Asheville is high on mushroom tourism

“So, the reason we came here is this log pile,” Alan Muskat says, pointing toward a roughly triangular stack of moss-fuzzed, weathered grey tree trunks. Crisscrossed by vines and encircled by brambles, the woodpile sits on the edge of a field just outside Asheville, North Carolina.

With a graying beard and off-white knit hat framing eyes creased with laugh lines, the longtime forager has a charming gnome-ish sensibility. He sets down his woven wicker basket, already half full of thin-needled pine sprigs, ruby red rose hips glimmering in the chilly November afternoon light, and a handful of the season’s last, wrinkly persimmons.