By Kerry Hamilton Smith

Ah Spring! The favorite season for many – trees dressing themselves in various shades of green, flowers bursting in vivid colors, birds fledging their young, and fungus hiding under fallen twigs and leaves. Wait, fungus? Oh yeah. Morels. You can find the elusive mushroom right here in the Tecumseh city limits, but I always look forward to my annual trek north in May to hunt the delicious mushroom.

Each year for the past five or six years, I’ve gone to Atlanta, Michigan with my friend and neighbor, Gordie Greiman, who has a cabin there. One or two other fellow hunters from downstate also join our hunting party, along with some Atlanta locals. We canvas our secret hunting grounds trying to figure out what sort of growing conditions the morels like. Each day is different. Sometimes they like mossy mounds. Other times they grow next to a poplar or black ash. Then, the next day, they might grow in clumps of four or five in a sunny spot. On very rare occasions, you stumble upon a honey-hole where dozens of them are peering up through the leaves. There is generally no rhyme or reason  to where morels like to grow from day to day, but if you can figure out the type of terrain, leaf cover or tree, you are bound to find a few.