Colorado Mycological Society President Jon Sommer used a homemade, hand-picked mushroom soup to romance his wife when they first met in college. At an event at the Bookworm in Edwards on Thursday, Sommer told the crowd he was down to his last jar of canned chanterelles at the time, and had been saving them for a special occasion. Like a good forager, he knew when the time was right.
His wife and him are now celebrating 34 years of marriage. It was a quick story among several told by Sommer, used to emphasize how chanterelles are able to be preserved for long periods of time. But the story also showcased how, for some, mushroom hunting is a passion that can lead to some of the most memorable moments in a person’s life.
Sommer lives in Conifer and spends time all over the state hunting mushrooms. He said one of his most memorable experiences from Eagle County recently was during the summer of 2022, when a large crop of rare morel mushrooms popped up in the Sylvan Lake burn scar following a few weeks of rain. “Everytime I went up there I got a few pounds of morels,” he said.
“They started growing in about June, at about 8,500 feet, and they would march up the mountain as it got later in the season, until about August they were at 11,000 feet.” The morels that grow in burn-scar areas, known as burn morels, grow only in North America, usually in the West, and only during years following a large forest fire, Sommer said. That makes them exceptionally rare, and also highly.