Nau speak: Washington: An assortment of shrooms and blooms

Life, uh, finds a way.

Never, in my experience, has that proven truer than here in the Pacific Northwest. Life abounds, multiplies, squeaks, squawks, shouts and slithers. There are vines crawling up any tree or surface they can get hold on, moss and molds fuzzing up on an astounding (and annoying, for home owner's) array of surfaces, and the mushrooms...oh boy, the mushrooms! While Antho and I have both invariably dabbled in the psychedelic kind at one point or another during our younger years, we're still quite fascinated by the sheer variety in shape, color, and size of mushrooms in all their forms. There's no shortage of mushrooms to be found up here, where the ambient moisture allows ample soft, decaying woods and roots for the mycological oddities to feed upon. Did you know that the mushrooms we see above ground are actually just the fruiting bodies and that the overall body of the mushroom is hidden underground? It's kind of like seeing only the apples but not the apple tree... And while we'd occasionally find some form of fungi growing in Nevada, it was rarely this varied or colorful! We've found deep purple mushrooms snaking their way through the yard, tracing the path of a tree root, and nearly trampled itty bitty little white caps barely the size of a pencil eraser! Then there are these big, fluffy pancake looking beasts that seem to happily lay claim to the yard, too, before suddenly recoiling into themselves and collapsing, like a dying star, except their final collapse withers away into a displeasing brownish-black sludge of unmistakable decay instead of a supernova. I suppose that's the preferable, route, though, as mini-supernova wouldn't make a pleasant yard-find.

Anyway, improbabilities of physics aside, mushrooms are super common to find up here. They come in a startling range of options! You shouldn't eat any that you find without being supervised by a trained professional! Yes, you can become a professional mycologist. Mushrooms can, and do, make excellent food options and can be absolutely and utterly delicious, but there are simply SO MANY KINDS of mushrooms out there, and many look SO similar, that you really should leave it to a knowledgeable professional to select edible mushrooms when foraging. There's the handy Puget Sound Mycological Society (PSMS for short) for Seattle and Puget-adjacent residents, who are happy to teach and inform new-comers and the cap-curious in their clinics and classes. I'm sure other areas have their own fungi-fan-clubs, too! I've met people who were fascinated by the fungal forms all the way over in Japan and Korea, along with Stateside, so I've no doubt there's plenty of resources if you're willing to dig a bit!