Let There Be Morels in the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore!

In the beginning there are gazillions of brown, rumpled leaves. Daps of decaying cellulose that cover the forest floor as far as your eye can see. Then morel season dawns and you wonder, What do just-born morels look like minutes after they poke their cone-shaped heads through compost to greet the light? Are they born 2 inches high and ready for the skillet? Do they come out with porous, craggy skin, or is it smooth as, you know, a baby's behind?

This evening I found out. It was on a hike with my husband and our 12-year-old son. All along the way our son had jabbered about finding a morel. My husband, whose moreling skills are legendary, said, no way, too early. He wouldn't even slow his pace. Which meant, of course, that the gauntlet was thrown. Our son was determined.

Two-thirds down the trail--somewhere in the 70,000-acre Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore, and that is as much information as I will give you--he stooped down and yelped "I found one." He had, indeed found a shroom. And it was very possibly the newest newborn that any moreler has ever seen. There's a good chance it was still nestled in its humus womb as I was sipping my coffee this morning. Baby morel stood no more than a quarter-inch high and was toothpick thin. If it had pores they were too small for the naked eye to see. Its fawn-colored flesh appeared smooth as an infant's butt. For all that, it was as surely a morel as we are homo sapiens.

We left it there to grow, of course. But this baby is no orphan. We'll be back to fetch it when it is plump and ready for harvest in a week or so.