With plans well under way for the 2016 Fungi and Fibre Symposium to be held in Madeira Park next October, I’m enlisting members of my mushroom club (and anyone else who wants another excuse to go out foraging in the forest) to start collecting the dyers now. So I’ve made a list of the dye mushrooms I expect to find in the next few months, once our usual autumn rains materialize (predicted for the end of next week!). Just go to The Mushrooms page on the right.

And keep an eye out for Symposium updates—on this site, on the Fungi & Fibre website, or like our page on Facebook. Mark your calendars now: October 17-22, 2016.

We’re expecting a bit of snow tonight (a dusting, really), and temperatures are set to drop, so I decided to go out for my annual foray on a nearby moss bluff—several tiers of bluff, actually—where I usually find a few of my Cortinarius dyers. This is part of the “arbutus belt,” a narrow area at a consistent elevation where the conditions are right for the arbutus tree (Arbutus menziesii, also known as madrone). Arbutus wood is iron-hard, and it sheds its paper-like bark each year. These trees resist domestication and are quite picky about where they’ll take root, so I consider myself fortunate to be living among them.

Knowing this hike would involve a bit of a climb, I left Silas, our 12-year-old Golden, behind, as it would have been too much for him. Instead, I invited Rica, our Border Collie mutt, to join me—nothing is too much for her!

I could hear the dermocybes calling, and sure enough, it wasn’t long before I found these little guys camouflaged among the dried leaves.

We clambered over moss-covered rocks, sweeping back and forth across the bluffs, and soon my little brown paper bag was full, of both the yellow-gilled and red-gilled beauties, and I had to start on another bag.

Along the way I found a few clumps of orange coral, Ramaria gelatinosum, which only added to the excitement.

It’s probably just as well Silas wasn’t along with us, as he would have been unable to tear himself away from these two discoveries: bones cleaned down to the bone (probably by coyotes) and a nice pile of elk poo (recognized by its large size and the distinctive “thumbprint” in each nugget).

 After two hours of foraging, it was time to return home. But wait—Rica found some excitement of her own! The squirrel teased and chattered and eventually made its way down the other side of the tree. Rica’s doggy brain forgot about it immediately, happy to move on to other discoveries.

A perfect afternoon, evidenced by this view of Mixal Lake on our way down to the road and back home.

And look what’s in the dehydrator at this very moment:

Mark your calendars: In October of 2016. the 17th International Fungi & Fibre Symposium will be coming to Pender Harbour! When the announcement was made at the most recent Symposium in Estonia, the room erupted in cheers—the event has never been held in Canada before, and everyone was thrilled to bits at the prospect of checking out our dye mushrooms in British Columbia’s coastal rainforest.

The wonderful members of the Sunshine Coast Spinners and Weavers Guild are enthusiastic about putting on an event to remember, and members of the Sunshine Coast Society for the Hunting, Recognition and Observation of Mushrooms (hereafter known as SCHROOM) are already busy collecting the mushrooms we’ll need to keep the dyepots going.

It’ll be a while yet before we get the details hammered out, but let me know if you’d like to be on our mailing list. Or just keep an eye on this blog.

I’ve been working with a small group of people who are organizing the first Sunshine Coast Mushroom Fest, to be held here in Madeira Park on October 16-18. As we blue-skied about what we wanted this festival to look like and wondered who we should invite to speak at our first event,  David Arora’s name came up, as in, “Wouldn’t it be great if we could somehow get David Arora up this way to talk to us?”

Well, guess what? David’s driving up from California in October to attend a couple of other mushroom events in these parts, and said he’d be more than happy to take part in our little mushroom celebration. He’ll be speaking the evening of October 17, then taking a limited number of people (thirty) on a foray/ID workshop on Sunday the 18th. Registration will take place through the Iris Griffith Interpretive Centre – I’m not sure when details will be up on their website (www.lagoonsociety.com), but if you can possibly make it here on that weekend, it will be well worth it.