I don’t trust myself not to kill myself. I wish I did. But I am going to learn! And the first step in this process was heading out into the woods with my friend Robin Follette during some downtime at BOW. We were off in search of edible mushrooms!

My love of mushrooms is not normal. They are my selling item at a restaurant; if a dish has mushrooms in it, I will order it. I can eat mushrooms with every meal. But one thing I can not do; identify which ones in the woods are actually safe for me to pick and eat.

Robin agreed to show me some basic mushrooms. She told me what they were and talked about how to make sure they are edible or not.

Fast forward a couple of weeks and I met Greg Marley at the Common Ground Fair. He hears me raise my voice as I enter the tent “Ohhh mushrooms!!!” and knows he has an easy sell on his hands. He hands me a cup of Chaga Chai to drink and tells me about some courses he is teaching and how I can learn how to not kill myself.

My plan now is to take what Robin has taught me, add in a course by Greg and see if I am confident enough to go into the woods to find some mushrooms. I doubt I will be at first, but I wont know if I don’t try. And I do love mushrooms!