Our visit to Fort Clatsop, the 1805 to 1806 winter home of the Corps of Discovery, gave us the opportunity to experience the smells, sounds, textures, and sights of a temperate rain forest. Strewn over the dark humus of the forest floor was an assortment of colorful and convoluted mushrooms. The mushroom itself is the fruiting body of a much larger fungus organism. As a rose bush packages seeds in its fruit, the rose hip, so does the fungus send up the mushroom to disseminate its spores. The mushrooms varied from delicate coral mushrooms, to strychnine containing amanitas to this beautiful specimen of a king bolete. Snow-white oyster shell mushrooms contrasted with the decomposing forest litter.
While the Expedition arrived too late to this area to enjoy the bountiful fall mushrooms, they did make mention of eating mushrooms on their eastward return. Meriwether Lewis noted in his journal on June 19, 1806 "...Cruzatte brought me several morells ...roasted and eaten without salt pepper or grease... in this way I had the taiste of the morell which is truly an insippid taistless food."
Unlike the Corps of Discovery, we enjoyed many scrumptious delights from the Sea Lion galley that included creamy mushroom soup, and pasta sauces with succulent mushrooms.
