Going on a Mushroom Trip

Going on a Mushroom Trip!

What a winter we are having. It seemed as if we were in for another with the few storms we had in the fall. But alas, we are bone dry in January? At this time of year last year we had similar weather in January but we had much more rain and snow prior. When it’s raining and snowing like it did last year, I find myself outside in the foothills. With rain comes fungus. The early deluges last year primed the forest for plenty of gourmet edibles. Even though there are only a few choice edibles that grow locally I’ve learned to distinguish them from the diverse array of mushrooms that pop out of the ground during the cold and wet winter months. But this year is a different story. With the weather leaving the Sierra bone dry all the way up to the pass it’s been a slow season around here. When I hear the crackling of leaves and sticks when I’m walking through the forest I don’t expect to find much. No use sitting around waiting for the rain. I’m heading for the coast in Mendocino.
Even though they haven’t gotten much more rain than we have hear in the Mother Lode, they have been getting bits of rain and fog at least. I hear that the price for fresh picked mushrooms is low in the city and the mushroom buyer’s are paying rock bottom prices to the commercial pickers. That makes me wonder if there is a plethora of gourmet edibles out. Only one way to find out is to go see for myself. So I’m packing my truck and camping out for three days with a couple of friends. I’ve been there before at this time of year so I am somewhat familiar with the area. I’ll be going to Jackson State Forest in Mendocino County. Nestled in between Fort Bragg and Ukiah, Jackson State Forest is 50,000 acres of second growth redwood forests. This is also where you will find commercial pickers and the brokers that buy the mushrooms from the pickers.
To those of you who are freaking out from the thought of people picking wild mushrooms to eat, do not to fret. Commercial pickers or just some “Joe” trying to fill the cupboard with the years supply of black trumpets, candy caps, yellow foot chanterelles, golden chanterelles, hedgehogs and a few others know what they are doing. Many people, myself included, have spent some time to learn from others and research the subject to the point that they are extremely confident in their ability to identify mushrooms correctly. Mushroom pickers aren’t just randomly going out and picking everything they think is edible. They are targeting certain mushrooms. So they look for the conditions that specific mushrooms thrive in, which in turn leads to the mushrooms. They don’t just randomly start picking everything that grows in the same areas as the targeted mushroom they are closely looking for specific characteristics that are inherent to the mushrooms they are looking for. Once they hone in on those characteristics and the habitats that certain mushrooms thrive in it may be hard to stop going out to pick, especially if it happens to be a great year for mushrooms. There may be even too much for nature to handle them and they’ll go bad before anyone or anything can utilize them.
A very wise mushroom hunter will also have a good understanding of the most important mushrooms to avoid, such as the death cap, or the destroying angel. These are both Amanitas, which contain many different alkaloids known as amanitoxins. These mushrooms can destroy your liver and your kidney and live up to their name quite well. There are telltale characteristics of these mushrooms that should be learned from anyone thinking about picking and eating wild mushrooms. The best way to learn about mushrooms is directly from a person that knows a lot about them. Columbia College offers the class Mushrooms of the Mother Lode every year and is a great way to get acquainted with the mushroom life cycle, their biological role, cultural significance and so much more. There are also Mycological Societies that are great ways to bump elbows with wildlife biologists and ecologists.
If you’re still wondering why people might go pick wild mushrooms and eat them I’ll give you a few more reasons. The flavors of fresh mushrooms and their dried counterparts are very unique and impossible to replicate. Many choice edibles are difficult or impossible to grow, so to enjoy fresh chanterelles is only possible if you or someone else goes into the forest and picks them.
If you’re thinking you want to hunt wild mushrooms I recommend using extreme caution. Learn from someone that really knows what they are doing. It can take a while before you become well acquainted with being able to identify wild mushrooms. Be patient and don’t rush into eating a mushroom you picked yourself. There are old mushroom hunters and there are bold mushroom hunters, but there are no old, bold mushroom hunters.
I just hope we get some rain this year because I would like to pick some morels in the spring. If we don’t get anything in the next few months it will be a grim morel season and I’ll have to look into going somewhere else to get my mushroom tripping fix.

Occupy Climate Change or Occupy a Living Earth

What a way to end November this year. The serious windstorm that kept me up all night, not because of the noise it made but because of how far the trees above my bedroom seemed to sway back and forth. I awoke to flickering power after hearing a couple of trees fall during the night, I wondered how much longer until it was out completely. I thought about the possibility of the power lines starting a forest fire. Within 20 minutes a friend burst into my house and frantically described a slash pile that was now burning the forest. With the worst of the windstorm not over we gathered our troops and the 7 of us headed up with our shovels and McLeod tools to see what we could do. We arrived to see lots of smoke and could hear the crackling of flames in the thick smoke. The fire was about 100 yards away from a house on Love Creek Road and maybe a quarter mile away from the top of Blue Lake Springs. Chopping a fire line we slowly made our way around the acre or so that had been burning. Finally, as we encircled the whole fire we narrowly missed keeping it from spreading to a brush thicket that was close to a more wooded section of the forest. And then Cal Fire and Ebbetts Pass Fire showed up with water and con crews. Our job was done here.

Now back to the windstorm. It was scary to drive back as several trees that had been standing on our way to the fire were now fallen on our way home. Since the fire crew arrived several trees and some power lines had fallen on Love Creek Road. For the rest of the day we listened to and watched trees get uprooted, broken and whipped around in the wind as if they were child’s toys. And when the wind settled there was a whole lot of destruction. Houses crushed, outbuildings crushed, whole canopies in the forest were altered, the power was out, the phone was out. How did this happen? How had some of the largest trees in the forest get uprooted completely?

It is a direct consequence of climate change. As our planet warms and creates less stable conditions we see more and more expressions of that instability with windstorms, floods and the like. Unfortunately we as humans have been occupying climate change for quite some time and we are beginning to see the effects of that more and more throughout the world. Climate scientist Jim Hansen has claimed that if Canada’s Tar Sands are exploited fully then it is essentially game over for climate change. Occupy climate change? Or Occupy Earth? The topic is under serious discussion in Durban, South Africa at the COP (Conference of Parties)17. “Organized by the World Business Council for Sustainable Development, the conference brings together United Nations delegates with representatives from the world's biggest polluters, including many corporations involved in Canada's tar sands.”-contributor, The Boundary Sentinel. Why, I ask, is the most destructive endeavor ever undertaken represented at the global climate summit? It seems obvious to me the tar sands has no place in a future without runaway climate change. Many have said that we are close to a tipping point in climate change if we haven’t reached it already. Some say this conference is the most important conference in the history of the world. For if we don’t do something about climate change now, our actions in the future may prove to be futile.

So can we just sit back and hope that the conference goes well and they figure it out for us? I don’t thinks so, and I’m not very convinced that the players involved with the climate summit really represent our best interest. Can we wait for the government to make the changes necessary? Can we wait for so-called “green” businesses and technologies to solve our problems for us? I think not. When the bottom line of green businesses and technologies are about making profit for investors, I find it hard to believe that the best interest of the planet is incorporated. Granted there are several technologies that can help us curb emissions and decentralize our power systems. I’ve recently heard about free energy devices, which has been hidden from the eyes of the public by the powers that be. But we can no longer wait for the economy or governments to help us make the change. It is now or never. The solutions to climate change exist today and are real. It is up to us to make this change, we can’t wait for a president, an invention, or a savior anymore. We are still the one’s we’ve been waiting for. So simplify, collaborate, co-create, just keep your vision of a life that can be great. Yes, we are the one’s we’ve been waiting for so let’s all step though that door.