Photos courtesy of White Mountain Forager
WITH HIS RESONANT, RADIO ANNOUNCER VOICE, it’s easy to understand why Doug Gralenski is a perfect fit for the role of Shelburne town moderator.
But most of his time is spent in silence on solo treks through the woods of northern New Hampshire, where the only sounds are twigs crunching beneath his feet and occasional birdsong. It’s in the forest that he assumes the persona of the White Mountain Forager, hunting for treasures like fiddleheads, ramps, berries, and such mushrooms as chanterelles and candy-corn-colored chicken of the woods.
Gralinski’s “aha” moments never came at a desk job. The former Cub Scout and retired state conservation officer called the Great Outdoors his office for 27 years before transitioning to his homegrown business.
“My definition of excitement is first looking at a new hillside peppered with yellow mushrooms,” he says. “When I retired at 50, I knew I needed to do something. I had mentally catalogued half a dozen very significant chanterelle patches and would find other types of mushrooms in certain environments. It’s really just a big puzzle—being in the right place at the right time.”
“My definition of excitement is first looking at a new hillside peppered with yellow mushrooms.”
EXPERIENCE, INSTINCT, AND SCIENCE AS GUIDES
Like most foragers, the longtime steward of the environment is secretive about his patchwork of patches. Experience from almost three decades as a game warden, instinct, and science guide his explorations across broad swaths of northern New Hampshire, the cargo bed of a pickup truck waiting to be covered like a painter with a blank canvas. Besides his go-to foraging spots, Gralinski references satellite images to explore new areas when old ones are increasingly lost to logging.
“In those photos, I can identify features that are likely good for foraging, and then go in on foot to see if I’m correct,” Gralinski says. “I’ve gotten good at it, and in the last five years I’ve found patches that are measured in acres, with about 15 acres being the largest patch. When peak, a patch this size can produce well over 20 pounds of chanterelles.”
Mushrooms and his other hauls are sold to restaurants, health and natural food stores throughout New Hampshire, and a couple of wholesale companies that blend fungal superfood chaga with tea or coffee.
There’s a bit of education and economics, too, in his second livelihood. When Gralinski finds fiddleheads, for instance, on a farmer’s property, he’ll ask their permission to forage what those landowners are often unaware is on their property. He then shares the proceeds. “There’s a great irony in that most fiddleheads grow on dairy and agricultural farmland. There’s a viable product that people want to buy, but farmers don’t have enough time to pick them themselves because they’re fertilizing or taking care of other things.”
HELPING MAKE SUPERFOOD CHAGA MORE MAINSTREAM
Over 10 years as the White Mountain Forager, Gralinski has also helped cultivate interest in chaga significantly thanks to relationships with clinical herbalists like Heather Chase of the Local Grocer in North Conway. “Chaga is still a ‘niche’ product, but it’s gone much more mainstream than ever before now that people are catching on to the health benefits,” says Gralinski.
The black, gnarled fungus grows on New Hampshire’s plentiful birch trees and resembles charcoal knobs on the exterior. According to the Cleveland Clinic, chaga’s vibrant ochre interior is as rich in color as it is in antioxidants, supporting lower cholesterol levels, blood pressure reduction, and boosted immune systems.
At home, Gralinski blends it with coffee or tea. Although he’s often on the road from sun-up to sundown during peak foraging in summer, Gralinski enjoys spending time behind the stove in slower months, he says. His fleeting escapes elsewhere are to visit his children, Nick, 33, who lives in Maine, and Lauren, 26, who’s made Idaho home.
Despite being sprinkled in dirt most days, Gralinski is still Prince Charming to his wife of 34 years, Pam, Gralinski says. They met working summers at Story Land in Glen—where she was Cinderella and he was her coach driver. “Management frowned on Cinderella dating the coach driver, so I was soon switched to antique cars,” he says, laughing.
