Yesterday, my friend Nikki and her three little girls and I went asparagus hunting. We went to a local park, which used to be a homestead that supplied a lot of produce for the little town of Colorado Springs and once even had six acres of asparagus. Nikki had seen the mature asparagus plants in the wilderness areas of the park each summer but hadn’t been able to catch them in the act of sprouting in the spring.

The night before, I did a little research on the web to see what I could find out about hunting asparagus. The best information I could find was to find the dead stalks still standing from the year before and look at their bases for the new sprouts. The dead stalks would look like miniature, bare Christmas trees. Don’t bother looking for the sprouts without finding the dead stalks, the information I found said; you won’t be able to find anything that way. I also found an article about how June was the best month to find asparagus in this area.

We went through the back entrance of the park so we didn’t have to go through the front gate to pay to go in where they give you stickers to put on your shirt so you can enter the museum buildings. We passed by the big tilled field in front of the farmhouse and saw where the rows of asparagus had sprouted and were about six inches high. Those weren’t the ones we were after. We continued along the path to the area where the park has a tipi set up in the summer complete with Indian docents. “Right here,” said Nikki. “Right here at this bend in the path is where I saw the adult plants.” I looked around at the various dead weeds still sticking up and started wading through them.

“I think this might be it,” I said, finding a stalk that looked like…well, Christmas tree-shaped. I rooted around in the brush at its base but didn’t see anything that looked like asparagus poking out of the dirt. Maybe it wasn’t time yet.

“I think you may be right,” said Nikki. “Here’s another one.” At the base was a skinny sprout of asparagus sticking out of the ground. She snapped it off and held it up triumphantly.

Suddenly, the hunt was easy. We knew exactly what kind of piece of dead brush to look for. X marked the spot. Only about half of the stalks we found had anything sprouting out. Mostly, they were just starting to poke out of the ground.

We ate some raw. I’ve never had asparagus that tasted so good, bursting with juice and unbelievably sweet. The rest of what we found was enough for one small serving.

I can’t wait until more of it is ready, though I we’ll have to find a larger source.