This is a tale about, among other things, morels, those dark and tasty mushrooms that cost maybe fifty bucks a pound, if you can get them fresh, and about that amount for a mere ounce when dried. It is also a story about a long-forgotten hotel where I once stayed.

Forthwith:

When I was bicycling across Europe in 1982, alone, with 40 lbs. of pack strapped to my Motobecane, there was a day when I had to climb the gentle north slope of the Jura Mountains to get from France to the Swiss border and the steep descent down the south slope to Neuchâtel. Given the state of technology at the time, I had only Michelin 1:200,000 scale maps to consult. As I planned the route for the day, I saw that there was just one hotel between Besançon in France and La-Chaux-de-Fonds, just over the Swiss line. I usually winged it, arriving in a place sometime around 4 in the afternoon and looking for shelter while there was still light. But since there was only the one hotel, I did something I never did: call ahead and make a reservation.

The place was named Auberge Restaurant de la Source, long since closed, and it was called that because it sat right below a waterfall that shot straight out of a cliff and cascaded down a steep ravine named Cirque de Consolation after a monastery nestled further down that green valley. The cirque itself consisted of narrow roads on either bank…