Fellowship of the Fungi

This is the first of many mini eco-episodes about mushrooms and other interesting fungi that I and my myco-minded friends have, and will come upon, on our fun as fungi forages through pristine primordial forest. Here I will share as best I can the intoxicating entertainment and educational value this ancient interactive experience with the guardians of Nature has on my and our collective soul. This is the purpose of the Fellowship of the Fungi - to have fun learning and realize learning is fun and that learning about fungi is the funkiest fun one could reverie have -okay fun guys and gals.

I came upon this babe-the ox-blue colored badboy I believe sometime in early September. My sasquatch sized friend Darrin Burton and I had walked a half hour into Three-Stage (a chunk of Canadian crown land in the Blue Mountains). We had already come across a large but unfortunately beginning to rot and sporalating puffball which had the look of a gnarly fossilized dinosaur egg. Scanning around the green/brown forest for more delectable puffballs to white-cloud poof into our vision my eyes fell on another white anomaly. I walked over to where it was sitting and I remember looking down at the ground and being immediately confused. I called Darrin over to show him this chalky white hockey puck protruding from a surrounding bed of fallen dead pine needles. He was as vexed as I and as excited to figure out what we had come upon. Neither of us had yet encountered this particular mushroom. The chalky whiteness of the cap was a new feature for us. After taking one blurry picture of it I reached down and plucked the mushroom from its genesis point and it easily gave way. It was a fully developed specimen and when I turned it over to get a look at the underside of the cap I was again totally surprised. Blue. Indigo blue. A shade of blue my eyes have never seen. I was astonished and when I handed it over to Darrin he too became elated with our new to us toadstool discovery. This mushroom had a mystical appeal about it. My god just look at it - it screams alien life. I didn't even think that we had such mushrooms growing in our neck of the woods. This was a true find. There was only one about and only one grew and this was a complete first for both Darrin and myself - and of course for us -neither of us had brought an identification guide. We did not know what we had at the moment - just a chalky white film over a bright blue mushroom that made our minds murmur goodness gracious - Gaia - you produce some strangely beautiful artifacts of yourself. We brown bagged this eye-bugging bugger and took it home so we could make a proper identification.

Consulting the bible of mushroom identification guides - David Arora's Mushrooms Demystified- we came to understand that this mushroom was aptly called the Indigo Milk Cap (Lactarius indigo). It happened to be a very choice edible agaricus but for some reason we did not partake in a taste test. There is still a healthy tinge of western societies mycophobia infecting us both and because this was our inaugural find of this magnificently mystical looking mushroom we passed on testing it in and on our gullets. Though with the info and experience we have now there is no doubt in my mind that if we come upon this Indigo Milk cap again I will certainly chow down and see what kind of earth energy it'll infuse in me.

This mushroom was one of my most interesting finds - especially thinking that this phenotype of fungi was not apart of my local eco-system. But this is why I enjoy hunting and finding mushrooms - you never know what kind of fruitbody is going to flare up its flesh from the ground and give you that goosebumps thrill of novel discovery.

Until next time - keep up your morel and mushroom your minds into thoughtful toadstools of nature scholastics.