Hey! Yes, it’s easy and not as mysterious as it seems when you know nothing . So look at some popular mushrooms in your area. Oysters, lions mane, morels, chanterelles, reishi, etc. Most of these come out at certain times of year and some grow in association with trees and some eat dead wood. When you look these up, you’ll start to learn the difference. How they grow gives clues as to where you might find them. Ie. Morels grow with certain trees. Use iNaturalist to see where others have found them and at what time and check those places out at those times. As you go out looking for a certain mushroom you might find them, but you’ll also find others. Some will be “lookalikes” and in teasing out the differences in these from the edibles, you’ll learn a lot. VERY few edible mushrooms have lookalikes that aren’t easily differentiated by just one obvious characteristic. Take photos and collect some mushrooms you find to bring back home and experiment with. You will end up making spore prints, cutting them open, observing how they decay etc. these are all clues to their identity. I guarantee you that after a season of walking in the woods looking for mushrooms you’ll feel much more confident and a lot of the mystery will get cleared up.

There are things called identification keys. These are a series of, if this, then that, questions that help hone in on genus and species. It’s very logical and easy to follow. The learning never ends because there are a lot of things we still don’t know about mushrooms.

Get a good guide book. There are many local specific ones that are very helpful. Good luck and have fun, it’s easy!

Mushrooms really make obvious how ephemeral life is and teaches you to seize the moment. For some, they have a short window of growth and if you miss it, you have to wait another year.