“Did you see that giant chicken!?” exclaimed my co-worker Jayme as she stepped out of her Jeep in my driveway. My puzzled look must have answered her question. “There’s a huge chicken of the woods right next to your driveway! It’s bright orange. I can’t believe you missed it!”
Jayme’s excitement was warranted. Chicken of the woods (aka sulphur shelf) are choice edible mushrooms, and she is an enthusiastic mychophagist (mushroom-eater) and wild forager. A little embarrassed that I had missed such a neat find, I joined her and Steve, her partner, on a quick hike back up our long gravel drive. “I won’t tell you where it is,” she teased, “let’s see if you can find it yourself.”
Once I was looking, it wasn’t hard, but I did discover why I hadn’t seen it before. Tucked away up a steep bank, several yards back in a balsam thicket, the cluster glowed orange on the cut stump of a fallen tree. We grabbed baby birch stems and kicked our toes into the dirt, clambering up the near-vertical road cut.
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