Autumn Recap- What a Wonderful Season!

The autumn of 2024 is coming to an end, and what an amazing mushroom season it was. This year has taken the channel to another level, rounding the corner on 90,000 subscribers which is unbelievable to me. I've always thought that if I reached 100,000 I would be at the pinnacle of all success, but I feel like I'm just getting started, and the channel will be 5 years old in May. 

I got to connect with a lot of amazing people this autumn, at so many awesome events. I've hosted mycologists into my home, traveling and having vehicle break downs along the way, camped outside on cold nights, trudged through unfamiliar damp forests, made videos with so many awesome people, it's hard to know where to start. 

I guess the kickoff of the season was really a chance to meet Noah Siegel and Shannon Adams on a impromptu private foray just between the three of us(and one of Shannon’s friends) in the Cascade mountains at an undisclosed location at about 4,000 ft above sea level, in late August. I followed the map directions until I was 30 miles deep on a dirt road with no cell phone service and no signs of other people. I just trusted the minimal directions sent by Noah and drove to the end of the road where I encountered Noah and Shannon, getting out of a car with tripods, backpacks and baskets- my kind of mushroomers. I had never met them before in person and I was star struck. We spent the day filming, picking massive Porcini, talking about everything from Cortinarius to hedgehogs, and the famous authors take on medicinal mushrooms. A week after that, Noah graced KPMS upon my invitation, to give a awesome talk about the bioregion of Cascadia to a pretty large group of people for our opening September meeting at Kitsap Peninsula Mycological Society, of which I am currently the Vice President. 

That was the kickoff to an amazing start to autumn, the rains started to fall at the end of August and through September, setting the stage for one of the most epic mushroom seasons of my life. More Chantrelles that I've ever seen growing in areas that I've never seen them growing in before. Porcini abound from the mountain tops to the dunes of the coast, and every conceivable edible mushroom in between. The only mushroom I've noticed that haven't had the greatest season has been the Matsutake. Last year was epic for those.

The first weekend of October landed me near Trout Lake Washington after having a disasterous drive where my brake fell off of my vehicle and I was stranded for 8 hours in a town called Stevenson Washington along the Columbia River. The people of the town were very nice and generous, and a nearby autobody shop owner lent me tools and helped me out during the day to get back on the road. The delay caused me to miss out on a foray with Dr. Beug and Julie Beeler(author of the Mushroom Color Atlas), for which I was very disappointed (I did get to catch up with her later at NAMA, which was nice). I eventually made it to the Cave Creek Farm where the 4th annual Gorge Fungi Foray was taking place. That night I stayed with Dr. Michael Beug at his lovely abode in the hills of the lower Gifford Pinchot forest. A gated property full of Oregon oak trees, it's a unique habitat, and he and his wife were very gracious to let me stay, and feed me oatmeal in the morning, and tell me old stories about mushrooms, mycology, and showed me some amazing old fungus books. What an epic experience that was. We made a video walking around his backyard, looking at his orchards and grapes. It was an experience I will cherish forever. Some of the noteable mushrooms that we encountered were Pisolithus, Suilliellus, and deadly Pholiotina- which he was quite excited about (he was, and is, the fungal toxocology expert on mushrooms in the US). That weekend was the Gorge fungi foray, in which I was one of the field guides - taking a team of 15 people deep into the forests around Mount Adams to discover what mushrooms were there. Although chilly, we found lots of mushrooms, ate great food, met lots of cool people.

   In mid October I found myself in Port Angeles Washington standing in what used to be Lake Aldwell, an artificial lake created by dams installed on the Elwha river near Port Angeles Washington. The dams had been removed about 12 years ago, and the river is falling back into its original path - and the vegetation is rebounding. So is the fungi. Graham Steinruck and Amy Honan led a fungal biodiversity survey during the third week in October. About 40 volunteer fungal fans united to collect and voucher all of the fungal specimens that could be found from the edge of the river to deep into the conifer forest. This all took place at the Olympic Peninsula fungi Festival, which was an epic event in itself. I was one of the main speakers there, kicking off Saturday morning at 10:30 with my talk labeled 'a stroll through Mushroom Wonderland.' People turned out in large numbers, probably the largest crowd I've ever spoken front of about mushrooms. So many other great speakers were there that weekend, between collecting mushrooms and hanging out with people like Peter McCoy and Sidnee Obersingleton, Langdon Cook, and of course making videos. If you haven't seen those, definitely check the videos out. I plan on making another video just about the event itself, I’m waiting till mushroom season dwindles down to make those sort of videos.

  The last week of October I had a house guest, Alan Rockefeller, quite a famous name in the mycological community these days, mainly for his studies on psychedelic mushrooms - but also because he's an all-around amazing contributor to citizen science and mushroom identifier. He's like a walking encyclopedia of fungal knowledge and is quite fun to hang out with. He truly is kind and gives freely of his knowledge- which is a value that aligns with my own. It was fun directing him as we shot videos about active mushrooms, traveling around the state for several days finding, filming and photographing hallucinogenic mushrooms. Along the way we had a lot of good laughs and ate a lot of good food. More videos to come from that experience. We even made a really in-depth microscopy video that the internet is in urgent need of, it's going to take a while to edit that one. We finished up that week by heading up to Randall Washington to the Cispus learning center, where the annual N.A.M.A. foray was held. A roving foray that lands somewhere different in the contiguous northern American continent, I was lucky enough to have it land in my backyard. That area of the Gifford Pinchot National Forest, north of where the Gorge fungi foray took place, is a veritable Jurassic Park of mushroom habitat. Humongous trees that are 15 ft in circumference on average, you really feel dwarfed. That weekend was amazing, I was roommates with the famous Christian Schwarz, co-author of ‘Mushrooms of the Redwood Coast’ and ‘Mushrooms of Cascadia.,’ as well as Dr. Michael Beug, and Sidnee. I spent a lot of that weekend in the collection area where all of the specimens were being vouchered, carousing with the mycologically well-to-do, as it were. It really was like a red carpet of mycology fame and I was awestruck at every turn. Hanging out with Daniel Winkler, people like Stephen Russell and Danny Miller, getting to interview Noah Siegel and Trent Blizzard, too many names to name. There's a video all about that weekend too, check that out. I took part in a workshop put on by Dr Gordon Walker (Fascinated By Fungi) and myself, all about social media in the Myco world. It was cool meeting him, and swapping our experiences about becoming pretty popular through social media. 

What a whirlwind of fungal activity. Between all of these events I still managed to be a father and a husband and run a little construction company, all the while still tromping through the forests around my neck of the woods to make videos still relevant for regional foraging, which is a big part of my following. 

A week after that I had another house guest by the name of Britt Bunyard, A famed mycologist, author, director of the Telluride Mushroom Festival and all around gentle and funny guy. He came to the Pacific Northwest on a tour promoting his books and giving presentations, he was gracious enough to come to the Kitsap Peninsula Mycological Society and hang out with me for a day and make a great video. We got to have a myo-centric dinner and breakfast together and sit around sipping coffee and laughing. I'm hoping to connect a lot more with him in the future.

This fall I have experimented with more different types of videos, like cooking videos and forage and cook videos. I really enjoy doing that kind of work and I would like to lean more into that. I would also like to get into travel vlogs where I go to different places to explore the fungal diversity there. As I said at the beginning of this, I still feel like I'm just getting started - so I'm excited to see what's to come. I ask the universe to humble me and give me the tools needed to take on the task of being a leading role in fungal education and continue to work hard and try to connect with as many people as I can; in person, through the channel, and through the mycelial network of the universe. Mush love!