine would be, like, 40 percent full, and we’d feel like that was pretty good. Then the neighbors would come back with, like, 40 lbs. “Where did you go?” “Oh, Simpson’s Hill.”

Then my mom would dredge them in flour and fry them. I never cared for that. Finding them was more fun than eating them.”

I dunno. I can, on a good day, see the appeal of walking in the woods. But walking AND hunching over poking through moss? Meh. Who can tell me the appeal of this pastime?