Stalking the Elusive 'Bely Grib' in Moscow's Enchanting Forest

Viktor Yakubovich picks a large chanterelle mushroom in a forest outside Moscow. (Anton Troianovski -- The Washington Post)

NARO-FOMINSK DISTRICT, Russia -- Just after 11 on a recent Sunday morning, 73-year-old Viktor Yakubovich stepped through an iron gate in the backyard fence of his country home. He emerged into the mythic stillness and wetness of the Russian woods, which stretched out before him in a canvas of greens, grays and blacks.

The vast but ever-dwindling forest around Moscow has a special place in the city's consciousness. It is into these dark woods that children are afraid to go as they recall bedtime tales about Baba Yaga, the wicked old lady who lives in a secluded hut built on giant chicken feet.

The forest is haunted for many adults as well. Old craters left by artillery shells mark the desperate, ultimately successful effort to keep the Nazis out of Moscow in the winter of 1941-42.

And yet, Russians continue to be drawn to the woods. Perhaps they desire solitude and fresh air. But many, like Yakubovich, come for the mushrooms.

The day's first, with its flat, yellowish cap, peered out of the moist undergrowth just outside the backyard gate. It was a valuy -- a marginally edible mushroom known in English as the stinking russula. But Yakubovich told his companion and novice mushroomer, Mark Brusser, 75, that it was too old. "We can pick stinking russula if there's nothing else, but I think there might be something else," Yakubovich said with a tantalizing grin.

The strange and endearing names that Russians call mushrooms underscore their devotion to them. The small, ubiquitous orange chanterelles are lisichki, or "little foxes." A variety of the tan, funnel-shaped paxillus is known as the svinushka, or "little pig." But Russian mushrooming's biggest prize -- the brown-capped and white-stalked porcini mushroom -- is simply called the bely grib, or "white mushroom."

Porcini were what Yakubovich brashly thought he might find, hoping that several days of rain showers -- which continued, off and on, during the morning's 50-mile drive out from Moscow -- had coaxed the luscious, shiny, earthy-smelling fungus out of the ground.

After 20 minutes, Yakubovich and Brusser emerged from the woods and traversed the right edge of an abandoned farm field. Above were power lines, seemingly supporting the low-hanging gray sky. They passed an unofficial garbage dump and a little village marked "Mineral-1."

Soon they ducked back into the forest. There the black, wet ground under the cover of pine trees was free of underbrush, leaving the mushrooms with no place to hide. Then came the magical moment. "Come and see for yourself what a real porcini looks like!" Brusser shouted to his friend.

It looked about as tall as Brusser's thumb and perhaps twice as fat. Ducking under the dripping pine branches, Yakubovich took the little white and light-brown treasure and gingerly scraped off the earth with his knife. "It's known that porcini don't grow alone," he said. "They spread out for about 30 feet."

Suddenly, amid the croak of a solitary crow and the leafy crescendo of an oncoming gust of wind, the two grew as calm and focused as hunters on a hot trail. But they discovered no more porcini near this initial find.

For the next two hours, Yakubovich and Brusser pushed on through waves of rain and sun over glistening, wildflower-covered fields, occasionally diving into dense woods, then emerging into perfectly peaceful clearings.

Their zigzags across the landscape were not as haphazard as they seemed. Over here was a group of birches where Yakubovich knew he would find chanterelles; over there was a clearing where porcini often grew.

Such special spots are a mushroom hunter's most closely held secrets. So, when a man dressed head to toe in camouflage and carrying a purple plastic bag slipped in and out of view, Yakubovich got suspicious. "This guy is near us all the time," he said to Brusser. "What, does he think that we'll lead him somewhere?"

Yakubovich studied each mushroom he found before tossing it into his basket. He cut through the stalk to check for maggots. He smelled it and examined the underside of the cap to make sure he was holding an edible species and not a poisonous relative.

By 2 p.m., when the two rain-soaked hunters decided to turn back, they still carried only one porcini mushroom. But they had picked several pounds of chanterelles and stinking russula . The former would be fried and served with meat. The latter would be boiled twice to purge harmful chemicals, boiled a third time in brine with cloves, pepper, dill, laurel and currant leaves, and refrigerated in the mixture for at least a month.

The walk back to the country house took less than half an hour. Before long, Yakubovich was feeding his wood-burning stove and warming up the cabbage soup that his daughter had sent along from the city. "On the whole, I think we should approve of what we did today," said Brusser, raising a glass of vodka over the table covered with beet salad, fresh vegetables and, of course, salted mushrooms.

He noted that what they gathered that afternoon could be bought on the side of the road for no more than $8. But that, obviously, was not the point.

"Sometimes I just feel that I need to go to the forest and touch a tree," said Yakubovich, whose day job is at a medical supply company in Moscow. "They say that that gives you something. They even say that every person has his own tree. For one person it's a birch, for someone else it's an oak."