Mushroom hunting requires a lot of hiking, right? Here’s a story about tracking them down in the wilds of Washington state. One guy takes a reporter and photographer along on his hunt but forbids them from revealing the location of his finds.

“People ask me where I find my mushrooms and I tell them, ‘About this high off the ground,'” he said with a grin, holding thumb and forefinger a couple of inches apart. “They don’t like that very much.”

Because some morel maniacs will scour the high country looking for his truck, Morris will often borrow friends’ rigs, or caravan with a buddy and park his truck miles from where he’s actually picking, just to throw off the followers.

This story is all in good-humored fun, but last year we had one in the Bay Area where an Asian family ate some wild mushrooms that looked almost exactly like the ones they enjoy back home; everybody got sick and at least one of them died. Which is why I prefer my mushrooms in their most natural locale: on top of a pizza.