Mushroom hunting photos

Mushroom hunting at the coast with the Guidry boys, aka Corey and his father, whom he affectionately refers to as "Pops," among other things.


This shrew died shortly after this photograph. It was pretty traumatizing. It just lay down in the middle of the road and stopped breathing. Corey and I were like, "...did that just DIE?" We witnessed (and perhaps were the cause of) the passage of its soul into the Shrew Netherworld.


There are crazy trees in Oregon too.


Amanita phalloides, aka the death cap. DON'T EAT THIS MUSHROOM! IT WILL KILL YOU IF YOU EAT IT. This is one of the three deadly poisonous mushrooms in Oregon.


Foxgloves contain atropine, a tropane alkoloid. It has a similar chemical in it that's similar to the deadly amanita. It's a stimulant... when people die of drug overdoses, they inject a chemical similar to this into their hearts, and it gets their hearts beating again. Think Uma Thurman in "Pulp Fiction."


Amanita mascaria! The eponymous mushroom from popular culture and likely the most familiar mushroom in the world. It is thought of as being the soma of the Rigveda (an ancient Indian collection of Sanskrit hymns). There's a substance that people use call the "soma," which brings dreams. That's this mushroom right here. They were EVERYWHERE on the coast this week... never seen anything like it. They're mycorhizal, so they grow with the roots of trees. People would dry them and use them as Christmas tree decorations because they grow with pine trees. Let's hope Little Billy in the suburbs never got his fat Game Boy playing lips around any. Then again, let's hope he did.


The oyster, our hero from Ecuador, dwells here in Oregon as well.


Reishi (ganaderma lucidum)... I remember the first time I went mushroom hunting with the Brian and the Jess they found oodles of these... you can make a disgusting tasting but very healthy tea out of them... Corey taught the recipe to Don Delio (our shaman friend... god, that sounds weird! I can definitely say I never thought I would have a "shaman friend"). It's used for cancer treatment, immune disorders and for cleaning the blood and has been used in Asian medicine since ancient times. I love that phrase, "ancient times." It makes me think of the phase he is not nearly so old as the ancient ones.


A pristine chanterelle. God, we found so many this year! It was a bumper crop, as they say. Corey and Jay were gathering 40-50 pounds in ONE TRIP and selling them all on Sundays at the market. On Friday and Saturday nights our refrigerator would be full of giant paper bags, with stray pieces of dirty and grass all over the floor and kitchen counters.


A cauliflower mushroom. I'd never seen one of these before. Damn, they look weird. But they're also really good. Corey's friend and fellow mushroom partner in crime Matt gave us this one after finding four or five.


He fried some up for us and it was delicious, sweet and wonderful. Corey said that some people cook them in the style of pasta too... peeling them off and then boiling them in a big old pot.




Corey and Jay at the Milwaukie farmer's market. See that ghetto ass sign? Yeah, I made that, with tape from the Dollar Store.


Our latest bounty. Corey picked so many of them he was carrying them in his shirt and they were falling out. We had porcini burger for dinner last night. It made it all worth it, even the falling down the mountain 40 feet and landing in a blackberry patch.