After the Rain: Winter Mushrooms at Camp Cougar
- Camp Cougar
- Jan 7
- 2 min read
More than seven inches of rain fell between January 1 and January 5. Torrents of water, high winds, and flying tree limbs made it impossible—and frankly unwise—to walk outside. When January 6 finally brought a dry day with patches of sun, it felt like an invitation. Conditions were perfect for a walk in the woods and a search for mushrooms.
The ground was fully saturated, blanketed in dense layers of fallen leaves that had soaked up days of rain. Over the course of two days, I wandered slowly, eyes down, and found quite a few mushrooms pushing their way through this soggy forest floor. I suspect that if I’d brushed aside more of the leaf litter, I would have found many more hiding beneath.
I tried to identify what I found using David Arora’s All That the Rain Promises and More: A Hip Pocket Guide to Western Mushrooms, along with Google image search. The book remains invaluable—compact and grounded in real field experience. Image search, on the other hand, is less helpful than it sounds. I often find photos that look remarkably similar to mine, only to discover they’re captioned with some variation of “Does anyone know what this is?”
If you recognize any of the mushrooms shown here, I’d love to hear from you. And if any of my tentative identifications are incorrect, I’m more than happy to be corrected. Part of the pleasure of mushroom hunting, for me, lies in the learning.
I’ve written two earlier posts about mushrooms I’ve spotted at Camp Cougar, but each season still feels like a surprise. What continues to amaze me is not only the sheer variety of species, but how different the mushroom landscape can be from one year to the next, shaped by rain, temperature, and timing in ways that are never quite predictable.
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