Diary of a Mushroom Queen

As soon as I step off the path, my decision making process changes.  Without a map to follow, my tuition and imagination takes over.
I use my nose.  My posture changes. I find myself inventing superstitions. There is adventure and treasure and the possibility to get terribly lost, or cold, or wet or eaten.
I usually manage to fill my basket and find my way home before dark.

When I come home I lay my finds out to look at them.  It’s useful to keep a record of what I see.  It's a good exercise in observation and reflection, like thanksgiving.
I thought the information might be interesting to my friends so I started posting my finds on line with descriptions and stories and to my surprise people kept looking at them and commenting.

Hopefully sharing my passion and adventure with the community will encourage others to indulge in their own passions.

 

Alexis Williams Mushroom Diary

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2012 is proving to be a devastatingly hot and dry summer with little fleshy mushrooms to enjoy. The drastic conditions have provided some interesting new finds. I built a lab and learned to cultivate mushrooms. I grew 7 different strains of oysters as well as several other gourmets and a few glow in the dark species on phone books. I sold them as grow your own mushroom kits at art fairs while encouraging mycoremediation and other inovative uses of fungal technology. I experimented with growing cultures from the wild including a variety of slime molds. I met Paul Stemets. I started to find enough choice edibles to sell them to restaurants. I began to find a wide variety of colored musrhooms and experimented with making dyes and oil sticks. I started to notice glow in the dark mycelium in the wild. 2009 was my first full mushroom season. The Summer months were spent in Cape Breaton. The Fall brought an abundance of inky caps so I made lots of ink. The end of the mushroom season was the begining of consistant and rich dreams of mushroom discoveries. When I began noticing mushrooms in the forest I bought the Autobon Field Guide to Mushrooms. I found a basket and began exploring the forests near where I live. Right from the start I was passionate about collecting. I started to collect field guides and stopped reading fiction all together. I learned to identify a few edibles and continued to study. My observations on The Mushroom Observer.org - the collaborative amateur mycology database.