I grew up in West Virginia, so I know a few things about life that outsiders may not. For one thing, just because a morning starts out grey and cloudy (like every morning in West Virginia) it doesn’t necessarily mean rain. The fog and clouds are just the Mountain State’s way of sleeping in a little. Also, when you come to a top of the hill on a one-lane road, pull over to the right a little or an approaching hay truck may take the paint off the driver’s side of your car. In West Virginia, if you’re not on the main highway, it will be a one-lane road and you have to learn to share the space. Also, I know from experience that if you eat even one ramp, you will smell like a garlic factory for three days.
Like ginseng, ramps are revered in West Virginia, where they have ramp festivals to celebrate their arrival. Ramps, Allium tricoccum, are wild onions that grow in peaty soil in the backcountry. April and May bring many mountaineers up into the hills, shovels in hand, where they dig a mess of ramps and consume the fragrant bulbs in a variety of methods.
Ramps can be eaten raw, like a spring onion, but if you do, you will have indigestion beyond the protection of an entire bottle of Nexium. Many fry ramps and eat them with eggs, or as a garnish for hot dogs. Fried potatoes and ramps is another West Virginia delicacy. But woe be to anybody who eats a ramp, for they will reek for days as the highly fragrant wild onions take their sweet time working their way though the digestive system.
It happened one spring a few years back that my friend Bernie accompanied me on an overnight camping trip to Shaver’s Fork, a splendid West Virginia trout stream with a renowned hatch of green drake mayflies – insects so big and juicy that when they emerge, every fish in the river comes up to gorge.
Bernie and I arrived early in the afternoon, pitched our tent and rigged our equipment, anticipating the late afternoon arrival of the drakes. Above our campsite, I saw some familiar shoots of green, the stems of ramps – big, fat luscious ramps.
I showed Bernie the plants, and he was interested.
“Why don’t you dig a few? I’ll cook them for dinner, along with some trout and see what you think,” I suggested.
Ramps dug and cleaned, we headed for the stream and we were on the water when thousands and thousands of green drakes emerged. Trout were rising everywhere, and we caught and released dozens, keeping two fat rainbows for dinner. By the campfire, I fried up a pan of ramps, added the trout filets and we dined like kings.
“I love these ramps,” Bernie admitted. “Let’s dig some more in the morning and I’ll take them home for my wife to taste.”
Advising my friend that not everybody liked ramps, and that his love for the wild leeks may have been somewhat influenced by the half-pint of 100 proof Kentucky bourbon he had consumed before dinner, he nonetheless insisted. The next morning, we dug a couple dozen plants, put them in a black trash bag and into the back of Bernie’s Explorer, then headed back to Virginia.
About a week after our trip, I ran into my friend and asked him what his wife thought of the ramps. It had not gone well.
First, when he came home, she could smell him approaching when he got out of the car. She would not let him in the house. He had to sleep on his back porch. She also insisted that he sell his Explorer. It also reeked of ramps, but none of the local car dealers would take it as a trade. They finally found some fellow from West Virginia who could tolerate the lingering odor and sold it to him for half the book value.
Bernie said he had to take all his clothes and fishing gear to the landfill, and it was a week before he could once again enter into his own house.
Green drakes mayflies and West Virginia ramps make an interesting combination.