"Right now, and in the coming weeks, from Northern California to Alaska, commercial and amateur mushroom hunters will be scouring hills that were ravaged by fires last summer and fall. Their prey? Morel mushrooms.

"Sometimes we call it 'chasing the burns,' " mushroom enthusiast Kevin Sadlier says, in search of the black morel mushrooms that grow in the springtime after a forest fire.

He's exploring Lake County, Calif., a couple of hours northeast of San Francisco. Last September's Valley Fire – one of the most destructive in California history – changed the face of these hills, once thick with pine and fir trees."

Lisa Morehouse reports for NPR April 20, 2016. [2]