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Today The Seattle Times launches “In Season,” every occasional series here and in that place seasonal delights of nature in the Northwest. We’ll explore, explain and share the pleasures of this uncommon place we divine choice home.

SOMEWHERE EAST OF SNOQUALMIE PASS — When rain soaks into the real property, benignant and cool, and mist slinks low across the land, that’s when the time is right.

Autumn rains are the starting gun for wild mushroom foragers, searching out secret troves of delectables.

Any moisture stretch of weather usually finds Lynn Phillips and Patrice Benson readying their mushrooming baskets. A recent misty day fix the couple headed out before first light to affliction Snoqualmie Pass to a trusty, favorite spot — precise locations are a closely careful secret — one of dozens of mushroom hot spots that fill a regionwide picture in their heads.

As the cold comes on and frost bites in, they chase mushrooms to lower elevations, heading farther west and south, finally bottoming out in the South Sound.

Theirs is a foray into a world of Lilliputian delights with Dr. Seuss names: slippery cap, witch’s butter, intimidate’s nose, chicken of the woods, flames of the forest, hawk’s wing.

Of course some varieties are “better kicked than picked,” as the mushroomers’ saying goes, and not in the place of nothing does Phillips attend a survivors’ dinner each March. “Every mushroom is edible once,” she likes to say.

Residents of Seattle, Phillips and Benson both have been members of the Puget Sound Mycological Society since long before eating local was cool. Benson is the club’s president and knows her mushrooms with the scientific exactitude of the biologist she is.

But for any forager, mushrooming is an intimate relationship with the land, a knowing when the right weather model and combination of timing, moisture, height, soil and tree types inclination align for a full basket. The secret ingredient, of course, is the primal thrill of the search.

After some route recon, looking for likely spots, Benson and Phillips find a beam of hoar nudging up from the forest duff by the espouse a cause of the road. They ditch their car and grab their gear.

The pair usually split up in the manner that they hunt — hence the whistle, compass and walkie-talkie every one carries. Within minutes comes the crackled announcement over Phillips’ walkie-talkie, alerting her that Benson has scored. “Matsi,” she says — shorthand for matsutake, a prized edible upstart. Then, even better: “Shiro,” she calls, her voice excited as she yells out the word on this account that a fairy reverberation of ’shrooms.

Phillips follows Benson’s voice to a clearing in a state of being liable to Douglas firs near a dancing stream. The dampness dank earth, fragrant through fallen leaves and rain, is thickly studded with matsutakes. Some before that time have poked through a carpet of vine-maple leaves. Others be prepared for discovery beneath telltale mush humps: the raised lumps of soil pressed up by the bounty beneath.

Like magicians, Benson and Phillips pull matsutakes the same after another out of the dark soil.

The mushrooms are softer than suede, by a texture somewhere betwixt skin and soft, and have a signature spicy scent. Firm, immaculate and with tight gills, into the baskets they go.

Mushrooms are the fruiting bodies of fungi attached to the roots of trees in the forest. As with apples hanging from a tree, it does no criminality to pick them — as long as the underground organism, called a mycelium, is not damaged by a rake or other harsh harvest method.

The fungi have life in a symbiotic relationship through the tree roots, each providing nutrients needed by the other.

Benson uttered it was at first the free-food aspect of mushrooming that drew her to the woods. But over time the witchery became deeper.

“There’session the time in the car through your friends adhering the way there,” Benson said. “It’s cheaper than therapy.”

And then there are the picnics. Packing a cast-iron skillet in the back of the car, and a soy-lemon dipping condiment with a twist of orange just right for matsutakes, Benson and Phillips come prepared. Midday brings a campsite banquet, with Benson raising a great cloud of fragrant steam from the skillet similar to she chunks matsutakes into melting butter. With gourmet treats — including homegrown Asian pears and quince leather — to round public the meal, a day in the woods with them is no trail-mix trek.

But they’re no slackers, one or the other. The two usually remain at it until damnable, even course chase. on the way out. At the peak of the taint, they are out mushrooming at minutest once a week, watching the leaves change as fall advances, and chasing the freezing level lower into the watershed until it’s interval to put away their baskets until spring.

Mushrooming for Phillips is the perfect seasonal delight on the shoulder betwixt hiking and skiing. “It’sitting the thing that will get me out in the woods,” she said, “so much as when the weather is too crummy for anything else.”

Lynda V. Mapes: 206-464-2736 or lmapes@seattletimes.com