Relations of learning

Taking our eleven year old, Zephyr, out of school has been a long-awaited blessing and I'm slowly developing a teaching method which is increasingly simple, involving only walking and being open. Learning can't be quantified when we happen across a jelly fungus called Yellow Brain (Tremella mesenterica). An old and highly sophisticated organism that attaches itself to its food source, this saprotrophic fungus, like most fungi, help decompose dead matter and turn it into soil. This understanding of life, this directness of contact with earthly processes, makes our walks about relationships.

Today we walked across the town's lake bridge and noticed the degrading pebble-mix concrete barrier and the lichen covered cherry plum and the grey melancholy of deep winter. Our blood and woolen warm engagement with these cold elements and our closeness together as father and son brought a quietness to us both. A simple joy that encouraged openness.

In the forest on the edge of town we noted that the numerous little mounds of rabbit droppings are partnered with an ancient moss (Polytricum sp.) and when we later bumped into a friend on his mountain bike traversing another part of the town's edge we learned that it is the buck rabbit that makes these little mounds as territorial markers, as nitrogenous cairns, that the spores of such moss so obviously gravitate to in order to make an easier life.

As we walked and talked of such connectivity, we discussed the many different type of relationships that exist in life – the mutualistic, the parasitical, predator-prey, the advantagious and the loving. None of which are exclusively human, as Zero, our kin dog Jack Russell likes to remind us in his own particular creaturely way, and who nearly always joins us on our homeschool adventures, using senses we've long lost but surely need to rescue.

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Eating wild fungi: fun or foolhardy?

In April 2012, in conjunction with Fungimap, the inaugural Australian Fungi Festival was held in Hobart. Here is the audio of the debate, Eating Wild Fungi: Fun or Foolhardy from my perspective, the second speaker for the affirmative.

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A ten minute crash course in edible fungi

Two new friends that I met through the community gardens, Dave and Doug (and Doug's lovely son Malachi), came out foraging with me yesterday in pine forest plantations on the edge of town. I asked Dave if he would film our little excursion so we could make a beginner's guide to foraging edible mushrooms.

Identification is critical before consuming 'shrooms. Books and static images are not often enough to identify accurately. I hope this little video document provides enough tips to get you started. And remember, if you're not 100% sure, trust your instincts and do not eat it.



For much of my fungal knowledge attained thus far I owe to my friend Alison Pouliot, who runs courses in south-eastern Australia in autumn every year. Thanks Alison!

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Walking for Food

I've been in Hobart for twelve days staying with my friend Glen, attempting to put together a first draft of all the chapters I've been working on over the past thirty months that constitute my doctoral research work, 'Walking for Food' (working title).

While at Glen's I was able to forage in his local neighbourhood. I brought to our table rosemary, figs, mallow, dandelion, hawksbeard, apples, feijoas, fennel, borage flowers, stickyweed, rosehips, crab apples, and up on Mount Nelson high above the suburbs I came across the one fungus I saw in hobart, the curry punk (Piptoporus australiensis), which I consumed only as sensory delight. Walking and foraging helped me loosen up my sedentary studious body, but I also resorted to quick break outs in Glen's apartment overlooking the Derwent River.

Arriving back in Melbourne yesterday morning I wandered once more disappointingly into The Age while I waited for a cup of tea and read another stupid article on foraging. Will the bourgeoise please take a plate of death caps now. Actually the article was not really on foraging at all but on secreting, privatising and selfishly capitalising on the autonomous food commons. Arseholes!

Photo: Meredith O'Shea

On my last night in Hobart I was a guest speaker at a dinner-debate titled 'Eating Wild Fungi: Fun or Foolhardy', an event that was part of a national symposium of mycologists and fungi enthusiasts that aimed to generate more awareness of the important role mycelium plays in life production. I wrote this little number while at the symposium.

At the dinner I was on the affirmative team with Tasmanian food writer Graeme Phillips and my friend Alison, a photographer and fungi educator who I've been doing an informal apprenticeship with while helping her out with the brilliant workshops she runs. We argued for a return to commonsense and self-accountability, not the continuation of the nanny state. Naturally I found this debate a platform to critique anti-ecological society, its estrangement due to a lost connection with food. We won!

Then after the dinner I hooked up with Glen for a final bash at Hobart nightlife, and headed to the Brisbane Hotel to see the FUN FUN FUN world of the 5678s. They were very cheap, cool and mingled with the common mycelium after the show. I had a chat with bassist Akiko Omo about all things punk, fungus and Hobart.

My love and gratitute to Glen for a wonderful time, and who shot this final peg as an encapsulating image of an awesome journey, at once intellectual and biophysical; metaphoric and metabolic; theory and practice; fun and fungi.

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Our Transition

To here –

Wheel of Ecological Culture (permapoesis)

From here –

Wheel of Progress Capitalism (another false cycle)

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My body as temple for experimental relocalisation

There's a lot of fear around mushrooms, fear created mostly out of mycological ignorance. In Australia we have such little knowledge of fungi, their role in ecosystems and their edibility. This previous post goes further into that sort of thing.

My friend and fungi teacher Alison Pouliot, an ecologist, photographer, writer and mycologist, is vehemently encouraging of amateur mycology, so I thought I'd share a recent discovery that I made:

Camp fungi – nibble methodology #1, 24 September 2011 (from my journal). Trametes versicolour (Rainbow fungus).

I found this bracket fungus growing in eucalypt forest alongside Sailors Creek at Bryce's Flat, Central Victoria. I have heard that the Dja Dja Wurrung ate Fistulina hepatica (Beefsteak fungus), another bracket fungus that also grows in the Wombat Forest. 

However I don't know for sure if the Rainbow is edible so I aim to taste-test in the name of local ecological knowledge and relocalisation. 

I choose a few small brackets, cut off the woody parts that were the point of attachment to the log, and fried them up in the pan on the camp fire using a little olive oil from nearby Guildford.

As I write I'm not in the least bit sure I'm going to be poisoned and as we've walked here from home to this beautiful camping spot I'll just have to tough it out around the camp fire tonight and trust that I'll overcome any adverse toxins. I have only had a small chip, and I say chip because what it tasted like was an overcooked, cold potato chip that's been lying around for a few days. In other words, an oily albeit edible tasteless crispy starch. The smell of this mushroom uncooked is earthy, vaguely fishy (permeated by freshwater eucalypt tannins). A good mushroom smell really, one you can trust, at least for a nibble, anything more at this point would be stupid. I'm with my girlfriend Meg and my son Zephyr, who I've not invited to partake in the experiment in case it all goes terribly wrong, and as it was my idea it is only fair I should carry it out. As I cooked the chips the mushroom gave off no unsavory smell, as mushrooms I have eaten in the past have, causing me to abandon eating them.

I write this post several days later and I'm pleased to announce that I suffered no adverse effects. Next time I may soak this fungus in milk for a day as I've heard this makes beefsteak fungus more delectable. I will then eat a few more chips to text the toxicity again before being confident to serve up to others.

Stay tuned for more non-lab, in the field amateur science soon!

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Flesh of the forest

A find of wood blewits (Lepista nuda) yesterday on a walk was last night cooked up with garlic and parsley as a protein bomb, and shared with friends.

More uncapitalised food from the commons.

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Greenwash #23 in Trouble - Goodly Spores

To read, click on image and then click again for better resolution.

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What mushroom is that?

I found this mushroom in a pine forest while taking Alison Pouliot's fungi workshop last weekend.

It was new to both of us, so Alison asked if I'd take a spore print and send her the results.

As the spores were white Alison emailed me back saying it may belong to the genus Tricholoma, though she wasn't entirely sure.

Regardless of the genus, the real excitement was that I made my first spore print (thanks Alison) demonstrating firsthand and emphatically the incredible reproductive ingenuity of fungi.

I took this peg today of a small colony of Inky Caps (Coprinus atramentarius) inhabiting ground under our young pomegranate. They are not only autonomous, auto-digesting and self-determined beings in our food garden, but edible too as long as we don't add alcohol to the meal as the combination creates allergy-like symptoms.

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To be open to the world as much as possible

Amanita muscaria

"Once you abstract, to the extent that humans do, you lose the sense of connection to the earthly scentscience of another species... perhaps."

This is a beautiful example of budgetless (no waste) filmmaking – poetic, humorous, philosophical and essential; contiguous with mycelial, and in the spirit of interweb, networks.

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Fungi's answer (a slow text mesostic)

Click for bigger.

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1. Val Plumwood, 2002
2. ibid.

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