Chanterelles & Sprites: Field Guide and Anecdote

[Author’s Note: This is a work of fiction and not intended as an ACTUAL guide to foraging Chanterelles. If you intend to eat things that you find on the ground, bring a mushroom guide. Don’t ask the sprites.]

You can find the delectable Chanterelle mushroom throughout North America. They’re gorgeous, a luminous yellow-orange creation with broad, thick caps. Truly a delight in soups, salads, and sauces. 

You have to be careful, however, when you harvest them, as there are several less appetizing lookalikes. Furthermore, and often more troublesome, they are frequently infested with sprites (also known as fairies, pixies, or the Fey folk). You’ll be familiar with sprites in general, I’m sure, from folk tales of life in the woods. In days gone, when we lived closer to nature, mankind shared laughs and food with these small magical cousins. Now, of course, we live in our houses and they live in the depths of the forests, rarely seen. I assure you they exist, they make themselves scarce, not unlike the Chanterelles. 

Chanterelle mushrooms have an incredible smell, forked gills, and grow independently (not connecting at the base, unlike their traitorous imposter, the Jack-o-Lantern mushroom). 

Had I but known this at the time of the anecdote below, it’d have saved me some trouble. 

The Jack-o-Lantern mushroom looks an awful lot like the Chanterelle and grows in large clumps. It’s best to avoid these altogether, but when they’re in the right mood, they’ll help you choose the right fungus for your meals. When they’re in the wrong mood… well. I’ll divulge a little anecdote about that.

***

As I went walking one Sunday eve, the damp winter chill of the South snaked its icy fingers under my coat. We’d had some rain the last few weeks so the forest floor had that damp springiness to it. I kept a brisk pace to warm up and it had worked, too well, I had a little sweat going beneath my layers. 

As I paused to tie my coat around my waist, a flash of orange caught my eye. Mushrooms. This time of year it could mean I’d found a cluster of Chanterelles. What a joyous sight! I had my leather pouch and hooked knife with me, of course. I’d only been foraging for a few months, so my exuberance still far outshone my expertise. I bumbled over to the mushrooms in a rush, as if they might get up and run off on me. 

12 caps sprung up near the base of a mid-sized oak tree. One large cluster of eight grew apart from the other four. I paused. The moment called for discretion. Delicious Chanterelle or devious Jack-o-Lantern? I didn’t know the difference well enough to tell for sure, and they were young mushrooms. Still, I was a forager? Wasn’t I brave enough to test my knowledge?

I squatted down near the patch and two tiny crackling trails of green and purple sparks flew up from the knees of the oak roots, startling me back a step.

“A curse on your first born, you poxy knave!”

“Leave the man alone, buffoon! He’s simply walking!”

They hovered just above the mushrooms, trails of pixie dust suspending them in thin air. Though they looked alike, short pants and light vests. Both had long, young faces and bright eyes, but the one on the left had a head of wild,  bright orange hair and a green dust trail, while the one on the right had one long purple braid trailing down his back. The orange hair, green tailed sprite had cursed my first born. A hollow curse, but it showed the basic nature of his disposition toward humans. 

If I wanted their help, I’d have to win them over… or trick them.

“Good morning, kind sirs,” I said, squatting to where they hovered and giving them a smile. “I take it from your accent that you emigrated from Ireland, perhaps some centuries ago?”

“You can shove your shiny morning right up where the sun don’t shine,” the orange haired fella spat. “We’re from Scotland, you pig-skinned devil, and I’ll thank you to keep her beautiful name out of your filthy mouth!”

That raised my eyebrows. Fairies can’t swear, odd quirk of their magic. However, the handicap only seemed to elevate the creativity of their insults. A charming quality.

“Whippler! For the love of the good Sun, be civil!” the purple and blue pixie shouted. He hovered closer to the firebrand and they glared at each other for a long moment. 

“My apologies,” I said, raising my hands. I tried one more poke at civility. “I meant no offense and I could surely use your guidance. How long have you two lived in these woods?”

“Long enough to remember a time before all the earth trampling, heavy-handed, ox-brained English farmers started chopping it down for pig sties and firewood! Why don’t you leave the way you came?!”

“Whippler!” the other said, hovering closer and clenching his fists. “I’m warnin’ ya!” 

“No, Dax! I’ve ‘ad all I can take! You’ve come for the ‘shroomies, haven’t ye? Come to snake ‘em away from us with your fat-fingered meat hooks!” 

“Well…” I said, glancing down at my hands. I did have stubby fingers, I grant him. “I wouldn’t mind taking home a Chanterrelle or two…” 

My knees had begun to ache, so I tucked my coat under my bum and eased back to sit cross-legged on the cushion of fallen leaves. 

“Of course ye have! Gluttonous goats, the lot of ye!” 

 “We share of the wood, Whipplera! What’s theirs is ours and ours is theirs! It was ever thus!” 

“Think on that, Dax! It only works in equity! When both parties have equal power and equal rights! It’s broken now! We’re dirt beneath their feet! Hardly worth the trouble to scrape off their muddy boots! Watch!” 

In a flash he conjured a tiny green fireball and hurled it at my face. I flinched back with a little shout and flung up my arm before my face. The little flame slapped against my sleeve and I cursed a few times. I rubbed at my sleeve, but after a few moments I saw that the little fireball had barely punched through the fabrice. When I looked back down to the sprites, I found them zooming around in a tiny chaos of loops, leaving trails of magic dust behind them. Every so often a tiny green or purple fireball shot out of the fray. 

“Mudstick!”

“Mouse brain!”

“Gentlemen!” I shouted. They ignored me. 

“People brain!”

“Oathbreaker!” Dax finally shouted in his small voice. “OATHBREAKER!” Hurling a half dozen spouts of purple flame.

“Wait! Dax! Wait!” the firebrand shouted. “Have I harmed you, tall-pig?!  Answer true, ya equestrian fornicator!”

Sheepishly, I pushed up my sleeve to double check. Not a mark. 

“No,” I said. 

“See, Dax!”

Dax paused and looked to me. Looked at my arm. The fight went out of him and he settled into a gentle hover. 

He glared at Whippler, then glared at me, then glared out at the wood. He started to grumble. 

I placed my hands on my knees, and made to stand. 

“Wait, good sir,” Dax said, in sullen tones. “Wait a moment. Whippler!” He waved the fiery pixie over to him. They stuck their heads together, their sparkling dust trails twining together beneath them. Furious whispers passed back and forth, and much gesturing.

“FINE!” Whippler finally shouted. “Fine! Tell this ham-fisted, goat-sniffing, bucktooth harlot what to steal from us! Go on then!” Dax turned to me and began to speak, but Whippler shouted over him. “It’s these here! You flea-bitten buttcheek!” He pointed to the larger bunch. I knew Chanterelles rarely grew in large bunches, it seemed unlikely. 

“Are you sure?” I asked. “I hate to impose…” 

“Oh I’m sure you do, porker!” 

“Mr. Dax,” I said, addressing the purple haired pixie. “Please, would you tell me which mushrooms are delicious and which are poison?” 

The loko that fairy gave me. Generations of watching mankind encroach into his woods, his home, and take, take, take. Clouds of despair. He pointed a drooping finger to the larger bunch of mushrooms.

“Thank you,” I said. “I’ll just take one or two and leave the rest.”

Dax shrugged, then drifted back down into the hole beneath the tree. Cleton gave me one last dagger-laden glare, then shot down into the hole behind him. 

I sighed and reflected for a moment. 

Pixies. Proud. Mischievous. Foul-mouthed. And… divided. Restless. 

I pulled out my hooked knife and plucked two mushrooms from the smaller group. An  echo of Whippler’s choice phrase “ham-fisted, goat-sniffing, bucktooth harlot” rang in my memory. I leaned forward and snipped up the other two mushrooms, placing them all in my bag. 

By then the cold had soaked through to the bone. I stood up, then shook out my coat and shrugged it on. I sauntered out of the woods, feeling quite full of myself for outsmarting the little devils. 

I cooked those mushrooms up into a delicious little sauce, giggling to myself all the while. A triumphant forage. 

At midnight, I became violently ill. Spent much of the night curled around my commode, vomiting little pieces of Jack-o-Lantern. 

I spent the next few days learning every conceivable difference between Jack-o-Lanterns and Chanterelles and I’ve never asked a sprite for help again since. I suggest you don’t either, I guarantee you’ll walk away with a headache, a stomach ache, or both.