The Great Morel is excited to announce it has reached a pinnacle of existence on the Internet. About 21 years ago, there were a few morel hunters doing their annual morel forage and the idea of creating one of the first morel hunting web pages on the Internet was envisioned. Hence was the birth of The Great Morel.
One may be asking, “Why are you celebrating 21 years and not 20?” Honestly, it was sort of forgotten, but as we all know, rocket-surgery tells us 21 is one better than 20 so it is a celebration damn it!
A bit of unknown history…
The underlying theme twenty one years ago was a crazy idea at the time and almost never happened. There was a vision that day in the woods to create a web page where morel hunters could share in its creation, to offer advice, share stories, photos, and for it to be informative. There also was one other very important concept – The Great Morel would be a mystical being of nature, almost an imaginative being, representing the morel mushroom hunting family. At first thought, this last concept sounds crazy right? Let’s get one thing clear – rest assured drugs and alcohol were not involved.
As crazy as the concept sounded, it was the vision on that day. It would not be about an individual, there would be no “I” or “we” or a “me”. It was not about a single individual and if you have wandered around the site for any time you may have noticed it remains that way today. It was created to be about the morel and morel enthusiasts who have an undeniable passion, an often time unexplainable love of this spring time endeavor called morel hunting.
…the most important factor in the creation of The Great Morel was to allow the people who visited the site to help create the site.
For those who have been with The Great Morel for all these years, you certainly have noticed the growth and stages The Great Morel has gone through. From the dial-up Internet era where the biggest images were 640×480 and the galleries couldn’t take much more. Even then, the images back in the day could take forever to load and many where done with digital cameras that could only do grey-scale images. Yet today’s galleries are clean, the photography is spectacular, and the information and content remains without a doubt the best out there. If you browse the galleries you will still find a few of the old 640×480 images and the Stories page still has many of the original old stories.
The Contributions of many…
Throughout the years, the most important factor in the creation of The Great Morel was to allow the people who visited the site to help create the site. It was to become a place where morel hunters from all over would contribute to the content. It was about fellow morel hunters sharing their knowledge, and building a web page where it could be a bit humorous yet at the same time be informative and educational. It was so very important 21 years ago and The Great Morel is proud that it still maintains that philosophy today.
It was about sharing and posting images, it was about sharing stories, sharing knowledge and tips, and sharing theories and recipes. The Great Morel has strongly held true those beliefs and to this day it is one of the most important concepts of the page. There is a huge sense of gratitude to those who have and continue to contribute, which is why it is mentioned time and time again – The Great Morel is what it is because of the contributions of many!
Thanks for sharing in the journey! The Great Morel hopes to be hanging around a lot longer spreading the knowledge, the passion, and the love of morel hunting with the contributions of many – it is what makes The Great Morel.
With that said…The Great Morel thanks you all!
Note: For you long-time visitors to the page, you may remember the old trademark image of the “popping” morel. Sadly, it has been lost in the transition over the years and if it is ever recovered or found on some old hard drive somewhere it will be resurrected for old-time sake.
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