“What an astonishment to breathe on this breathing planet. What a blessing to be Earth loving Earth.”

-John Green

Things have been a little quiet around here as I wrap up some projects, plan new ones, and focus on rebuilding my website–not a quick or simple task. I’m hoping to have it completed in the next few weeks ahead of the holidays but there are always technical difficulties. I definitely need time away from screens this weekend.

Last weekend we ventured out for our very first mushroom foraging trip of the year. Typically I’d wait until early-mid September, but I heard folks had seen good flushes of the iconic red Lobster mushrooms in the coast range so ventured out early, skeptically at first, then pleasantly surprised to have found a few tucked away under soft duff at the foot of the pines.

For those who aren’t familiar with lobster mushrooms, they are one of the best edible mushrooms around. They taste a bit like seafood and have a very firm texture which makes them excellent in spicy stir fries and creamy pasta sauces (my favorite).The nice thing about them is there really isn’t another mushroom that looks like them around here so they’re virtually impossible to mistake for anything toxic. And they’re beautiful! That bright reddish-orange can sometimes be a deep ochre yellow too, and it is always exciting to see this glowing beacon emerging from the dark forest floor.

Fun fact: lobster mushrooms are a type of bolete that is inedible at first. Once it is parasitized by another fungus it takes on the reddish hue and lumpy appearance that, by some magical chemical transmutation, makes them completely edible. Neat!

Foraging surprises are great, yet still I am hyperaware that the phenology–the timing of growth across seasons or “nature’s calendar”–is heavily impacted by human-caused climate change. This year more than any other I’ve watched flowers, fruits, and now fungi enter the scene earlier than usual. This is concerning for so many reasons and I am often shaking my head in disbelief at how much plant life cycles, breeding seasons, and migrations have been knocked off kilter, and this is just what we can see happening. What are the long-term implications of an off-tempo environment?

Can we still be grateful for a certain kind of abundance while keeping an eye on how the web of life as a whole is impacted?

With one wary, weary eye on these unprecedented changes to our land I will still try to be grateful for this long hot summer, grateful to know fall will be here shortly, and grateful for early mushrooms and the dopamine-fueled hunt to find them.

Here’s to all of the wild and wonderful animals, plants, and fungi who teach us how to be better humans.

Jenn