The mushroom hunters

PDF

Download

Open document

Flip pages

Download a page range

Download transcript

Copy asset link

Request this asset

Transcript (if available)

Content

The Mushroom Hunters

By

Evan Jacoby

A Thesis Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE USC ANNENBERG SCHOOL FOR COMMUNICATION AND
JOURNALISM
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree
MASTER OF ARTS
SPECIALIZED JOURNALISM

December 2020

Copyright 2020 Evan Jacoby

ii
Acknowledgements
To my dad, who at the first mention of J-school showered my inbox with a million
articles from publications I wasn’t subscribed to; To Nicolas Shannon, who forced me to listen to
my first podcast as we drove 600 miles into a North Carolina swamp to see venus flytraps in
their natural habitat; To Dan Birman, whose conversations and seemingly boundless dedication
prompted me to attend USC, and who later became the only person in my life who would take a
call to troubleshoot a camera at 11:00 pm on a Sunday; To Tien Nguyen, and Sandy Tolan, for
broadening my interests in journalism to territories I hadn’t even considered; To Alan
Mittelstaedt, for stepping in at the 11th hour to serve on my committee, And to Megan Botel,
Paige Smith, Sarah Brown, and all of my friends at Annenberg...

Thank you all for encouraging and enabling me to take on this endeavor! And now,
iii
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements … … … … .… … .. . … … … … .. .. … … … ... … … … … … … … … .. ii
Abstract … . .. … … … .... … … .. . … … … … … … .... … .. . … … … ... … … … … … … iv
Forward … .. .... … … …. .. …. … … … … .. …. ... … … … … …. .. … … . … … … .. … .. … 1
The documentary . … … .. … .. . .… … … …. … … .. .… … … … .… … … … .… … … … … 6
Structure and Approach … … … … .. . … … … .. . … … … … … ... … .… … … … … … … 13
Permanent Video Link … … … … … … … … .. . … ..… … … … … … … … … … .. … .. .. 15
Documentary Script … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … .… … 16
References … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … . … … … … … 24
Appendices … … … … … … … … … … … .… … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … 27
iv
Abstract
Mushroom hunters are notoriously elusive, and their secret patches are rarely seen on camera.
Although the wild foods they sell are in high demand at restaurants across the country, few
consumers know about the exhausting labor and often grey-market deals required to bring them
from forest to plate. Two foragers reveal their coveted picking locations, and explore what it
means to find a home in this shadowy, isolating trade.

1
Forward

If you’ve ever eaten mushrooms at a fancy restaurant, chances are, some of them passed
through the hands of a forager. Wild mushrooms grow in dense, rain-soaked forests around the
world. Many species are inedible or even poisonous; others are coveted by chefs and home cooks
for their rich, earthy flavors. But while they may be recognizable on a dinner plate, few people
know what it takes to dig them out of the woods and bring them to the kitchen.
Most wild mushrooms in America come from the Pacific Northwest, and properly
identifying them takes a trained eye. An amateur’s bounty of fruity chanterelles, for instance,
might actually be misidentified jack o’lantern mushrooms, which cause profuse vomiting
(Masters, 2002). Professionals rarely make this type of mistake, at least for the most commonly
foraged mushrooms, but it does happen.
Wild mushrooms have recently become popular menu items for American chefs, but
mushroom hunting has been around for over 4,600 years (Dugan, 2008), and beginning as early
as the 1600’s, they’ve been domesticated for cultivation (Spencer, 1985). Not all mushrooms can
be grown in a lab, though; wild mushrooms form complex relationships with their environments,
which can often be impossible or expensive to replicate (Hall et al. 2003). Some are
opportunistic, like morels, which propagate in the highly alkaline ashes of forest fires (Greene et
al., 2010). Others, like the matsutake, are mycorrhizal, which means they trade nutrients back
and forth with nearby trees in a symbiotic relationship (Kirk et al., 2001). Yet others are
parasitic: bright orange cordycep stalks grow out of the husks of insects they’ve infected and
2
consumed (Nikoh et al., 2000). These mushrooms aren’t found in the average American
supermarket.
I’ve always loved wild mushrooms — cascading lion’s mains that look like frozen
waterfalls, meaty porcinis bigger than a football, gnarled lobster mushrooms the color of fire.
They can be found at neighborhood farmers markets, or on restaurant menus with steep price
tags, but I never questioned how they got there. This thesis began with a simple question: what
lurks behind this curtain of pomp and flavor?
As a journalist, I’ve noticed that questions that seem simple on the surface, often aren’t.
When I started this project, the only thing I knew about foragers came from rumors I’d heard
about violent groups of pickers who stole mushrooms from each other and killed people who
wandered too close to their patches.
I started my research looking for these gun-wielding mushroom bandits, but as I started
meeting foragers and learning about their world, I realized this wasn’t the right story. Sure, some
of the people I talked with had heard the same rumors, and a few of them even told me about
their own unsavory encounters with violent foragers in the woods. But overwhelmingly, the
commercial mushroom pickers I talked with had a deeply intimate relationship with nature.
They’d memorized every mushroom, fern, and tree that grew in their woods, and prized
self-reliance above everything else. This self-reliant lifestyle seemed to defy modern American
rules for society, and a lot of them told me as much. Instead, their lives are governed by a
patchwork of under-the-table sales, secret picking sites, and seasonal instability.
This lifestyle has been explored in text before, with one of the most extensive examples
being Langdon Cook’s The Mushroom Hunters . In his book, from which my documentary takes
3
its title, Cook follows pickers into forests near Seattle (Cook, 2013). Cook’s documentation of
the mushroom market — from picker to buyer, to wholesaler, to restaurant — helped inform
many of the questions I wanted to address in my research. However, the major limitation of text
for something as obscure and remote as mushroom hunting is that we don’t get to see anything.
Mushroom picking is a visceral, beautiful, and physically taxing activity. Most people never get
to see a chanterelle growing in the dirt, or the effects foraging has on a picker’s appearance: their
tired fingers, the way their eyes mechanically scan the forest floor, the cracks and scratches on
their boots. Documentary film seemed like the best medium to tell this story, as it would let me
bring viewers into a world that few people ever get to see.

*
When it comes to mushrooms, not all forests are created equal. Some have more alkaline
soil, or more frequent rain (Greene et al., 2010). Others might heavily restrict foraging or ban it
outright, often in the name of conservation (Karwa et al., 2011). Combined, these factors
significantly limit the number of forests suitable for mushroom hunting. In order to find the best
patches, commercial mushroom hunters endure some of the most labor-intensive work in the
country. On a given day they might drive for hundreds of miles and bushwhack through dense
forests, with no way of knowing what they’ll find until they get there. High competition and
limited supply push some foragers to ignore weight limits, or to venture into locations where
commercial picking is illegal.
Whether their patches are legal or not, foragers are notoriously secretive about their
picking locations. Protecting their patches in this way promotes a sense of isolationism which —
4
coupled with a lifestyle that often borders on nomadic — has earned mushroom hunting a
reputation for being one of the last vestiges of the old American frontier (Cook, 2013).
Commercial foragers are often retired loggers or crab fishermen, who are used to isolating work
in the wilderness, or refugees from Southeast Asian countries like Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam
(Cook, 2013; Von Hagen, 1999). In recent years, foraging has also drawn immigrants from
countries like Honduras and Mexico, according to commercial buyers interviewed for this
documentary. Since neither race, gender, nor language play a role in determining one’s success,
foraging attracts people who don’t feel welcome in traditional, city-based jobs (Von Hagen,
1999).
In recent years, mushroom hunting has become a popular weekend hobby among
urbanites, but professional hunters’ bounties are often larger by multiple orders of magnitude
(Cook, 2013). The pros spend hundreds of hours scouring service roads, overgrown logging
trails, and the sites of last year’s wildfires, looking for new patches. An experienced picker can
dig up thousands of dollars worth of mushrooms in a single day, and clear six figures during a
good year (Hyman, 2017). These mushrooms are then sold locally, or exported across the
country and even internationally. Volume estimates for the global wild mushroom market place
it somewhere in the ballpark of two billion US dollars (Hall et al., 2003).
In a way, mushroom hunting is kind of like futures trading. Pickers spend hundreds of
dollars on gas, betting that their patches will produce. Buyers, in turn, spend thousands on
mushrooms, betting that restaurants will be interested in what their pickers find. During good
seasons, foraging can be extremely lucrative for both pickers and buyers. It’s a precarious
balancing act of supply and demand, though: When mushrooms are scarce, competition
5
skyrockets; when they’re plentiful, the price-per-pound plummets (Alexander et al., 2011).
Pickers, buyers, and wholesalers build a travelling cottage industry, and together they follow the
seasons up and down the Pacific Northwest.
A boom in foraging over the past few decades has led to steeper regulation in many areas.
Policy makers in California, for example, impose penalties of up to $1,000 in fines or 6 months
in jail, citing sustainability concerns (Cal Fire, n.d.). While some of their concerns are based on
misconceptions about mushroom reproduction (Egli et al., 2006), others are legitimate:
Abandoned, garbage-filled forager camps dot the coast, and some foraging techniques are
suspected to contribute to habitat destruction (Aurora et al., 2008). But as the popularity of wild
foods increases across the country, more and more people are turning to the woods. For the
documentary, I decided to meet two commercial foragers and explore why they chose to find a
home in this shadowy, isolating trade.

6
The Documentary

Despite their growing numbers, foragers are difficult film subjects. Many don’t have cell
phones, and their nomadic, follow-the-seasons lifestyles make them hard to pin down. The best
way to meet a forager is often through another forager, which is how I meet Dylan Taube.
Taube buys mushrooms out of his truck in Northern California, and has a reputation for
paying higher prices to pickers, but only accepting top-quality mushrooms. He follows the rainy
season from California to Oregon, and then to Washington and Idaho. Buyers keep a keen eye on
mushroom yields, and usually know the best picking locations. Some buyers do this by
befriending large networks of pickers, and others trade secrets for higher rates. Taube does both.
Originally, Taube was going to be the main character of the documentary. The intent was
to follow him up the coast as he chased the rain, sometimes picking, sometimes setting up his
buy-stand, and sometimes selling to his chef friends at Michelin-starred restaurants. He tells me I
can join him in Mendocino, but he has terms: I can’t drive my own car so that I won’t be able to
steal his patches; we’ll leave at 7 am, so I have to check in with him at the motel the night
before; and the patch he wants to visit is several miles uphill behind a metal gate, so I’ll need to
procure a collapsible electric mountain bike that can fit into the back of his truck.
I accept and drive to Mendocino. When I get to the motel, however, Taube goes
radio-silent. By 7:00 a.m. I still haven’t heard from him, and I resort to tricking the concierge
into giving me his room number so I can watch the door. Eventually another man walks out with
a collapsible electric bike and starts folding it into his car. I introduce myself and ask if he knows
Taube. He gives me a once-over, and leads me inside.
7
Taube is standing in the middle of the room wearing a torn t-shirt and boxers. He’s
fast-talking and tall, and when he sees me he emphatically shakes my hand and slings me a cup
of microwaved coffee. Then he tells me he sprained his back and is done with foraging, forever.
“Maybe I'll go back to oyster shucking,” he says, shrugging. But I could go with his friend, he
offers, gesturing to the man I saw folding up the bike, which is how I meet Nevin Dayton.

*
To the north in Coos Bay, Oregon, Dayton is considered the best mushroom picker in
town — according to Taube, at least. During a typical day he reportedly hauls hundreds of
dollars worth of porcinis, morels, and chanterelles. But it was black trumpet season when we met
in Mendocino, California, and most of his patches were barren. Two days earlier, Dayton
climbed over 17 miles and only picked $100 worth of mushrooms. For his twelve-hour trek, he
made $4 less per hour than California’s minimum wage. He’s hoping his patches in Jackson
Forest won’t be so frugal.
I follow Dayton through a labyrinth of dirt service roads until we reach a large metal
gate. He unfolds his electric mountain bike and cautiously peers over his shoulder. There’s one
other truck parked on the road, and he recognizes the license plate: another forager. We’ll have
to sneak by unnoticed, or risk being followed by his competition. After quietly walking our bikes
out of earshot, we ride uphill into a thicket of old logging trails.
“It gets discouraging for people who have been picking for years when it gets like this,”
Dayton says, as we dismount our bikes and hide them behind a tree. (The bikes are safe, he
promises; these are abandoned logging trails, after all, and only one other person in the world
8
knows about this black trumpet patch.) We leave the bikes and walk the rest of the way, about a
mile through thick huckleberry, manzanita, and the occasional felled redwood.
Dayton has been foraging for nearly fifteen years. He grew up on reservation land, and
after a brief stint in the logging industry, he realized he could make more money picking
mushrooms. He tells me that as a Native American he can skirt taxes on his mushroom wages,
which means he can double his logging salary most years. Some weeks he makes as much as
$5,000, but this amount varies erratically with mushroom yields. As Dayton puts it: “It’s not
always burritos and strippers.” When things get really bad, he says, he can go weeks without a
paycheck.
Sometimes it rains too little, or snows too much. That’s what happened this year; the
trumpets got a late start, and by the time they were fruiting, the sun was frying them in the dirt.
Nobody was finding mushrooms in Jackson, and the price buyers were willing to pay for black
trumpets soared to $10 per pound.
The price changes with supply, Dayton says, and he’s wary of certain buyers. When
mushrooms are abundant, groups of buyers organize to keep the price as low as $1 per pound.
When buyers resell their mushrooms to restaurants, however, they don’t adjust the price to
reflect supply. This means large resellers can rake in huge profits when supply exceeds demand.
Some pickers tell me they’ve heard stories of certain buyers destroying mushrooms in order to
rig the market. For his part, Dayton says he’ll never sell to Farwest Fungi — the largest
wholesaler in the game — no matter what they pay him.
Of course, not all buyers try to lowball their pickers. Dayton has connections with local
buyers everywhere he forages, and Jackson Forest is no different. He drives to a motel in Willits,
9
where a man named Greg sets up a buy-stand in an empty garage unit. Greg is one of three
1
buyers at the motel, but Dayton has been selling to him for years and can expect a fair price. The
transaction is technically legal — permits aren’t required for the buying or selling of wild
mushrooms (WSDA, n.d.) — but Dayton tells me he’s not paying taxes and neither is Greg. I’m
allowed to film the transaction on the condition of anonymity. Dayton sells him eight and a half
pounds for $85, enough for gas and lodging.
He still has about ten pounds of trumpets left over, so he drives to a Safeway parking lot
to meet up with Dylan Taube again. Dayton tells me Taube bought him a car, and he’s slowly
paying back his debt with mushrooms at a constant rate of $15 per pound. Taube smiles and says
that Dayton is his best picker, so “he’s worth the investment.” Taube weighs the mushrooms and
pours them into one of several massive storage containers in his trunk. Later, he’ll drive to San
Francisco to sell them to his network of restaurants for twice the amount he subtracted from
Dayton’s car loan.
Dayton and Taube provide access to the financial side of mushroom hunting, but their
stories don’t fully unpack the personal lives of the people drawn to this lifestyle. That search
brings me to mother and son duo, Elle & Wiley Matthews.

*
Compared to Dayton, Matthews’ foraging strategy is less specific. She’s looking for
black trumpets, but she’ll also pick hedgehogs, sweet tooths, yellowfoots, and some candy caps,
if she can find any. Her son Wiley’s strategy is to pick anything he finds, edible or not. The
1
Name changed for anonymity.
10
candy caps are their favorite, though — when they’re dried they smell like maple syrup and
make a delicious marmalade. They can also be sold for as much as $200 per pound.
Matthews doesn’t have a cell phone, so we plan our meeting spot on Facebook. She lives
four hours northeast in Humboldt, California, but she says Jackson Forest is the nearest place in
season that allows commercial picking. She doesn’t have any secret patches in the area, so she’s
looking for markers: Tan oak beds with just a little bit of light, choked with black huckleberry, at
the base of long, south-facing slopes. “You need to find the perfect duff layer,” she says,
indicating the tan oak leaves at her feet.
She interrupts her search to list off the scientific name for every plant, slime mold, or
mushroom that Wiley shoves at her. She smiles. “It’s more fun with other people,” she says.
Matthews wants her son to be able to identify wild foods on his own when he grows up,
believing food to be the most basic form of self-reliance. If you can survive off the land, you can
do anything you want, she says.
That’s why permits and regulations bother her so much. She says it’s a slap in the face to
let loggers demolish a forest, but require her to adhere to strict foraging guidelines in the name of
conservation. “That’s not how mycelia work,” she insists.
Mycelia are massive networks of root-like filaments in the soil, and are responsible for
transferring nutrients across every forest in the world (Forest Service, n.d.). Since most trees and
plants are unable to produce their own nitrogen, they trade for it, giving mycelia as much as 80%
of the sugars they produce (Abumrad & Krulwich, 2016). Most mycelia propagate via
sporulation, which typically requires a mushroom. Matthews compares mushrooms to apples;
picking the apple doesn’t kill the tree, and in fact that’s the only way to create more apple trees.
11
What does kill mycelia, she argues, is habitat destruction: A bulldozer is a lot bigger than a
mushroom knife.
Logging, like foraging, is restricted in most national parks. But Matthews argues that the
timber industry has the financial backing to purchase huge swathes of land, and they’ve
successfully lobbied for fewer environmental protections over the years (Sahagun, 2018).
Mushroom pickers can’t do any of that, she says. They can choose to avoid areas where
mushroom picking is illegal, paying for permits and following strict guidelines, or they can
choose to break the law. For some pickers, Matthews says, the looming threat of $1,000 fines
isn’t a strong deterrent.
In Washington’s Mt. Baker Snoqualmie, for instance, the largest permits only allow
pickers to harvest 62.5 gallons per half-year period — a little less than 140 pounds (Forest
Service, n.d.). For most mushrooms, that adds up to less than $3,000 per year, according to
pickers and buyers in the Seattle area. Matthews says when mushrooms are scarce and
competition is high, illegally picking in national parks — or overpicking beyond permitted
amounts — can mean the difference between eating and not.
Matthews isn’t always on the picker’s side, however. Making her way up a steep slope,
she finds a pile of soda bottles and candy wrappers, covered in mud. “You see that everywhere
where there’s mushrooms,” she says. She kneels and picks up a Cheetos bag and stuffs it into her
coat pocket. “At least that means it’s a good patch.”
Matthews says most foragers are environmentally conscious and friendly, but some
groups play by different rules. She says she’s heard stories of stabbings and mushroom heists,
and is surprised if an easy-to-access, well-fruiting patch isn’t surrounded by litter.
12
As the sun sets, Matthews and her son drive to a friend’s cabin near Mendocino. She
hands her friend a large mason jar full of dried candy caps as thanks for their stay — a lavish gift
in the mushroom trade. Matthews prepares pasta with fried wild garlic and black trumpets, while
her friend eagerly prods her for leads: “Where did you park? How far did you hike?” But
Matthews won’t budge. “You know I love you, but I can’t tell you,” she says. She’s found her
secret patches for next year.
13
Structure and Approach
Foragers are an elusive bunch, but once you have one source on your side, the
community becomes much more accessible. I approached this project as a series of profiles of
individual foragers, zeroing in on each character with the goal of sharing stories and locations
that are seldom seen on camera. I wanted to answer two fundamental questions: What does this
lifestyle look like, and why would someone choose it?
The production was limited due to the COVID-19 pandemic, so some restructuring
became necessary. Certain research questions, like Farwest Fungi’s alleged market manipulation,
couldn’t be answered. I also had to cancel flights and planned meetings with park rangers,
mycological societies, and groups of immigrant foragers in Seattle. Exploring these questions
would have given the film a broader scope to explore more aspects of mushroom hunting, but
they would have also likely meant a less intimate focus and tone.
Instead, the two main characters described within this text emerged: Nevin Dayton and
Elle Matthews. Their profiles formed separate chapters, both of which feature sparse sound
design. I wanted to highlight the solitude of the foraging experience, so dramatic transition music
often gives way to long stretches of silence.
Dayton’s chapter explores the highs and lows of wild mushrooms’ grey-market. When
watching him ride into Jackson Forest, we hear about his most and least successful seasons. He
then picks black trumpets alone, in secret patches, bushwhacking his way without a map to
locations he’s memorized. The visual story is efficiency and optimization, while the audio story
explores the challenges he often faces.
14
Dayton’s story sets us up to understand what the world of mushroom hunting looks like. I
wanted Matthews to offer insight into how it feels. In her chapter, she and her son tromp through
the woods looking for mushroom patches, as she unpacks her frustrations with permits and
regulations. She describes the hypocrisy of banning mushroom picking but allowing commercial
logging. Meanwhile, her son innocently chases after her or leaps at her bag. Their story also
explores the idea of foraging as an act of bonding and sharing love.
While short of my original intent, Dayton and Matthews still bring viewers into an often
ill-understood area of food culture, and their intimate profiles serve to capture the feeling of
living one’s life at the will of the woods.

15
Permanent Video Link
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DaA-8rUQiyA

16
Script

SOT NEVIN DAYTON
Mushroom Forager

Establishing pan of forest

Nevin unloads his bike from the car, closes
trunk

Fade to black
When I was like 16 or 17 me and my buddy
weren't working at the time. And we'd both
just got done logging. and we decided, he let's
try to go pick mushrooms, and treat it like a
job, you know? And we started doing like two
or three hundred dollars a day.

Sounds of Nevin handling bike
SOT DAYTON
Music (“Rain Waltz”)

Wide, Nevin rides left to right on bike

Close up on Nevin cleaning mush with knife

Track Following Nevin on bike

When stuff’s good it’s really good, and when
stuff’s bad it’s just really bad, you know.
It’s not always burritos and strippers.
SOT DAYTON
Music (“Rain Waltz”)

Nevin actuality interview
Track following nevin on bike
Establishing shots of forest

Close up Nevin picking mushrooms
Title: “The Mushroom Hunters”

Fade to black
You know, three years ago, I was doing ‘bout
5 buckets a day. But, there’s been so many
times where I’ve got a regular job, you know.

Because stuff did get slow, and bills still need
to get paid.
SOT DAYTON

Card: Nevin

Wide angle Nevin picking mush and putting
in bucket
Close up Nevin puts mush in bucket
Nevin walks through bush

This last summer I had a 12 hundred dollar
day and that, that was killer. But it’s really
easy to spend money when you get paid every
day too, you know, so.
17
SOT DAYTON
Nevin actuality interview

Close up Nevin picks mushroom

I try to save it, but most of the time I go to the
bar and spend $300 in one night because I
know I’m gonna make a thousand dollars
tomorrow, you know.
SOT DAYTON

Nevin looks around for mush

But it gets discouraging for people who have
been picking for years when its like this,
because with the weather the way it is, like its
really tough out there.
SOT DAYTON
Music (“String Quartet 05”)

Nevin actuality interview

Nevin picks more mush

Establishing shot of trees from below

Fade to black
Two days ago I hiked 17.3 miles in one day.
And I only made like a hundred bucks or
something like that.

Card: Pickers spend hundreds on gas and
lodging, with no way of knowing how many
mushrooms they’ll find until they’re in the
woods.

Card: Competition is fierce, and pickers
don’t share their locations.
Sound of Nevin Picking
SOT DAYTON

Close up on nevin’s face as he picks
Close up on hands cleaning mush
Close up on bucket full of mush

over in eastern Oregon, there’s some spots
over there where there’s really good
matsutake picking. And uh, the price was $80
a pound so people were doing like $2000 a
day.
SOT DAYTON

Nevin walking up the hill and out of the dense
bush

And, there was a couple crews that were
actually camped right on top of the
mushrooms. They’d basically chase you out
with guns if you went back there.

18
SOT DAYTON
Music (“French Accordion and Viola Duet”)

Nevin shakes mushrooms out of bucket and
into basket

Nevin attaches basket to backpack, puts it on,
and walks away from camera

Establishing shots of forest
Nevin carries bike into frame
Track Nevin riding on road

Fade to black

It was pretty scary, but it doesn’t really
happen like that any more you know. The
authorities are on it.

I might sell a couple pounds just for gas and
food or whatever so I don’t have to go out of
pocket.
Card: Like many pickers, Nevin sells most of
his mushrooms to buyers at local stands.

Card: These buyers then distribute to
restaurants, markets, and wholesalers.
Music fades out
Nat sound cars driving outside the motel
SOT ELEAZAR
Mushroom Buyer

Wide shot of Nevin talking to anon.buyer,
zoom, rack focus

Eleazar interview

Establishing shots of anon.buyer’s stand
There’s three buyers in this motel.

And all the pickers will be selling to the better
prices

And the price moves very frequently
SOT ANON.BUYER
Mushroom Buyer

Anon.buyer pours Nevin’s mushrooms into
new basket and weighs mush
You do a good job man those are beautiful.
That’s a good grade, good grade.
SOT ELEAZAR

So, could be 10 today, maybe later, a couple
hours 12, or maybe 8.
SOT ANON.BUYER & NEVIN

Anon.buyer still weighing mush

(anon.buyer) hedgehogs going crazy up
north?

(nevin) well they were, I got snowed out but
uh, yeah I’m just down here cleaning up my
19
patches before it dries out and then I’m gonna
head back up there

(anon.buyer) really nice mushrooms. Really
nice. So.. 8.42?
SOT ELEAZAR

Interior shots of anon.buyer’s stand

They follow the seasons, and they can be here
today, and next day could be Idaho,
Montanna, Washington, Oregon, different
states depend on season.
SOT ANON.BUYER & NEVIN

Close up Anon.buyer hands counting cash,
Nevin grabs money

Nevin shows phone to anon.buyer
(anon.buyer) There’s 20, 40, 60, 80, 85.
(Nevin) Right on, thank you man.
(Anon.buyer) Thank you.

(Nevin)Yo, check this out.
SOT ELEAZAR

Eleazar interview

Nevinn showing phone to anon.buyer
different angle

Eleazar interview
Fade to black
I know some Thai people, Lao people,
Cambodia people, Honduras, Mexico, and
they’re big communities that are picking all
together, so, pretty good job.

No boss, no, just go and pick.
Card: Elle & WileyCabin exterior Nat sound cabin exterior
SOT ELLE
Mushroom Picker

Wide Elle ripping mushrooms

Close Elle ripping mush

Elle breaks pasta into water

Wiley stands by Elle as she stirs pot, Wiley
pinches mushroom salt into his mouth

Wiley’s been foraging with me since he was
in the womb. I was like nine months pregnant
and I was trying to basically have a baby as
soon as possible because, you know, it’s
uncomfortable to be pregnant.

I mean I know sometimes long hikes
sometimes wear on the young child but I like
for him to feel, you know that he could just go
out and find healthy food wherever he wanted
to.

20
SOT ELLE
Music fading in (“Russian Dance”)

Elle interview

Close up on Wiley pinching mushroom salt
Elle interview

Kids need to get out there and like get into
nature and do stuff, you know?
SOT ELLE
Music (“Russian Dance”)

Establishing shots of forest, rack focus on
leaves, Elle & Wiley walking through bush,
rack focus on mushroom

Alright so we should keep our eyes open
cause there’s some trumpets out here
supposedly
SOT ELLE & WILEY

Wiley and Elle walking through bush. Wiley
falls and picks up a mushroom. Camera
swings and Wiley hands mush to Elle
(Wiley) Wait yes it’s a candy cap
(Elle) You got it, you put it in the basket?
Awesome.
(Wiley) It’s a baby but we haven’t found a lot
so, doesn’t quite matter.
SOT ELLE & WILEY

Establishing shot of trees from below

(Elle) Should we go under this log or over this
log, Wy
(Wiley) Over
SOT ELLE

Track following Wiley & Elle up a hill

Just it’s like, I don’t know it’s more lively
with other people. I mean we have a good
time as a family we enjoy it
Card: Mushrooms grow out of root-like
filaments called mycelium. Most pickers
argue that they can pick mushrooms without
harming the mycelium below.

Card: Still, some conservation groups fear
that over-picking can hurt the forest
ecosystem. Many areas ban foraging, and
where it is legal, pickers are often required to
obtain a permit.

Nat sound of the trail

21
SOT ELLE

Wiley jumps at and pulls on Elle’s backpack
as they walk on the trail away from cam

Track Camera searches ground for
mushrooms
Close Wiley picking mushrooms

Your kid can’t even touch a mushroom if he
doesn’t have a permit. I think that’s kind of a
sucky policy, you know, like children should
be informed and educated and that’s like,
you’re gonna make people pay to educate and
inform their children I think that’s— I don’t
know I just think it’s kind of lame.
SOT ELLE & WILEY

Pan across lens flare plants

Close up wiley putting mushrooms in basket,
shaking off shirt, and following Elle up hill
(wiley) oh my god
(Elle) awesome you found a good flush
(Wiley) a very good flush.
(Elle) good eye
(wiley) Just slowly putting…
(Elle) just dump em all in there. Awesome
keep that duff out of there. Good job. You
want your hat?
(Wiley) yes please
SOT ELLE

Rack focus on baby pine tree

Elle picking mushrooms, cleaning, putting in
basket

Elle interview

Close on Elle picking
I don’t like these big swaths of land just being
used for cutting down trees. Like it should be
for everyone to use? You know, sure you
wanna leave some for animals, sure you
wanna try to leave some for sporulation and
stuff, but I think the destruction of the forest
is coming from actually logging these places.

And if they’re worried about me going in here
and picking some morels on their land before
they come in and clear the forest, like, I think
they have bigger things they need to be
worrying about
SOT ELLE & WILEY

Elle stands up and walks away from cam

(wiley) theres some on the trail too
(elle) yeah there should be a bunch on the
trail, hopefully
(wiley) yeah lets go on the trail
Establish forest Bird sounds
22
SOT ELLE

Track Elle walks toward cam, Wiley trails
behind

Elle walking away from cam, Wiley runs after
her. Zoom out to reveal trail

Pan from trees down to car, Elle fiddling with
stuff in the trunk

I mean, you know we’re all inhabitants of the
earth, and we all have to share it.
So, there’s a whole huge dichotomy between
people that are in cities and they’re doing all
this technology stuff, and then you have these
people that are going out into the woods
foraging these things and it’s just two
different worlds

You start realizing that you’re like, tending
the wild, and you’re actually part of
something bigger
Forest wide shot C ar engine starts
SOT ELLE
Music (“A French Kiss”)

Elle interview

Car makes u-turn and drives around bend and
out of frame

Show title, “The Mushroom Hunters”

Fade to black
You know I mean its… It’s heart warming.
(laughs)
What more could you ask for I guess

Music (“A French Kiss”) continues

Card:
Directed by Evan Jacoby

Card:
Executive Producer: Daniel H. Birman

Card:
Music: Rain Waltz, soundscape
String Quartet 05, Francois Couture
French Accordion Viola Duet, Emily M.
Klassen
Russian Dance, Joey Pecoraro
A French Kiss, Stephen J Rice & Janet L
Rayor

23
Card:
Animal Handlers:
Faye & Gil Eisenberg

Card:
USC Annenberg Media
IMPACT

24
References
Abumrad, Jad, and Robert Krulwich. “From Tree To Shining Tree.” Episode. Radiolab . WNYC
Studios, July 30, 2016.
Alexander, Susan J., Rebecca J. Mclain, Eric T. Jones, and Sonja N. Oswalt. "Challenges and
approaches to assessing the market value of wild fungi." Mushrooms in forests and
woodlands: Resource management, values and local livelihoods (2011): 87-106.
Arora, David, and Glenn H. Shepard. "Mushrooms and economic botany." Economic Botany 62,
no. 3 (2008): 207-212.
Cal Fire. “Mushroom Permit Information.” Cal Fire, n.d. Accessed 2020.
https://www.fire.ca.gov/media/10251/2019-mushroom-permit-by-mail-packet2_r1dgs.pdf .
Cook, Langdon. The Mushroom Hunters: On the Trail of an Underground America. Ballantine
Books, 2013.
Dugan, Frank Matthews. Fungi in the ancient world: how mushrooms, mildews, molds, and yeast
shaped the early civilizations of Europe, the Mediterranean, and the Near East .
American Phytopathological Society (APS Press), 2008.
Egli, Simon, Martina Peter, Christoph Buser, Werner Stahel, and François Ayer. "Mushroom
picking does not impair future harvests–results of a long-term study in Switzerland."
Biological conservation 129, no. 2 (2006): 271-276.
Forest Service. “Mushroom Permits.” Forest Service, n.d. Accessed 2020.
https://www.fs.usda.gov/detail/mbs/passes-permits/forestproducts/?cid=fseprd500023
25
Greene, David F., Michael Hesketh, and Edith Pounden. "Emergence of morel (Morchella) and
pixie cup (Geopyxis carbonaria) ascocarps in response to the intensity of forest floor
combustion during a wildfire." Mycologia 102, no. 4 (2010): 766-773.
Hall, Ian R., Wang Yun, and Antonella Amicucci. "Cultivation of edible ectomycorrhizal
mushrooms." TRENDS in Biotechnology 21, no. 10 (2003): 433-438.
Hyman, Frank. “How I Make $200-An-Hour Foraging For Mushrooms.” Forbes , 2017.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/nextavenue/2017/06/11/how-i-make-200-an-hour-foraging-
for-mushrooms/#1ba9f639f3ef .
Karwa, Alka, Ajit Varma, and Mahendra Rai. "Edible ectomycorrhizal fungi: cultivation,
conservation and challenges." In Diversity and Biotechnology of Ectomycorrhizae , pp.
429-453. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, 2011.
Kirk, Paul M., Paul F. Cannon, J. C. David, and Joost A. Stalpers. Ainsworth and Bisby's
Dictionary of the Fungi . No. Ed. 9. CABI publishing, 2001.
Masters, Edwin J. "Personal experience with Jack o’lantern mushroom toxicity." Wilderness &
environmental medicine 13, no. 2 (2002): 182-183.
Nikoh, Naruo, and Takema Fukatsu. "Interkingdom host jumping underground: phylogenetic
analysis of entomoparasitic fungi of the genus Cordyceps." Molecular biology and
evolution 17, no. 4 (2000): 629-638.
Sahagun, Louis. “As Trump Tweets about California Fires, His Administration Wants to Expand
Logging.” Los Angeles Times , August 7, 2018.
https://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-logging-wildfire-risk-20180807-story.ht
ml.
26
Spencer, D. M. "mushroom, its history and importance." Biology and technology of the
cultivated mushroom/edited by PB Flegg, DM Spencer, and DA Wood (1985).
Von Hagen, Bettina. Opportunities for conservation-based development of nontimber forest
products in the Pacific Northwest . Vol. 473. US Department of Agriculture, Forest
Service, Pacific Northwest Research Station, 1999.
Washington State Department of Agriculture. “Regulations for Specific Products.” WSDA.
Accessed 2020.
https://agr.wa.gov/getmedia/e8ada76f-adfc-4a66-b8a6-5bcc3a583891/32.pdf.

27
Appendix 1: Pitch
Fruit of Fire & Rain
Inside The Hidden World of Mushroom Hunting

Commercial mushroom hunting is one of the most labor intensive and unrewarding jobs in the
country. If a chanterelle runs $40/pound at a farmer’s market, a commercial picker might earn a tenth of
that— after long days trolling through the woods, sometimes risking fines or arrest. So, commercial
pickers are extremely territorial in order to survive. With wild mushrooms becoming increasingly popular,
what is the human and environmental cost ?

Mushrooms thrive in the dense, rain-soaked woods of the Pacific North West. The region has
become a mecca for mushroom foraging in the US. Recreational foragers host community cookoffs and
forage competitions, where they might hope to find a couple dozen mushrooms in a day.

The commercial forager is different, seeing mushrooms as a natural commodity— as miners
might see gold— rarely eating what they find. They know the woods better than anyone, and count their
days’ bounties by the hundreds of pounds.
28

Langdon Cook
Wrote The Mushroom Hunters, where he follows several commercial and
recreational foragers into both legal and illegal picking territory. He would be an
ideal expert to put all aspects of the mushroom hunting world into perspective.

Contact : Marian Maxwell, chair and former president of the Puget Sound
Mycological Society, said she can connect us.

Miles Ryan McHugh
Recreational forager based outside Seattle. Recent transplant from Alaska,
hopes to use mushroom hunting to rebuild their community. Good source for a
recreational forager character.

Contact: facebook

Doug Glen Carnell
Commercial forager featured in Cook’s book. Ex-logger, ex-crab fisherman.
Picks in both legal and illegal places. Moved to the woods to become a
mushroom hunter in order to go clean/sober over 30 years ago. Does not use
maps or GPS. Ideal main character.

Contact: through Cook through Maxwell

Jess Starwood
Semi-commercial forager who forages for restaurants and also eats a
predominantly foraged-food diet. Good source to talk about sustainability/ethics
of foraging.

Contact: email; cell

Asset Metadata

Creator Jacoby, Evan (author)

Core Title The mushroom hunters

Contributor Electronically uploaded by the author (provenance)

School Annenberg School for Communication

Degree Master of Arts

Degree Program Specialized Journalism

Publication Date 11/01/2020

Defense Date 10/29/2020

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag documentary,foraging,journalism,mushroom hunter,OAI-PMH Harvest,Pacific Northwest

Language English

Advisor Birman, Daniel (committee chair), Mittelstaedt, Alan (committee member), Tolan, Sandy (committee member)

Creator Email ejacoby@usc.edu,jacobyevan83@gmail.com

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-c89-390387

Unique identifier UC11666313

Identifier etd-JacobyEvan-9095.pdf (filename),usctheses-c89-390387 (legacy record id)

Legacy Identifier etd-JacobyEvan-9095.pdf

Dmrecord 390387

Document Type Thesis

Rights Jacoby, Evan

Type texts

Source University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

Access Conditions The author retains rights to his/her dissertation, thesis or other graduate work according to U.S. copyright law. Electronic access is being provided by the USC Libraries in agreement with the a...

Repository Name University of Southern California Digital Library

Repository Location USC Digital Library, University of Southern California, University Park Campus MC 2810, 3434 South Grand Avenue, 2nd Floor, Los Angeles, California 90089-2810, USA

Abstract (if available)

Abstract Mushroom hunters are notoriously elusive, and their secret patches are rarely seen on camera. Although the wild foods they sell are in high demand at restaurants across the country, few consumers know about the exhausting labor and often grey-market deals required to bring them from forest to plate. Two foragers reveal their coveted picking locations, and explore what it means to find a home in this shadowy, isolating trade.