The Fungus Among Us

In these confounding times, it seems like we’re all spending a lot of precious time just trying to figure out what’s real. 

Practically everything in our feeds feels like a ploy for our money or blind allegiance, and we’re all desperate for some truth—it says a lot that Merriam-Webster’s choice for the 2023 word that best reflects our current culture is authentic. My suspicion is that we’re not going to find authenticity with more scrolling. 

When propaganda masquerades as facts, celebrities can’t be discerned from their deep fakes, and your next therapist is an AI chatbot, the best remedy is a walk in the woods. Nothing clears the mind like fresh air, and a sycamore tree isn’t going to try and sell you a six-pack of leaves when you just want one to decorate the windowsill. 

Trustworthy oxygenation is what led Mark and I into a far corner of Tom Triplett Park in Pooler a couple of Saturdays ago to breathe in the scent of pine and a few errant gnats. We were also enticed by the tail end of mushroom hunting season, which unlike other kinds of hunting does not require a weapon or a permit. A strong stomach, however, can be useful. 

Though wild mushrooms won’t claw your eyes out or confuse Dick Cheney into shooting you in the face, dangers still abound when it comes to nature’s fungal bounty. I’ve been extremely wary of mushroom hunting ever since 1997, when the scion of a winemaking family died after a dining foray into the Sonoma hills. The Australian woman who killed her in-laws with the “special ingredient” in her beef Wellington isn’t doing the hobby any favors either. 

But wise ol’ Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote that knowledge is the antidote to fear. And if these days the things that pass for knowledge I can’t understand (that was for you, Steely Dan fans),  nothing sticks like hands-on learning. So we sought out some screen-free education courtesy of local forager Drew McGlohon, aka Savannah Mushrooms, who promised to help us parse the edible from the poisonous. (Sure, there are plenty of delightful online mushroom resources, but is gastrointestinal vexation, liver failure and certain death something you really want to risk learning from TikTok?)