The following year he was robbed, beat up, and left for dead in the forest. He survived, but the perpetrator burned the Cherokee and Sam was hitchhiking again. But the mushroom harvest has brought more than prosperity to isolated frontier outposts and timber towns like Ukiah. It has also generated a degree of genuine mushroom consciousness unimaginable a decade ago. One has only to wander into a rural bar or small caf anywhere on the mushroom trail to witness the transformation.
Mushrooms are the seasonal fruit of mostly perennial fungi living in the ground or on decaying wood.
The mycelium, or network of threadlike fungal cells that produces the mushrooms, is often long-lived and usually unseen. Imagine an underground apple tree, invisible but for a few apples that miraculously appear on the ground after it rains, and you can see why mushrooms dazzled and mystified the ancients. Most of the commercially valuable wild species derive their nourishment from the rootlets of living trees in a mutually beneficial relationship called mycorrhiza. This fungus-root partnership means that mycorrhizal mushrooms cannot be grown artificially with the ease of mushrooms that live on dead organic matter, such as shiitake and portabellos. Not only is it easier to harvest known patches than to continually look for new ones, but pickers also develop strong attachments to particular places.