Learn how foraged mushrooms create health and environmental benefits

Foraging for mushrooms is an activity that ranks almost has high as skiing in popularity here in Revelstoke. Our wet climate creates quite a bounty from early spring to late fall depending on the micro climate of the area you are foraging in. We are seeing a great interest in our collection of mushroom books at the library in the hopes that the hot dry summer is coming to an end and a wetter, cooler autumn is on its way soon.

Mycelium Running by Paul Stamets is a book that will appeal to readers with both a little or a lot of interest in mushrooms. Most people know that mushrooms are great for our health, especially as an immune-boosting food. However, most people are probably not aware of the mushroom’s benefit to our environment.

To be more precise, it is actually the mycelium, or the microscopic threadlike cells that form an almost worldwide web-like network. Sound familiar? Stamets makes the claim that Mycelium is at least as intelligent and useful to our world as the internet is. It is a network that through digesting and decomposing is able to turn waste into life-giving material. Stamets has proven that by the same method, mycelium can de-toxify, neutralize and filter the debris that humans and our industries leave behind.

Even if the chapters about “mycorestoration” don’t interest you, the rest of the book will. Stamets talks about the medicinal and nutritional properties of the fruit (mushrooms) of the mycelium which have long been known in Asian countries (mushrooms have an enormous potential as an anti-bacterial and anti-viral medicine). Other chapters cover the many ways to cultivate mushrooms on both a small and large scale. The book is beautifully illustrated and full of great references as well.

If you are considering mushroom foraging please check out some of the library’s great resources by following this link.

Also, please stay tuned to the North Columbia Environmental Society’s upcoming Hunting and Gathering Guru Series. The schedule for this exciting series of workshops will be released soon.