There’s Anthony as always leading the backwoods charge, here on the path that I’m fond of saying really leads somewhere, per John Muir, who wrote that “the clearest way into the Universe is through a forest wilderness.” Said path is also the one that winds through our back ten acres of Northern Deciduous Forest, otherwise known as The Eastern Masssasauga Trail, named after Michigan’s only poisonous rattlesnake. And while our Wolverine state’s elusive swamp rattler never appeared, The Golden Pholiota, the storied Birch Polypore, and my personal fav, Slime Mold, all made their presence known. Preferring to keep his talks and walks intimate, Tony kept our crew to a lucky dozen, ranging in age from nine to sixty-nine.
Although a Fantastic Fungi coloring book and even a vintage, 1000-piece mushroom puzzle were on hand to make sure the youngest, Cameron, stayed engaged and entertained, there was no need. This nine-year old’s knowledge and enthusiasm ended up impressing and energizing us all, giving us some hope for the planet! I joke that Tony puts the fun back into fungus finding, and his gatherings are always a lively mix of storytelling and wild discoveries. We started by touching on some of the mysterious mushroom basics, fungi being neither plant nor animal, made of mostly water and fiber like plants, are reproductive organs like fruits, but evolutionarily speaking, have interesting correlations to Homo Sapiens on the tree of life. The hunted, visible, fruiting body of the organism that shoot up in exotic arrays of reds, yellows, blues, purples and greens are the reproductive part of the natural entity. But these attractive, colorful outgrowths are mere glimpses of their vast existence, most of the living organism remaining unseen, thriving underground, or inside the bark and wood of trees, existing as part of a vast mycelia network that lies just below the earth’s surface.
While a hot, seasonally dry early autumn turned our stretch of front lawn into a silvery savanna, lack of rainfall and a sweltering September afternoon couldn’t thwart our mission to forage. It wasn’t long before we crossed paths with “a mushroom interesting in the extreme.” Fomitopis Betulina also known as the Birch Polypore (BP), a common bracket fungus, was harvested for centuries for its vast medicinal aspects, holding anti-bacterial, anti-parasitic, anti-viral and anti-inflammatory properties. It was also formed into band-aids for wounds. Unearthed with the first discovered Iceman Ötzi, BPs were also sought after for their ascetic or ornamental value, a Birch Polypore found mounted to Ötzi’s leather thong. Three of the mushrooms were found in his pouch along with Fomes Fomentarius, a mushroom that, when boiled and properly pounded out, forms a leather-like material called Amadou, that’s then used to make hats, wallets, and other garments. BP’s velvety edge were even used as a strop to sharpen razors, hence its name Razor Strop Fungus.
Cameron’s sprightly, trail-attuned eyes caught the bright yellow caps of Pholiota Aurivella, commonly known as the Golden Phollota. While described by Anthony as having a “nutty taste”, it’s been reported that the this mushroom’s flavor resembles "marshmallows without the sugar.” That set the stage for a sighting and discussion of beloved, bright yellow Slime Mold. Not a mushroom but rather a protist in its own scientific category, Fuligo Septica, also called Dog Vomit or Scrambled Egg Slime Mold, are energetic blobs that can move up to a foot a day, changing form like a shape-shifter. Amoeba-like with no cellular walls, there’s even a pulsating area of the organism, as if it had a heartbeat. Put into terrariums, these intelligent molds can crawl through a labyrinth, and were bizarrely used to remodel the Tokyo subway system. In Mexico, they’re gathered by moonlight and fried up in pans. Buenos.
Receiving some encouraging follow-up notes from Anthony, he pointed out the ramps on our property take forever to develop, going from seed to bulb in four to five years, a very lengthy multiplying process. That considered, we’ll be working at developing our edible plant offerings — ramps, mushrooms, slime mold (bromas - joking!) — but seriously building a thriving food forest here at The Higher Haven. Fostering ramp patches, plugging logs, these are just a few of the ways we can apply the wisdom of the forest wilderness, enriching our land as well as future retreats. Plugging Mycelium corks and inoculating logs makes for the start of an incredible cultivation plan, a collaboration with the power of nature, a way to harness its primal, unpredictable force.
At the end of the day, it was another great forest foray, another chapter in our ongoing discovery of an underground network of interconnected organisms revealing a wild new story about our planet’s ability to heal itself. The innate intelligence of these networks —the result of billions of years of evolution —has much to teach us. And spending the afternoon with Tony, our team of nature walkers took it all in. According to my mushroom coloring book, this ‘third kingdom” of fungi and mushrooms is a realm of mystery on whose secrets the future of life on earth may depend. At a time when solutions to our planets most pressing challenges seem as elusive as ever, the ground beneath our retreat center holds some very promising answers.
