“As soon as Ben announced he’d spotted his first morel, I began, exclusively and determinedly, looking down. There I found a thick carpet of pine needles amid the charred carcasses of pine. A morel resembles a tanned finger wearing a dark and deeply honeycombed dunce cap. They’re a decidedly comic-looking mushroom, resembling leprechauns or little penises. The morel’s distinctive form and patterning would make it easy to spot if not for its color, which ranges from dun to black and could not blend in more completely with a charred landscape. . . .
    I found that if I actually got down on the ground . . . I could see the little hats popping up here and there, morels that a moment before had been utterly invisible. . . .
    And then there was the ‘screen saver’—the fact that after several hours interrogating the ground for little brown dunce caps, their images will be burned on your retinas. ‘You’ll see. When you get into bed tonight,’ Ben said, ‘you’ll shut your eyes and there they’ll be again—wall-to-wall morels.’ ”

—Michael Pollan, The Omnivore’s Dilemma, 2006.