As Wash. mushroom season begins, daughter remembers forager mother

AUBURN, Wash. — Katherine Alice Balser Kelly led hikes for the Seattle Mountaineers into the thrush and prairies of Washington state into her 80s. Her eyes peeled through native plants, hoping to land on wild Lewisia flowers.

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She had a tub filled with them outside her back door. The Lewisia plant, the flower that most interested her, was named after Meriwether Lewis of the Lewis and Clark exploring duo.

The year after wildfires, she would drag her husband, John Winter Kelly, into areas scorched by flames to hunt for morel mushrooms.

“He would have just as soon stayed home to read a book,” daughter Pat Chubb said. “But mom was a force of nature.”

Katherine and John Kelly met on a blind date on a Friday the 13th in 1946. They were married for 53 “long, miserable years,” they often joked.

John was the city treasurer of Auburn in the 1960s and Seattle in the '70s. Katherine was an artist, skilled with textiles; she opened her own custom dress-making and tailoring shop in Seattle in 1937.

She also worked for a time at Boeing's Plant 2, back when the building was shrouded with plants in "civic camouflage." Boeing constructed a false town on the roof of their building to deter potential attackers from above during World War II. It was complete with false grass, trees, plants and even homes.

Fabric and plywood was used to build the false streets and houses, “making it vanish into nearby neighborhoods,” according to The Associated Press.

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In addition to her varied work, Katherine was always a fabric artist. She spun yarn from the wool of two sheep her family cared for, Sunflower and Lambchop. The sheep were shorn every spring; Katherine's children felt they were "running around in long underwear."

“She used the wool to make sleeping bags for all us kids with red twill for the outside; animal print flannel for the inside,” Pat said. “They were the warmest sleeping bags on the planet.”

Katherine also braided rugs from wool coats from Goodwill and produced sturdy, beautiful quilts. A peach-colored one was hung on display in 2004 at the Auburn care facility she was a resident of.

Another piece of hers was also displayed: a yellow dress with Seminole patchwork inserts.

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She died this year at 97 years old.

2015 brought a severe string of wildfires to Washington. Three firefighters were killed battling wildfire in Twisp in August of last year.

About one year has since passed. 2016's wildfire season has already started, early, burning acres of land in Oso and Gold Bar, of Snohomish County.

As mushroom-picking season begins, enthusiasts map where wildfires occurred the year prior.

When Katherine’s daughter, Pat, saw in the news that mushroom pickers had started foraging where last year the earth burned, she burst into tears.

"For many years, my mom was a member of the Puget Sound Mycological Society," Pat wrote online, sharing the article. "She would take my dad mushroom hunting the year after forest fires, and because of her hiking background, knew all the best places."

Katherine would sauté the morels and chanterelles in butter and serve them over steak or mixed with scrambled eggs. Pat says Katherine also regularly foraged for mushrooms and greens in their over 50-acre backyard and would return with dandelion greens and various plants to add to dinner.

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“We kids were used to it,” Pat said. “Our friends that we had over for dinner sometimes gave the stink-eye to what was on the serving platter.”

Katherine’s mother, Helen, was born in Maine. She grew abundant boysenberry bushes at a cabin she and her husband, Richard, built at Point No Point in Kitsap County. In the back of an image near the cabin, one can read in her handwriting: “Gram’s bo bushes beach 1969.” Bo, a nickname for the fruit.

Katherine’s last eight years were spent in a care facility’s memory unit in Auburn, Washington. Her memory went slowly. She was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease in 2001.

"It was a long goodbye," Pat said.

Despite the memory loss, her daughter, Pat, describes Katherine as happy through the end.

And Pat was happy, too. “We kids were lucky in the big lottery of life,” Pat said of Katherine.

She stayed loving and affectionate; she enjoyed holding hands. Communication became fragmented. But she would occasionally say “I love you” and kiss her daughter’s or an aide’s hand.

Katherine would also sing the chorus of “You Are My Sunshine” as her memory corroded -- the light of her continuing to warm those close to her.

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Cox Media Group