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Mike Potts inches through damp, old-growth forest beneath mammoth Douglas firs sporting beards of lichen, but he's not seeing this forest as he walks beneath the trees. His eyes are downward, in search of the golden fungi of fall. Potts steps over a log, pushes back a little buck brush and spies a patch of chanterelles popping through the duff. "You know this is good chanterelle habitat, and then suddenly here they are," says Potts, as he digs his mushroom knife out of his jeans. "And aren't they beautiful?" This delectable bounty of fall mushroom hunting is something Potts wants to share with the mushroom-wary public taught not to trust their eyes when it comes to differentiating the good fungi from the bad — and the very bad. Potts is teaching a series of fall mushroom classes in November at the Siskiyou Field Institute in Selma — the classes are already full — and he is an avid nature photographer who specializes in fungi photos. He has also led spring and fall mushroom hikes through The Northwest Nature Shop in Ashland. While the High Cascades are awash in edible, mildly poisonous and even deadly mushroom varieties, Potts maintains that a little education and sticking to just chanterelles can turn nearly anyone into a successful, bountiful and healthy mushroom hunter each fall. Look for the smooth, yellowish-orange and funnel-shaped cap, with folded ridges beneath it that taper nearly all the way down the stipe, or stem. They grow exclusively on the ground, not wood, and they smell fruity, often like apricots. Chanterelles differ from their closest local imposter, a faux chanterelle called the scaly vase chanterelle, which has trumpet-shaped stems and fuzzy or scaly caps. When ingested, scaly vase chanterelles can cause mild nausea — maybe even vomiting and diarrhea — and could result in a trip to the emergency room but not the morgue. "The reason chanterelles are so popular is because there is no deadly look-alike," Potts says. "It's easy for people to identify them and eat them. And they look so edible." Chanterelles grow mostly in old and intact forest stands, so exploring for mushrooms puts hunters in unique habitats. Potts is a 38-year-old carpenter who submerged himself in all that is forest fungus the past decade. While slowly plying an old-growth stand in the Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest, he identifies and plucks several mushroom varieties, rattling off their scientific names and unique features. On a Tuesday hunt in a forest above 4,000 feet not far from Howard Prairie Lake, Potts points out a toxic poison pie fungus and an edible bear's head mushroom. He even stumbles upon a version of the amanita mushroom that is decidedly not for consumption. "It's deadly toxic," Potts says. "Causes liver failure." He focuses on stands of old-growth Douglas fir because, unlike Ponderosa pines, they prefer the moist grounds that harbor lichen in the trees and chanterelles beneath them. He often finds them under huckleberries and other brush. They are mycorrhizal, so they are connected to the root systems of older firs. That's one of the reasons why when Potts finds one chanterelle he usually finds several, unless another picker has come through previously. Potts finds a half-dozen chanterelles poking through the duff between four large firs. "A lot of these healthy firs are creating a nice patch here," Potts says. Potts peels the duff away from a chanterelle and slices it off at the base. With a boar's-hair brush at the base of his mushroom knife, he carefully brushes away the dirt and trims off what he can't clean. In his early days of mushroom hunting, Potts used clean lichen to whisk away dirt. Mushrooms are best collected in baskets and transported in paper bags, he says. Plastic can foster mold. At home, he rarely washes them because they soak up water and demean their taste, he says. If he does wash them, he does so lightly and right before cooking, pats them dry with a towel and cooks them in a dry skillet or pan to boil out the water. Recreational mushroom hunters in the Rogue-Siskiyou National Forest and on Bureau of Land Management lands are limited to a gallon of chanterelles a day and five gallons a year for personal consumption, with no permits needed. While this is the tail end of the season in local high-elevation forests, chanterelles normally will be around until they disappear beneath the snow. "Until it starts freezing really hard for several days, you can still find them," Potts says. Though he found several chanterelles Tuesday, Potts cut just two for dinner and felt perfectly sated from his afternoon in the woods beneath the lichen-bearded firs. "Mushroom hunting is my way to connect with nature," Potts says. "And sometimes, you do have to remember to look up." — Reach Mail Tribune reporter Mark Freeman at 541-776-4470 or [email protected] . Follow him on Twitter at www.twitter.com/MTwriterFreeman .