Brown: How little fish and secret mushrooms can salve Minnesota’s culture wars

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When I heard the tuba, I knew something was up.

You see all kinds of people walking along Duluth’s Canal Park during the busy months. And yet, the fuzzy-haired tuba player honking the original Super Mario Bros. theme in front of the Aerial Lift Bridge stood out.

Things would only get weirder from there.

A van pulled up and people in silver robes hopped out. They removed boxes from the back filled with giant costume fish heads and reflective decorations that glinted in the late afternoon sun. Someone popped on one of the heads and I realized what we had accidentally stumbled upon.

This was last year’s world-famous Magic Smelt Parade. Smelt are fish, if you didn’t know.

I had seen clips on local TV news, but never saw the parade in the flesh — or fins. In person, the event is a sensory explosion. The smelt queen rules over the proceedings, a massive silvery puppet with two human legs powering her fishlike motions. A band called the Brass Messengers plays while the Smelt Queen and various other costumed smelt walk, march and dance along the Lakewalk.

The audience doesn’t just watch the parade go by. They join in, dancing alongside the anthropomorphic smelt, men on stilts in silver tuxedos and regular folks of all ages with homemade costumes.

Jim Ouray is the artistic director of the Magic Smelt Parade, and one of the event’s co-founders. He was inspired when he saw the smelt run on Duluth’s Park Point shortly after he moved there in 2011.

“The spectacle of it,” said Ouray. “People with fires and lanterns and headlamps pulling in smelt. Kajillions of them. It felt like I was in a National Geographic article about Spain or the Philippines. It was all a revelation.”

Ouray is an artist specializing in puppet and mask design. His travels to New Orleans for Mardi Gras and the Carnival of Trinidad and Tobago gave him an idea. Minnesota needed its own immersive cultural event melding music, art and partying. Once he saw Duluth’s smelt run, he had his inspiration.

His bold cultural statement connects people and nature without any stern lectures or somber reflections. And yes, he knows that smelt are an invasive species that populated during a downturn in native lake trout.

“I hear that, but to me it’s a bigger picture,” said Ouray. “Smelt are the life force of the planet. OK, so someone dumped them in Lake Superior, but look what happened. It’s an example of nature’s inexorable force to be so abundant.”

Last weekend, my son Henry and I found ourselves bumbling through mud and logging slash looking for mushrooms. It was all part of the Black Morel Hootenanny in Grand Rapids, Minn., where tourism officials are trying to make a springtime destination event for morel enthusiasts.

Reaching the foraging grounds required a 25-mile bus ride to a former aspen stand that was logged two years earlier, the ideal amount of time for morels to flourish.

Black morel mushrooms only grow north of the 45th parallel, roughly around Hwy. 2 in northern Minnesota. The rest of the state hungers for its equally delicious sibling, the yellow morel. What makes black morels distinct is their love of dead aspen stands, a common sight in northern Minnesota where aspens are the top targets of loggers.

Morels are earthy, meaty mushrooms that chefs love for their rich flavor. They are easily distinguished from nonedible mushrooms because morels are hollow with a complex honeycomb pattern on their cap. Black morels get their name from the dark lines that highlight their honeycomb appearance.

It might sound like I’m some kind of expert. I’m not. We just listened to one of the best 25-minute mushroom lectures I’ve ever seen, delivered by Mike Kempenich, known on YouTube as the Gentleman Forager. Kempenich served as a guide for paid guests on this VIP foraging foray.

Megan Christianson from Visit Grand Rapids said they started small this year, focusing on successful events for ultraserious mushroom hunters. But next year they hope to add a night parade with costumes, lights and live music across this entire small town along the Mississippi River.

Henry had just come home from college. He and I filled our buckets with delicious black morels, which I cooked up for the family dinner that night. We enjoyed a beautiful day in the woods and a meal that brought everyone together. The power of nature is the most overlooked aspect of modern human culture.

“If you are celebrating morel mushrooms or smelt with your neighbors, it’s a more nourishing experience than just consuming the dominant culture that is so often generated with economic intent,” said Ouray.

You can take part in the “Run, Smelt, Run!” parade and party this Sunday, May 25, at 3:30 p.m. Just show up at the Aerial Lift Bridge and look for the dancing smelt.

Events like these bring us closer to nature and each other. Culture doesn’t have to come from a screen or empty your wallet. We need not divide along political or class lines to gather. Culture pours from the woods and waters of the beautiful place where we live. We may laugh, dance and party together until the smelt come home and the morels peek out from the grass.

No one can take this away from us. We must only remember that it’s there.