El Vergel

A colleague in Puerto Escondido mentioned El Vergel almost in passing — something about mushrooms and cold mornings and soup that tasted like the forest itself. I filed it away and forgot about it until October, when I found myself on a bus out of Cuauhtémoc watching the scrubland give way to pine, the temperature dropping noticeably as the road climbed. By the time I arrived in Madera and caught a ride up toward the sierra, I understood why people come back every year without much persuading.

October in the Forest

The mushroom season here is not a tourist attraction. It is what people do. Families from Madera and Cuauhtémoc show up on weekends with plastic baskets and a working knowledge of the terrain that no field guide can replicate. I tagged along with a woman named Doña Esperanza who had been coming to these woods for thirty years and who pointed out boletes, chanterelles, and a rust-colored species she called by a name in the local Rarámuri-influenced dialect that I could not find in any book. She picked quickly and without ceremony. I moved slower, photographing things I was afraid to touch. By mid-morning we had several kilos between us, and she laughed at how much I had photographed relative to how little I had collected.

The forest at this elevation — pines thick enough to block the midday light, the ground carpeted in needles and damp moss — smells nothing like the coast. I kept stopping to just breathe it.

Eating What You Find

The best meal I had in El Vergel cost nothing and took forty minutes to make. Back at the small cabin where I was staying, Doña Esperanza’s daughter cooked the boletes we had gathered in a cast-iron pan with butter, garlic, a little dried chile, and salt. Served with thick corn tortillas and a mug of atole against the afternoon chill, it was the kind of food that is inseparable from where you are. In a restaurant in Puerto Escondido, the same mushrooms would taste different. Here they tasted exactly right. The small comedores in Madera serve caldos de hongos through the season — order one, eat it slow, ask what went in.

The Air at 2,400 Meters

Outside of October, El Vergel is quieter but not empty. The highland trails hold their appeal through late spring and early summer, before the rains arrive in force. Mornings are cold enough for a jacket even in June. The light at this altitude is sharper than what I am used to at sea level, and the silence between the birds is the kind that takes a day to stop finding unsettling. I bought a field guide to Mexican highland fungi at a small shop in Madera on my way back out. I have looked at it often since.

Getting There

From Chihuahua City, take a bus to Cuauhtémoc (roughly two hours), then a second bus to Madera (three to four hours more). From Madera, collective taxis and occasional pickup trucks serve the sierra roads up toward El Vergel. Most people base themselves in Madera and make day trips into the forest. Accommodation in the highlands is basic — ask around in Madera for cabin rentals before arriving in October.