On a soggy Green Mountain morning, I am following a mossy streambank under a mixed canopy of hemlock, ash and birch. My every sense is engaged as I scan the surrounding soil in a search of the peerless porcini. After multiple failed early season attempts, my timing is finally perfect. Kings are back in action, and I let the bloated old ‘flags’ – yellow-pored and squishy stemmed – guide me straight to the prime specimens, mycological royalty camouflaged beneath autumn leaves.

Our family enters the forest to find a reinvigorated mycological landscape. Eight-year-old Eliana is mesmerized by a spiraling flush of dainty waxy caps, while three-year-old Noemi munches on trailside blackberries. Jenna is deep in focus photographing summer novelties like purple coral mushrooms and jelly babies, but I have only one thing on my mind: reaching my favorite local black trumpet spot, among the boulders and beech trees ahead.

Golden chanterelles, classic summer wild mushrooms, have arrived early this year in Vermont. My rational mind tells me to wait until July, but instinct carries me up a rocky streambed toward an old patch. I am greeted by a sleek red fox that makes fleeting eye contact before leaping stealthily out of sight. Soon I arrive at a pair of hemlocks that have produced in past seasons, and the hunt is on.

The weather – day after day of sparkling, blue skies and spring flowers – was undeniably spectacular. For a string of sun-soaked days, each evening found children splashing playfully in the river and brown trout rising explosively to flies. Everywhere I looked I saw people smiling, their relief palpable on the heels of another long and trying winter.

Lobster mushrooms are having a moment, erupting quietly beneath the leaf litter. These furtive fungi are carefully concealed, for the most part, despite their flame-orange coloring and often hefty proportions. I am exploring a new spot, and a few bloated, dark red giants – now soft and covered in white mold – give away a dense and sprawling patch. I follow the fiery fruiting from a low-lying stream dominated by conifers, uphill for over a mile into an ecosystem favoring hardwoods.

Invigorated by a late October spell of wet, balmy weather, wild mushrooms are making unexpected late season appearances. In the last week, I have seen pristine wood blewits, elm oysters, late fall oysters, shaggy manes, and velvet foot mushrooms (enokitake). These are all hardy fall fruiters, but unusual to find going strong by Halloween in northern Vermont.

Golden chanterelles are on fire throughout the region, visible from a distance with their bright yellow caps. While all fresh chanterelles are delicious, our favorite patch yields dense, chunky specimens with a ghostly white – rather than yellow – stem and false-gilled underbelly. We call these firm and meaty culinary gems ‘white back’ chanterelles, though my hunch is they are Cantharellus phasmatis, first documented in 2013 at University of Wisconsin-La Crosse.

Eliana didn’t miss a beat as I walked in the door, kicked off my boots, and slipped a small brown paper bag into the fridge. “Are those mushrooms? Did you find those in the woods?” She was onto me, leaving her post of helping mama stir shiitake and tofu to investigate.

Plump hedgehog mushrooms are fruiting at the forest’s edge, but there’s no time to stop for these gourmet edibles – Eliana has already scurried up the rocky path far ahead of us. “Pa! Waxy caps!”

No matter how many morels one has found, the first find of the season is always a revelation. I’m making a pilgrimage to an old favorite ramp patch, following a trickling streambed up a craggy hillside of hickory, yellow birch, ash and beech. It still feels early for morels in northern Vermont’s hills and I’ve learned to pace myself, saving the epic hunts for peak conditions. But with the sweet smell of springtime in the air and the temperature pushing 80, I can’t help but slow down beneath a hefty ash tree that somehow feels just right for Morchella.

Gary Lincoff, legendary mushroom expert, naturalist, writer, teacher, and radiant spirit, passed away on Friday morning. He will be deeply missed. I never had the chance to meet Gary, but his work left a lasting impression on me and instilled an enduring sense of wonder for the mycological world. When I was all of ten, his Audubon guide caught my eye in a bookstore display, and I begged my mom to buy it for me. She reluctantly obliged, and that became the bible that I took on countless hunts and used to identify my first hen of the woods as a child.

It’s nearly dusk and I am bushwhacking up a steep hillside of mixed conifers, punctuated by ancient oaks. The oaks that stabilize these craggy slopes are survivors - spared widespread logging not due to conservation but to convenience, the prohibitive price of hauling hardwood out a ravine.

The season’s first morels, even if growing in highly questionable soil in downtown Burlington, always are a true sight to behold. Jenna, right out the passenger seat window as we were parking, spotted two plump yellow morels on woodchips among dog-doo and debris.

My heart sank as I reached the crest of the hill to find my most faithful maitake (hen of the woods) tree standing naked, unadorned. After a summer plagued by drought, I had grown accustomed to such disappointment. But the successful hunter is an eternal optimist, always seeing potential in every fiber of the forest. We’d finally gotten a half-inch of rain, and it couldn’t hurt to get down on my hands and knees and scour for signs of hen.

My daughter, at two-years-old, already understands where her favorite food comes from. “Papa, hunt mauk-mee,” (mushrooms) she says. “Hike.”

How can I resist? I take her in one arm, paper bag and mushroom knife in the other, and we hit the trails behind our house just before sunset.

As I entered the woods with my childhood best friend on my 30th birthday backpacking adventure, my attention was fixed on the ground as we followed a languorous river. Lipstick­-red, vomit­-inducing emetic Russulas lined the trailside, and acrid peppery milkies were sprayed about the flat forest floor. Deadly destroying angels were everywhere, menacingly elegant and dangerous. Yet a three-­mile, flat riverside walk into the backcountry did not reveal a single gourmet mushroom, and the soil seemed drier with each step.