Burn Morels in Saskatchewan: The Land of the Lemon Sun

A view worthy of its name. The pale northern light that Robert called ‘the land of the lemon sun.

Some years back, I got the kind of message foragers dream about. René, a member of the Peter Ballantyne Cree Nation, reached out through social media to tell me about a burn site in northwest Saskatchewan—prime territory for burn morels in Saskatchewan, he said. He wasn’t vague about it—he said they were everywhere. I passed it along to my friend and business partner, Chris Daniels—a guy I’ve shared a lot of long drives, bad coffee, and mushroom hauls with—and before long, we were tossing our gear in his truck and heading north. Way north.

Last stop before Flin Flon. Fueling up on coffee and faint optimism before heading deeper into the unknown.

We’d already looked into it and knew there was exactly one motel in Flin Flon—a forgotten little mining town near the Manitoba border—and that’d be our base. The plan was to stay there and make daily runs into the woods, assuming René’s tip turned out to be the real deal. It all felt promising, but just unstructured enough to have that edge of adventure.

When we rolled into Flin Flon late that afternoon, the motel was about what we expected—basic, clean-ish, with a design that hadn’t changed since the '70s. We got our keys, dropped our bags, and started trying to get in touch with René.

That’s when the unease started creeping in.

The problem wasn’t the phones—we had enough signal to make a call. But René just wasn’t answering. No response. No call back. Nothing. As the hours passed, we went from confused to concerned. We’d driven hundreds of miles on a stranger’s word, and now he’d ghosted us?

That night, unable to sleep and increasingly unsure what we’d gotten ourselves into, we dragged a couple of plastic chairs outside and sat under the strangest twilight I’ve ever seen. It was 1:00 a.m., but the sky still held a soft yellow glow, like the day didn’t want to end. It felt surreal—beautiful, but a little eerie too. We sat there with drinks in hand, cracked a few half-jokes about being lured into the woods and never seen again, and tried not to overthink it.

Following René into the burn. The road narrowed, the signal faded, and the adventure got real.

Morning finally came, and with it, René. He called, apologized for the radio silence, and explained that things had gotten tied up on his end. But then he dropped something unexpected: he wanted to take us even deeper into the burn zone—to stay with his friend Robert, who lived off-grid in a cabin right where the mushrooms were booming. No daily commute. No motel. Just us, Robert, and the woods.

We lit up. It was exactly what we’d been hoping for all along.

When René arrived at the motel to lead us out, he gave us a quiet heads-up. He explained that when we left Robert’s place, we should offer him something—not as a fee, and not as a negotiated transaction. Just a gesture. “It’s called a sheesh,” he told us. “You don’t talk about it. You just leave something that feels right when you go.” It was simple and clear: a gift of thanks, nothing more, nothing less.

We followed René’s truck out of Flin Flon and into the wilderness. The pavement ended. Gravel turned to dirt. Dirt narrowed to two ruts through miles of burned forest. The terrain had been scorched by fire, but it wasn’t lifeless. You could already see the first signs of regrowth pushing up through ash and cinders. It felt like driving into a different world—quiet, vast, and stripped to its essentials.

Robert’s place: simple, remote, and exactly where we needed to be.

Robert’s place emerged from the woods like a small punctuation mark in all that emptiness. A simple cabin, tucked between blackened trees and new green. He came out to meet us with the kind of quiet warmth you don’t often find anymore. He didn’t oversell anything—he didn’t have to. He shook our hands, said we were welcome, and we got settled in.

Processing the day’s haul—burn morels in Saskatchewan thick in every direction, the kind of flush foragers remember for years.

That first evening, we headed out into the burn to scout. It didn’t take long to see René had been telling the truth. The morels were thick—everywhere. Sprouting defiantly from the ash like they had something to prove. We picked for hours, and by the time we returned to the cabin, our buckets were full and our stomachs were rumbling.

Then came one of the best meals of my life.

Steaks and morels, cooked over open fire—still the best dinner I’ve ever had.

Robert pulled out steaks—thick, bone-in beauties—and fired them over open flame. We cleaned the day’s morels, tossed them in butter and garlic, and sautéed them until they were golden and fragrant. There was no ceremony about it, but it might as well have been a feast. We ate outside, under that same endless northern sky, and I remember thinking: this is why I do this. Right here. This moment.

Quiet wisdom and calm water. Fishing with Robert was as much about listening as it was about catching.

The days that followed unfolded in that same quiet rhythm. We picked mushrooms, fished a nearby lake with Robert, and spent our evenings by the fire. Robert wasn’t the kind of guy who talked to fill space—but when he did speak, you listened. His thoughts came slow and considered, often sparked by something small—a sound in the woods, a shift in the weather, a story from his past. He never claimed wisdom. He just carried it.

On our final morning, we packed up. No big goodbyes. Just handshakes, a thank-you, and—as René had suggested—we left some sheesh. Quiet, respectful, and without discussion.

A parting shot with Robert and René—two of the reasons this trip became a story worth telling.

We didn’t bring mushrooms back. We brought back something better: a story, a memory, and a quiet reverence for a place that felt untouched by time. It was one of the most memorable experiences of my life—and easily my most rewarding hunt for burn morels in Saskatchewan. Even now, when I catch that same pale twilight on a northern trip, I remember Robert’s quiet voice by the fire—and what he called it, without a trace of ceremony: the land of the lemon sun.